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The best Java IDE
December 03, 2018

The best Java IDE

James Pautz II | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA

It is generally used widely by the technical teams at my company. We aren't required to use one IDE or another, but since IntelliJ IDEA is an excellent IDE that is cross-platform, it is widely adopted. A few of my co-workers use Eclipse, and I used to as well, but I've made the switch and have been happy with IDEA.
  • The UI is clean, has an excellent built-in dark theme, and is customize-able. I was able to easily switch the keyboard shortcuts to Eclipse's shortcuts, making the switch to IDEA seamless.
  • The code-completion is fast and intuitive
  • Code validation is very helpful
  • It is slow to initially load
  • It uses a fair bit of memory
  • Since I'm using the free Community Edition, there has been no cost or negative ROI.
IDEA is cleaner, a bit easier to use, and more modern than Eclipse. Eclipse is still maintained and still works fine, but IDEA is overall a better tool.

My main reason for staying with Eclipse as long as I did was their implementation of SVN. When I got a new laptop, I couldn't get SVN running in Eclipse so I decided to switch to IDEA and to lean the command line SVN as well as use TortoiseSVN.
If you are writing Java in almost any context, it is a worthwhile IDE. I'm mostly doing scripting with Java and it works great.

I don't think it is the best GUI for source control. I find its Subversion implementation clunky at best. I haven't used the Git integration, but I can't imaging it being much different.