Not all IDEs are the same
Disclaimer: I do not intend to write a detailed comparison. I am only sharing my experience with an intent to encourage people to experiment for themselves.
I recently returned to writing code in Java after a gap of about 6 years. A lot had changed during this time, so I took some time out to get myself up to date with state of the Java ecosystem. I read about the evolution of the language itself and about the evolution of other things (libraries, frameworks, tools, etc.) around it. Heck, I even had to spend a good amount of time understanding the licensing changes Oracle was bringing about with Java 11. But what caught me most unsuspecting was how much more powerful IntelliJ IDEA was compared to Eclipse.
A superficial web search on "eclipse vs idea" threw up a lot of details and little by way of a clear conclusion, so I decided to use both for a few days and see for myself. I had to work on a new SpringBoot project from scratch, so I decided to code twice, once in each IDE, for about a week. Here's what I found:
- IntelliJ IDEA had far superior auto-completion. It ordered the suggestions according to the surrounding context, and therefore the desired text came almost always in the top 3. In Eclipse, I often had to type more to narrow down the suggestions to what I wanted. This alone made a huge difference to my productivity, and I was sold on IntelliJ IDEA.
- IntelliJ IDEA had more visual appeal. It had better fonts and closer-to-native look and feel. I understand that this is subjective, and also people habitual with any one may find the other one less appealing. For me though, I had no habit (rather, I had lost it) and I found IntelliJ IDEA much more appealing.
- IntelliJ IDEA community edition did not have built in support for Spring Initializr. It was definitely an annoyance, but Spring Initializr had a web interface which I used to generate project skeleton. As generating project skeleton is a one time exercise, it did not matter beyond the first day on the project.
PS: IntelliJ IDEA has recently improved its startup time vastly. Earlier when I was comparing the two IDEs, I found their startup time similar. I have since moved entirely to IntelliJ IDEA, so don't know if Eclipse has also made improvements in this regard.