2020-04-09: After Using Eclipse for 10 Years, I Switched to IDEA [Translated]

Original post: https://www.cnblogs.com/ouyida3/p/9901312.html published in December 2018.

Preamble: The original text was in Chinese. I first got the "raw translation" from Google Translate. Here is my impression of Google Translate: 75% or more text made sense but only about 25% text read authentic. As a result, I have to manually edit A LOT to make the post readable. The original post was about 50% longer than what I posted here.

After using Eclipse for 10 years, I finally switched to IDEA.

I did not start with Eclipse when I became a Java programmer, but a tool called jBuilder. When I started using this tool, I already found it very easy to use, because previously, I just used a simple text editor.

It didn't take long for me to find a tool called Eclipse, and there was an increasing number of users. At the end of the "test drive", I found it to be very user friendly. The functions inside were just tailored for the programmers. One exciting feature was that it supported many types of plugins. You could also develop new plugins.

Eclipse was founded by IBM in 2001. Unfortunately, Chinese users always lagged behind to some extent in that era. I started using Eclipse around 2007-2008. During that time, the three-legged situation of Eclipse, jBuilder, and NetBean was basically formed.

Later, MyEclipse appeared and was even more powerful. It integrated all commonly used plug-ins. Basically, as long as you own it, you can develop anything in Java. However, it was not free.

As time went by,  jBuilder was no longer popular. and there were few people around me using NetBean.

In fact, a long time ago I heard that IDEA was very easy to use. However, I really couldn't find any reason to change. Another reason was that I also needed to develop applications in other languages such as C++ and Python and Eclipse had perfect support via plug-ins.

However, there was an opportunity when the company hosted a training workshop. All speakers used IDEA. Therefore, I decided to give it a try. Last Monday was the first day of my trial. After installation, it was a dark theme interface. All buttons looked strange. Most shortcuts I had been using for10 years failed. I could not even import an existing project.

The steep learning curve was OK, what I was struggling was the rapid reduction in efficiency by 20 times, or even a hundred times. I had to frequently search questions online. However, after about half a day to a day, something magical happened, I actually no longer wanted to continue using Eclipse. I even felt it inconvenient without IDEA. So for the next four days, I started writing my code more and more with IDEA.

I personally think that IDEA was better than Eclipse, but its advantages were not functionalities, but that IDEA did a much better job on details. For example, when configuring Tomcat, it just ran automatically without much configuration. It seemed that it was reading my mind.

If you are new to programming, it wouldn't cause much trouble. But if you are an Eclipse programmer with many years of experience, the shortcut keys could be an obstacle. IDEA had a very user-friendly interface.

You also need to refresh your understanding of projects and modules. Eclipse adopted the concept of project and there were no modules, but IDEA was completely different.  You can only import one project in IDEA. If you are trying to import another project, you must open a new view. Of course, you do not have to worry about the problem of memory consumption nowadays because it is already optimized. The key is that you can import multiple modules in a project, which is more suitable for development purposes because Maven has a modular configuration.

The setting of Tomcat is also very user-friendly. Note that you can use multiple projects in one Tomcat, of course, deployed at different ports simultaneously. 

Three frequently used configuration buttons:

• Preferences
• Project structure
• Run configuration

Frequently used shortcut on Mac:

• cmd + shift + f: find a certain string for all projects or modules
• cmd + shift + o: find files
• cmd + 0: search class
• cmd + f: find strings in this file
• cmd + x: delete a line
• cmd + c: select the line and copy
• alt + enter: automatic prompt error repair
• ctrl + alt + h: shows the method that invokes this method
• cmd + 7: show all methods of this class
• cmd + alt + l: organize code format
• ctrl + alt + o: organize import
• shift + f6: reconstruction rename

My favorite featured functions: 

• By default, IDEA shows the terminal at the bottom, which was very easy to access. With that, I rarely use the built-in terminal with Mac.
• There is an option to link databases on the right hand side, Now I rarely use Navicat and MySQL workbench any more. 
• Maven on the right hand side is already easy to access, unlike Eclipse, in which I had to right-click, and the default options were incomplete.

JetBrains is indeed a great company. Now I am using JS, and WebStorm, and get PyCharm for Python instead of pydev in Eclipse. 

- Translated by Google Translate. Cut and Edited by Jian Wu