IntelliJ IDEA - a great IDE for Java developers
December 21, 2018

IntelliJ IDEA - a great IDE for Java developers

Dhruba Jyoti Nag | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA is used by developers in our organization as the standard IDE to develop code. It drastically reduces time to develop effective code and being an enterprise licensed product , it offers enterprise features which are not present in other IDES like Eclipse or STS. It is mainly used to develop efficient code in quick time.
  • Debugging in Java is easier in IDEA.
  • Code hinting is way ahead and more smart.
  • Code refactoring is much more easier since more options are given here.
  • IntelliJ IDEA wins as long as the language is Java. Outside that , e.g., in other languages, it is not so advanced.
  • It is licensed, with a steep licensing cost. All features are not included in the free edition.
  • It is not as light as Eclipse, so in a weak system, it can be a pain.
  • Easier to find bugs and debugs, thus reducing man hours and generating immediate dollar impact.
  • Coding time is lessened, which in turn again reduces man hours and generates immediate dollar impact.
  • Refactoring code is more innovative and easy here, resulting in more maintainable code.
The main competitors of IntelliJ IDEA in the Java world must be Eclipse and Spring Tools Suite. It performs better than both in code refactoring, code completion and debugging (the features of an IDE) but the plugin support is much better in the other 2 products, since they are open source. Having said that, it performs really well as an enterprise IDE.
IntelliJ IDEA is well suited for someone involved in enterprise Java development. It helps in auto completion, code refactoring and debugging. However if someone wants to use it for development in other languages, it may not be well suited. It comes with a cost, so that should be factored in as well. It is also not as fast as Eclipse, though it is much more efficient.