Being tempted to switch to Intellij from Eclipse
It looks to me like Intellij has a killer feature that I can't get anywhere else, and I'm fighting my way to making use of it.
Generally speaking there is a huge hurdle in swapping your IDE, and that is your "finger memory". When I'm in Eclipse and I want to see the implementation of some method I just hit F3 and I don't need to think about it. Whenever I try out Intellij or NetBeans, I'm sure they can do it too, but I don't know the key sequence off by heart. So other IDEs slow me down.
Aside: I'm sure that IDE wars often come down to people rationalizing their in-ability to learn new key sequences, by inventing stupid reasons why their IDE is better than someone elses. But that's another story.
BUT it appears that Intellij v5 has a killer feature, and one that might make me go through the pain of learning new key sequences. In ye-olden-days of 2004 before Ajax was invented, most of a Java/Web developers time was spent like this:
- 30%: Editing/Debugging Java code
- 40%: Editing/Debugging Struts/Spring config files
- 20%: Editing HTML and CSS in web pages
- 10%: Filling in timesheets
Now if you are lucky enough to be involved with Ajax development, things have changed a bit:
- 50%: Getting your head around some gnarly Javascript
- 20%: Editing/Debugging Java code
- 20%: Editing HTML and CSS in web pages
- 10%: Filling in timesheets
It appears that IntelliJ 5 has a Javascript editor with the brains that we've come to expect from Java editors.
So I'm currently being very unproductive and tying my fingers in knots getting the key-sequences wrong, and getting cross with a javascript editor which is very nearly a must have feature.
I say 'very nearly' because it is clearly still under development.
Back to keymaps
I notice that IntelliJ (like Eclipse) has a keymap feature that helps users from Emacs and Visual Studio. Eh! I'm sure there will be more people trying out IntelliJ 5 from Eclipse than from Emacs in the next few months. Eclipse is similarly unhelpful.
Maybe they don't want the "other guy's" keyboard shortcuts to become the "standard". I say - help users out, it's far more important than some keyboard standards battle.
Does anyone have a neat way to make Eclipse do IntelliJ keyboard shortcuts, or the other way around?