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by wiradikusuma·14y ago·view on hn ↗
I used to be an Eclipse fanboy, until a colleague introduced me to IntelliJ. Then I never look back :)

To be fair, it was (is?) the most lightweight free Java IDE around, compared to JBuilder and NetBeans.

2 comments
IntelliJ is an IDE. Eclipse is a platform :)

Being able to use Eclipse for complex multi-language projects and have it offer intelligent IDE functionality for all of them is amazing. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the Eclipse ecosystem.

I think you're selling IntelliJ very short. IDEA is a pretty encompassing platform, too. It does PHP better than PDT, for one, and I haven't found better Python support than what you get as part of PyCharm (which is available as part of IDEA--their Ruby support is too, though I don't write Ruby myself). And in the Java world, its first-class support for Maven and Gradle make me a lot happier than wrestling with stuff like m2eclipse.

About the only thing that I thought was better in Eclipse last I used it was C/C++. CDT is great in comparison. But I'd rather use Visual Studio if I need to write C++.

I used to be an Eclipse fanboy, until I fell on http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ca/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.htm... :)

Emacs is now my editor of choice, teaching me Emacs-Lisp to customize it was even quite enlightening. My only regret is having spent 10 years in "modern" IDEs while Emacs was there all along to double my productivity!

So far every convert at work loves it :)