Java IDEs vs Microsoft IDEs

Question

Hi Guys,

I come from a strong Java background and in recent years have been also developing in C#.

What I can never understand is how far behind (Personal Opinion) the Visual Studio IDE's are in compared with Intelli-J IDEA and Eclipse (Java).

There have been improvements by Microsoft from VS 2005 to VS 2008, but I feel they are not quite there in terms of taking the development experience to the next level.

What I want to know is, is VS 2010 any different?

Why is it that the tools and syntax editors are so much more "evolved" in the Java IDE's.

Just to name a few:

• Code Completion (Much more advance in Java IDE's)
• Ant Integration (Eclipse and IDEA) vs Visual Studio Build Events
• Lack of Code Repository integration in VS (Subversion and CVS) out of the box.
• Lack of Advance Re-factoring Tools in Visual Studio.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Visual Studio has definitely been coming on over the last few years - although many of the improvements have basically been things that Eclipse has had for ages (I haven't used IDEA) myself.

You may well want to look at ReSharper, which brings more goodness to Visual Studio, along with the VS2010 Productivity PowerTools.

Also, have a look at Scott Guthrie's blog series about improvements in VS2010. Lots of goodies in there.

All tools have their strengths and weaknesses - these days I'm about as happy in Visual Studio as in Eclipse... although I'm much happier writing C# than Java :) One area where Visual Studio really shines is debugging though... I find things like the VS Watch window to be much better than Eclipse's equivalent.

Answer 2

A few points…

• People tend to like what they know.

• It is quicker to get up-to-speed in C# as the IDE and most of the tools / docs come from a single source.

• In the Java world you have a lot more chooses, this is great for expert that spend times learning about them all, but does also lead to its own problems.

• Adding ReSharper or Refactor to Visual Studio may give you what you want.

• The Visual Studio debugging is great.

• Visual Studio tries to make life easy for you by trying to find missing dlls etc and then storing where they are in the registry. This may be great for a 1 man project, but can often lead to build problems across developer’s machines if you are not careful. In the Java world you have to edit more config file by hand, but at least you can put these files under source code control.

• There is not a small command line tool that works well on a build server that will build all types of Visual Studio projects. However in day to day usage you don’t need to learn how to use command tools, as Visual Studio hides them form you.

I think these days most programmers are just happier with the IDE they know best.

Answer 3

I don't agree with you. I think VS is much more easy to use. For example, when i need to create a web application. I open VS and create a new project (Web Application). After the project created, i press f5 and tadda!... But if want to create my web application with Java, i need to install a server or some frameworks. Still i don't know how can i create a web application?

Or, Windows Application. At VS, you don't need do any thing to create a windows based application like web application. but if i want to create windows based application with Java, i had to do something.

I think VS IDE is more user friendly than Java IDE's.