The first time I saw my VP of Engineering use Idea Intellij I feel in love with it! All those shortcuts, a debugger, running a server, refactoring code, inserting exception handling, and the ability to do auto-complete! I was coming from an Emacs, NEdit, VI background, which are all powerful in their own right. I loved Emacs, because I could switch between files quickly and compile in a single window, which is great for C and C++ development. NEdit is great for hardware languages like Verilog and VHDL where you make a lot of single line edits. And VI, was my first love, because of all those shortcuts! But they all paled in comparison to Idea Intellij. I used Idea for 3 years during the course of my Java development. And then the unthinkable happened, I upgraded to version 8.0, and it sucked! My experience was so bad that I reverted to version 7, and refused to upgrade while everyone else on my team upgraded. I vehemently opposed upgrading for months because of the performance issues I faced. None of the optimization techniques worked, and I forever remained an Idea 7 fangirl, while the rest of my team upgraded to version 9. Developers hate waiting for code to compile, so why would they even tolerate an IDE that takes minutes to load or start a server, and brings the rest of your computer to a grinding halt.
It’s been over a month since I’ve done Java development. I’ve moved onto learning Rails. While I have been happy with TextMate for the most part, my application is starting to get more complex, and I find myself constantly switching between files. I’m also really lazy when it comes to typing and love shortcuts and autocomplete functionality. Hence the quest to search for an IDE has begun again. Currently, I’m playing with Aptana RadRails. I decided to install the full application instead of an Eclipse plugin because I wanted to see it in its full glory. I’m not a huge fan of Eclipse, but I know its probably the best free IDE out there with the most language plugins. As my application becomes more complex and involves more languages I’ll switch over to Eclipse. Or maybe just maybe I’ll give Idea 9 a shot…
A happy developer is a productive developer. Sitting around and waiting for stuff to load or compile is time sunk. An IDE makes or breaks a developers productivity. A good IDE handles all development tasks and all stages of development: coding, debugging, refactoring, testing, and running the web app. An awesome IDE provides the ability to integrate multiple languages like JavaScript, Java, and HTML, which is crucial for a developer like myself who deals with the whole stack (front and back-end). But the most important factors are speed and ease-of-use. An IDE should be blazing fast; I don’t want it to suck up memory, take minutes to load, and forever to synchronize changes. Some nice to haves features are integration with code repositories and doing error checking (e.g. highlight unused references, static code analysis).
But the main reason I like IDEs is because I a like having single tool that slices and dices, and moves me seamlessly through each stage of development.
Quick video on installing RadRails: http://vimeo.com/channels/radrails#6450292
Hi Poornima,
I think your analysis is correct: you _need_ a good IDE if you want to be a productive engineer (or femgineer for that matter). But this is not limited to engineers working on web applications. If you use _any_ computer language for more than a quick hack, you should try to find a suited IDE.
When I was still in college, I was frustrated that there was no decent IDE available for VHDL. After I finished my Ph.D., there was _still_ no decent IDE for VHDL, so I decided to start a company who would build and sell this IDE. We’ve just hit the market last month, with customers in Europe and North America.
I read you’re also working on a startup (still in stealth mode huh?). Well, good luck! Can’t wait to see what you will launch in half a year.
Philippe
Cool product Philippe, and very much needed for languages like verilog and VHDL! I am going to recommend this to all the hardware designers I know.
Have you tried Netbeans for ruby? It’s been a while since I tried RadRails etc but I was super happy with NetBeans when I switched to Rails.
http://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html
It has a GIT plugin and some things like that which make it great too.
I’ll try RadRails for a bit. Do you like GIT? I’ve never used it before, only SVN, Perforce, and CVS.