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Eclipse vs IntelliJ

By Arpit AsatiArpit Asati

Eclipse-vs-IntelliJ

Difference Between Eclipse and IntelliJ

  • Strategic members of the eclipse foundation range from Google; strategic members are organization and the person who used eclipse as a platform for development and invest their money and resources to further the development of eclipse. IBM to oracle. A strategic member of The current release of the eclipse is Photon (4.13). It is released under the Eclipse Public License, a free business-friendly software license, and it comes under the eclipse foundation.
  • Intellij is a product of the JetBrains company introduced in 2000 as a private firm Intellij as a java IDE first introduced in 2001; the IntelliJ comes in two variations the community edition and ultimate edition; the community edition of the IntelliJ is free to use for everyone it supports Java, kotlin, its releases are freely available and open-source under the free license of Apache software foundation license. Where the ultimate edition- is required the activation licensed. The community edition is very basic for the programmer to use it. Whereas the ultimate edition provides various built-in tool support for the programmer to take care of their various tasks and make the development easier.
  • The developer generally prefers to use Java and python as their main programming language for product development. Each of the developers chooses them on a preferable IDE for programming and development. Which IDE should use and best to use for development this is the point of discussion since our childhood, university and extended to our working organization. While eclipse and IntelliJ, both the IDE have their own pros and cons, which we should consider before starting using it.
  • There is not and fix/decided answer for which IDE should we go with it always depend on the suitability of the project and comfort of the programmer, but to consider the right platform for your development needs, and the type of programmer/developer you are. We would like to share our own experience and point of view on both the IDE, so let’s get started.

What is IDE?

  • First of all, as a programmer choosing the right IDE as compulsory as choosing the programing language to achieve the desired goal. Most of the programmer will feel very uncomfortable without using IDE’s feature, and it would be very hard to implement the project without using the comfort provided by IDE. While working on a project IDE, Generally handles and takes care of the classpath, configuration, internal execution command, command-line argument, web servers configuration, and port replication while running the enterprise project with multiple instances.
  • Multiple IDE is available, such as net beans, eclipse, and IntelliJ; choosing the right one depends on the need and comfort; some of the famous IDE is eclipse and IntelliJ. Keep discussing how much IDE is beneficial for the project is off-topic, but IDE provides the comfort of work by taking care of other external things. Let us dive a little bit into the history of eclipse stated as IBM project the first release of the eclipse was in 2001, and the major release of the eclipse was in 2004. Those who developed the eclipse as a project known as the strategic members of the Eclipse community.

Head to Head Comparison between Eclipse and IntelliJ (Infographics)

Below are the top 6 differences between Eclipse vs IntelliJ:

Eclipse-vs-IntelliJ-info

Key Differences Between Eclipse and IntelliJ

Let us look at the key differences between Eclipse vs IntelliJ as below:

  • Generally, Eclipse handles very large and scalable projects faster and efficiently, without consuming much time for indexing the entire IDE project. That is why projects usually open much faster in Eclipse, whereas in the case of IntelliJ, it indexes the entire project while importing and starting the IDE project; that is why it comparatively consumes much time for starting the project.
  • The default and auto code generation is much easier, faster, and more useful than eclipse. IntelliJ provides various options that are already inbuilt in IDE one can use without installing any external plug-in. IntelliJ has easy to understand GUI for auto code generation; let’s consider Java; in this case, IntelliJ has the option to auto-generate the code for to String, constructor, getter and setters, overriding equals and hash code method by customizing the condition parameter as per the programmer requirement.
  • Code debugging facility has been provided by both the IDE; however, IntelliJ is in richer in a while considering debugging features like step over, step into, move into, step back, drop frame, and summarise all breakpoints at one place so that one can navigate them easily. Whereas eclipse provides fewer options for debugging, which is not more user-friendly as compared to IntelliJ.
  • And IntelliJ provides an inbuilt decompiler to read the source code of the java class, which makes programmers more comfortable to work with this IDE, whereas in eclipse, we need to install the plug-ins for using the decompiler.
  • Intellij user experience is much better; the learning curve is also easy. The programmer who used to use other IDE before can easily switch to IntelliJ because it provides a shortcut key mapping facility according to almost all the operating systems and IDEs.
  • For e.g., if there is a project based on the SOA architecture (which is considered a big and scalable project for ESB) and use SOAP web services. Then there is a chance that the project is available into multiple modules. The user may need to navigate through all the module that contains various web service; at the time of project development. Then programmers use eclipse for maintaining such kind of scenarios. Using IntelliJ, development becomes easier, and it also provides features like. Dropdowns, code completion, quick view, project wizards, etc. These are available in both the IDE and IntelliJ; these features are more convenient to use and more satisfying to follow.

Eclipse vs IntelliJ Comparison Table

Let’s discuss the top comparison between Eclipse vs IntelliJ:

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Eclipse

IntelliJ
Eclipse does not identify the context of the programmer and does not create a context tree, so while auto-completing the code when user type ( for, e.g. “v”), it will suggest you all universal context which starts from “v”. Intellij index all the project and its library available in the classpath and even create a decision context tree so user type ( for, e.g. “v”) will automatically analyze the context and insert the appropriate line of code.
While debugging the code in eclipse, if we need to evaluate the expression, then we have to select the entire expression statement, then press ctrl+shift+I to get the value of that expression. In IntelliJ, for evaluating the expression while debugging the code, we just need to move the cursor on the expression statement which we want to evaluate, and the IntelliJ automatically popup the value of that expression, so it is much user-friendly.
For integrating the version control system like SVN/GIT with the eclipse, then we have to download and install the version control plug-in from the eclipse market place. Whereas in IntelliJ ultimate; version control is already inbuilt with the IDE, which has various features and easy to understand GUI.
Eclipse marketplace provides more than 1,276 plugins to use; after launching the new technology or tool, the plug-in for those first developed mainly for the eclipse. Intellij Plugin Repository offers only 727 plugins which are very less if we consider the new tool and technological changes to extend the functionality of the IDE.
Eclipse is faster and easier to extend by using the plugin. The IntelliJ market place offers very few plug-ins comparatively, so it is very hard to extend the IDE using plug-ins support.
Eclipse provides the mechanism for auto code generation, but it is not as good as provided by IntelliJ, and it is difficult to understand and to be familiar with it. In IntelliJ, auto code generation is much easier because it is customizable; if you are a java developer, IntelliJ can improve your code as per the java compiler you have selected in the project structure.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the developer should find a specific IDE according to the given and assigned project/task by considering all the above-mentioned factors. This means that one should make yourself comfortable using and accepting both the IDE’s in order to face the technological challenges more appropriately and get the assigned task done more efficiently.

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