Highly versatile and flexible, Eclipse was designed to serve the needs of complex enterprise projects and embedded system application development. Since then, Eclipse has become a major platform used in both open source and commercial projects. Released by IBM in 2001, the open source IDE Eclipse was initially created to eclipse Microsoft’s Visual Studio.

IntelliJ IDEA includes features like advanced forecasting, code analysis, and smart code completion as well as a selection of plug-ins and extensions to customize the IDE to your needs if you’re not satisfied with its out-of-the-box feature-set. The Community Edition, available for free and aimed mostly at Java and Android application developers, offers support of a number of languages including Java (obviously), Kotlin (which was developed by JetBrains), Groovy, Clojure, Scala and others. IntelliJ IDEA was released in 2001 by JetBrains, an established company known previously for its Resharper plugin for Visual Studio. So in this comparison, we’ll be talking (mostly) about the free version of IntelliJ offered: IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition. To settle this once and for all, we need to look at both IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse from the perspective of a confused (but objective) junior Java developer with a new laptop.Ĭonsidering the subscription costs of the Ultimate edition of IntelliJ (sometimes dubbed “ the Cadillac of Java development ”), we’re going to assume our junior developer is not looking to spend cash on an IDE subscription license at this point. Should they pick the one used in most tutorials or preferred by their teacher and colleagues? The one with more positive reviews online or with the most users? It’s no wonder beginners find themselves confused when deciding what IDE to install as their default, after moving up from the world of lightweight student development environments. IntelliJ loyalists scoff at Eclipse fanboys, Eclipse fanboys get mad, and once everyone starts naming eclipse plugins and waving software licenses around? All hell breaks loose.

IDE users turn into something evolutionary anthropologists refer to as “fanboys”. Once someone starts using it they stick to it and rarely switch. An IDE is what we in marketing call a sticky product. Any discussion comparing IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse for Java development can be tricky because it’s sticky.

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