IntelliJ IDEA for Java Development

by Eric Foster-Johnson

July 11, 2002 —

Like Eclipse covered previously, IDEA from IntelliJ
(http://www.intellij.com/idea) is an Integrated Development Environment
(IDE) for Java development that has developed quite a following. One
IDEA's tag lines is "develop with pleasure", which seems to be accurate
for the many diehard fans of this product. A testimonial Web page shows
comments from many happy users.

As with all tools though, individual preferences play a large part in
what makes you productive. IDEA is worth a try, but likely won't be the
right match for everyone. I always feel a need to make this disclaimer
to defeat the one-size-fits-all, or one-tool-solves-all-problems
attitude at many companies.

All of IDEA's functionality is available from the keyboard, which should
appeal to those who like editors such as vi or emacs with the many
keyboard commands. You don't have to take your hands off the keyboard to
switch to the mouse to get things done.

I like the IDEA Import Assistant, which can import classes that you
reference in the code, but have not yet specified with an import
statement.

IDEA excels at code refactoring, where you rearchitect code without
changing the external behavior. (See http://www.refactoring.com/ for
more on this subject.) If you need to change an API or class, IDEA
provides tools that can help modify all occurrences. This is just the
tip of the iceberg with the refactoring support in IDEA.

IDEA costs $395 US per seat, with costs going down for more than five
orders. IntelliJ also offers academic license for $99 US. You can
download the package and get a 21-day evaluation license key to try out
the IDE.

IDEA supports Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and most any platform that runs
Java. You need at least a 1.3.1 Java Developer Kit (JDK) to run IDEA.
Installation is fairly simple. On Linux, you simple run java -jar with
the name of the JAR file you downloaded, such as java -jar idea-2_6.jar.

An online FAQ list helps solve the most common problems. For example, on
Linux, you likely need to add the following command, "ulimit -s 2048",
to the script that starts IDEA.

ITworld