IntelliJ's Maia shapes up against Eclipse
Open-source frameworks ahoy!
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Web, scripting, and open-source have been boosted in the next version of the ever-popular IntelliJ IDAE, released this week in early access.
Codenamed Maia, and due this fall, IDEA 9 wraps in features designed to keep the charged-for Java development environment in the running against free tools based on Eclipse.
Maia will support version three of the Spring open-source Java programming framework, which will be detailed at next week's JavaOne in San Francisco, California, along with support for the OSGi modular Java framework and Apache's Tapestry component-based framework.
Additional changes see the addition of Google App Engine for building and hosting web applications that's been extended to support Java, a JavaScript debugger through a Firefox plug in, and PHP. There's also the expected changes in bread-and-butter code management features for Mia, which is built for Windows, Mac and Unix-based systems.
IntelliJ is a minor success in what's become a bitterly fought and often unrewarding market. Founded by Java programming veterans in the early 2000s, the company's built and retained a loyal following.
In different surveys, Eclipse is ranked as the industry's second most popular IDE after Microsoft's Visual Studio and certainly the biggest IDE for Java. IntelliJ IDEA has maintained a significantly smaller yet substantial and consistent second place on Java.
It has managed to do this despite charging, in an era when other - and sometimes bigger - Java tools providers have either shut down or sold up as they failed to square the challenge of how do compete against the free, open-source Eclipse environment.
Loyalists and the curious can download and try Maia here. ®
COMMENTS
Free as in freedom to be stupid
The vast majority of productivity improving features have been, are, and always will be copied from IntelliJ IDEA. This IDE sets the bar - the others follow - much later.
People have paying for the privilege of using this IDE since version 1.0 and they'll continue to pay for it. Some people don't mind forking out a paltry $250 for a tool they use all day, every week, all year long.
Others do. Other people, despite spending their lives being paid to write software, are doomed by their own myopia to use inferior products because they believe software should be free. This stinking horde, ignorant of their own rank hypocrisy, should be forced into a hippie commune where they can dance around naked singing whale songs of praise to the multimillion-dollar beneficence of their S&P 500 multinational benefactors, without which, this nerd love-fest of self-congratulatory socialism would not be possible.
Paris, because she believes in paying for shoes.
IDEA much better
I've used both eclipse and IDEA for long periods of time, and there is no doubt that IDEA is vastly superior in terms of capabilities and intuitive usability.
Yes it is true that eclipse can be extended with plugins, but so often they don't work properly and end up making things worse. Configuring eclipse is less fun than banging your head against a wall repeatedly, whereas IDEA just seems to automatically figure everything out for you straight away.
I think the real difference is that IDEA pushes the user towards code modification via a process of refactoring (which is automated so all your code changes at once) whereas eclipse only has very basic refactoring functionality and so you change your code and then it tells you everywhere in the codebase that is now broken and you go and fix the problems manually. I know which I prefer...
I have to agree with Mr. Wolf..
Where is Netbeans in all of this?
Considering that Oracle is now buying Sun, I could see Oracle adopting IBM's model of a free version sans bells and whistles and a paid for supported version.
IMHO, monetizing Netbeans is feasible and would keep the minions of Larry happy.
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