Benefits of switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDE

Question

I have been using Eclipse for Android development and don't have a problem with it (I also use it for Web Service and C++ development under Linux) but I want to give IntelliJ IDEA a go as it appears to have favourable reviews. This is easily possibly now that IDEA 10 has been released with Android support enabled in the Community Edition.

I have looked at IDEA and it looks pretty good to me with the only downside being the lack of UI on .xml file editing (AndroidManifest.xml for example) and the user interface builder provided with ADT 9.0.

Has anyone got experience they can share on IntelliJ IDEA and Android development?

EDIT: Thanks all; I'm sticking with Eclipse as I know it pretty well and it allows me to do pretty much anything (Java-related) I like for free. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth!

Answer 1

I have used both, they aren't that different. A lot of it is just what you are used to. Personally, if you aren't having any problems with Eclipse, I would not suggest switching. There are no advantages that are worth the learning curve.

Answer 2

I switched to IDEA for my android development.

• Intellisense actually works
• IDEA is much faster
• The refactoring is nicely done, and the "inspections" catch a lot of places where refactoring would make sense

Things I miss:

• The new Layout viewer from Android 3.0. I always modify the layout xml, but it's nice to be able to switch over and get an idea of what it will look like without running the app. I do load up eclipse for this reason when I do heavy layout editing.
• Hover documentation. In intelliJ, you have to press ctrl+Q to get the javaDoc of an existing method call (vs intellisense popping up as you code).

Answer 3

Google's Android Studio is built on top of IDEA, assuming that it will be the "Official" developer tool when it reaches 1.0, it might be worth getting up to speed by learning IDEA. It also has a "dark" theme built in so you don't have to mess around with Eclipse plugins.

Answer 4

I am interested in this question too. For me, eclipse starts to be slow as more plugins installed: CDT, aptana, pydev, ADT....

IDEA seems like a light-weighted and interesting alternative. For the lacking of layout xml editing, you may do it with http://www.droiddraw.org/, or its desktop version. Pretty amazingly easy after reading the droiddraw tutorials.

I haven't got enough experience with IDEA, so cannot help a lot. Hope more people cast light on this issue.

Thanks, Frank

Answer 5

I think Eclipse has all the features that an IDE should have these days. But from my point of view it does everything on the wrong way (I am a Visual Studio fan).

After I tried IDEA, I had to realize that it can be customized to act nearly the same as VS, so it IS a very good IDE.

And the version 12 has UI editor for Android.

I can say that try to compare their IntelliSense (or whatever you call it), the debugger (including watches) and the editor. Much more better, smarter, faster for a daily use.

IDEA ultimate is not free, but if you would like to make money with programming I think you can make it easier with professional tools.

I would never pay for Eclipse.

Answer 6

I know eclipse is free, but come on, I don’t know how people actually use this piece of shit to build software. I like open source as much as the next guy, I just like “high quality open source” which may be an oxymoron.

I want to get work done and not fight the tool no matter how free it is.

After 2 years of Android Development on Eclipse I finally give up. I hate it because:
1. Eclipse is slow.
2. Search and autocomplete is poor.
3. Require big among of memory.
4. Crashing and hanging constantly.
5. Correct or incorrect way of closing Eclipse may cause workspace and settings crash.

Eclipse: reminding me every time I use why I normally don't use it. - Romain Guy

You can check some of interesting IntelliJ IDEA features here