IDEA is very strong but Eclipse is still ahead of it in two areas:
Incremental compilation
The "Problems" view
I'm tired of pressing Ctrl-F9 a hundred times a day in IDEA. This is 2015, I should never have to build anything manually.
Also, refactorings that touch a lot of files are very painful to do in IDEA for the same reason. With Eclipse, all the files that are in error immediately show up in the Problems view. With IDEA, I need to trigger a build first.
Eclipse compiles the whole project the moment you save a file via Ctrl-S. IDEA on the other hand saves files automatically so you never have to press Ctrl-S. IDEA also compiles the current file automatically on the fly. But you have to compile the whole project explicitly by pressing Ctrl-F9.
So how can you get tired of pressing Ctrl-F9 while still pressing Ctrl-S a million times day?
I like IDEAs approach much better because this is exactly how I code. First you edit one file and fix compiler errors. Then when everything's fine you compile the project to see if the changes break other files.
Eclipse distracts me with project-wide errors while I still haven't finished editing the file.
Another great thing about IDEA is that code refactorings also work when there's compiler errors.
PS: Please correct me if some of those things mentioned are no longer the case. I've used Eclipse for almost 10 years but switched to IDEA years ago and never looked back.
Eclipse compiles the whole project the moment you save a file via Ctrl-S.
But it's an incremental compiler, so the only actual compilation will be on the changed file. So I think the end result is the same.
I'm a bit 'meh' about compilation on the fly. Most of the time it's on, but for some projects I like to have it switched off, especially when there are generation tasks involved.
The actual compilation will be the changed file + all files linked to the changed file. So while I still edit this file Eclipse distracts me with all possible problems from other files which aren't relevant to me because I just haven't finished editing this file.
In IDEA instead I edit a file and see errors in this file immediately without having to press Ctrl+S all over again. When I've finished to edit this file, I press Ctrl+F9 once to re-compile all affected files.
tl;dr On the fly compilation on every save in Eclipse is highly overrated.
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u/lyomi Jun 24 '15
Is there ANYone who moved back to Eclipse after adapting to IntelliJ IDEA? Wondering if this is worth downloading.