The first time I saw my VP of Engineering use Idea Intellij I feel in love with it! All those shortcuts, a debugger, running …
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
