Item: IntelliJ IDEA
Rating: 9
Author: Gaurav Gosavi

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Intellij IDEA as our main IDE for all backend development and, in many cases, front-end development, although some developers prefer to use VSCode. But as far as backend development is concerned, IDEA is our main IDE. We use it for not just coding but also debugging, unit/integration testing, and general note-taking.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ability to do line by line debugging.
Support for Java and Kotlin.
Support for general purpose scratch file creation which can be added to git if needed.
Pretty robust Git GUI which helps a lot while doing VCS Management.

Cons

I think can have a bit better debugging support by having a more robust hotswap.
Vis-a-vis front-end development would be good if we built a better Playright testing framework.
The GitHub copilot does not always produce code that can be lifted-and-shifted.

Return on Investment

Increased developer productivity in terms of coding and development.
Increased dev productivity when it comes to testing.
And GitHub copilot has helped the need for auto-generating code, thereby reducing a lot of time spent in writing tests.

Usability

IntelliJ has a pretty good UI, and I would give it high marks in terms of usability. I love the part about being able to customize the look by moving around some of the tool panels. I also love how we have a pretty robust GUI integration with Git and GitHub, which makes VCS management easy.

Alternatives Considered

Eclipse

In summary, IntelliJ is more polished and feature-rich out of the box, especially for Java development. Eclipse is extensible but can be rougher around the edges. IntelliJ costs money for advanced features, while Eclipse is free. IntelliJ offers many developers a better experience, but Eclipse remains a viable open-source alternative.

Key Insights

Do you think IntelliJ IDEA delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IntelliJ IDEA's feature set?

Yes

Did IntelliJ IDEA live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IntelliJ IDEA go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IntelliJ IDEA again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Jira Work Management, Splunk Enterprise, VMware Aria Operations for Applications, Postman, Slack

Likelihood to Recommend

This is a superb tool if your project involves a lot of backend development, especially in Java/Spring Boot and Kotlin. The support for the front end is great as well, but some developers may prefer to use the GitHub copilot add-on. I especially love using the GitHub copilot add-on. It may be less appropriate if your project requires heavy use of HotSwaps for backend debugging, as sometimes the support for that can be limited.

Comments

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IntelliJ IDEA: A Java Developer's Dream IDE.