How does the IDEA Community Edition compare with Eclipse?
+3
A:
The best, straight answer to this, is to look at the feature matrix of which features are still left in Ultimate-Edition. Eclipse probably has support for all of these things, although the quality of the integrations can always be an issue.
krosenvold
2009-10-21 10:33:18
pimpf0r
2009-10-21 10:52:00
That was actually the SO "url" box truncating my url. hacked the source ;)
krosenvold
2009-10-21 11:20:47
+2
A:
IDEA is a far better IDE than Eclipse (general opinion by people that use IDEA).
On a feature point of view, everything that IDEA CE can also been done by Eclipse. However, IDEA is a commercial product, which limits its adoption. Thanks to the Community Edition, you can test this IDE for free, in order to develop JavaSE applications (or Scala or Groovy). For an enterprise, this is quite limited, as you will not be able to develop J2EE applications.
My conclusion is that IDEA CE is only a tool that allows you to test and understand the philosophy of this IDE. If you are convinced by IDEA, then you will really have to choose between the Ultimate Edition, which will let develop any kind of applications, or stay with Eclipse.
romaintaz
2009-10-21 11:36:38
You will still be able to develop JavaEE applications with the community edition, you just won't get any specific help from the IDE as you would with the full version.
Dan Dyer
2009-10-21 22:45:32
@dan:true but the point of using an IDE is to get code completion/highlight and error correction, and click thrus etc that IDEA provides. Otherwise, you'd be better off using VIM!
Chii
2009-10-25 13:48:23