Item: IntelliJ IDEA
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IntelliJ IDEA is used by some departments in my organization for the development of Java-based applications. It is an IDE that is basically universal in terms of developing applications using the mainstream technologies and it really provides full debugging, easy to remember shortcuts and great suggestions for making development more efficient and effective.

Pros and Cons

Pros

It provides great debugging features for most applications that can support features such as watching and manipulating objects while the code is running
It fully supports the development of Android applications; minimal setup is required for getting the IDE up and ready
A great strength is the ability to change the project folder structures based on preferences, for instance, you could change the structure from viewing by the program's packages rather than it's project files

Cons

It would make life a bit easier if the IDE allowed the development of .Net applications out of the box. One would have to download plugins for this to work however this is not a show stopper as there are numerous plugins that can assists

Return on Investment

This IDE provides great suggestive tips to developers and great debugging features, therefore, we are able to quickly deploy and provide support in our applications in a more timely manner.

Alternatives Considered

Eclipse and NetBeans

I selected IntelliJ IDEA over Eclipse and NetBeans because of the easy to use interface, great customizable features, and it comes with features for the development of Android applications. It is the most stable IDE among the 3, it has never crashed since the moment that I have been using it

Other Software Used

Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio IDE, IBM Rational System Architect

Likelihood to Recommend

If one wants to develop applications using the Java or even the Kotlin language, IntelliJ IDEA is well suited for this. It shines in its suggestion tips, marvelous debugging features, and ability to easily create unit tests right out of the box. It comes fully integrated with Gradle, therefore, dependencies can be easily managed.

Don't use this if you want to do .Net development because a lot of plugins would have to be added to the IDE to fully support all the features that one would need. However, it can be done regardless with a little effort.

Comments

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IntelliJ IDEA the best IDE for Java development