Hacking with IntelliJ

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Jetbrains have a programme for Open Source projects which allows them to receive IntelliJ IDEA licenses. As part of that programme, which the Selenium project has participated in for many years, they’ve asked us to provide a fair and balanced review of IntelliJ. I’ll attempt to do that, and I’ll try and state my biases up-front so you’re aware of them.

I’ve been using Jetbrain’s IntelliJ to hack on the Selenium code since I started working on it slightly over ten years ago. It’s still my favourite IDE for my Java work, and it’s plenty of fun to use. For some time, I’ve been using the (free) Community Edition, which is ample for many coding needs.

IntelliJ

Sun, 08 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Every year, Jetbrains are kind enough to donate an OSS license for IntelliJ to the Selenium project. As part of that process, they’ve asked that we review the product and (kudos to them!) have been clear that they hope we’re open and honest. So, I’ll be open and honest.

When I tell people that I’m a professional Java developer, people in some circles make sympathetic noises and (sometimes) jokingly refer to how painful my coding life must be. After all, there are several far trendier and hipper languages, from Ruby, various flavours of Javascript, Python, Haskell, and even other languages running on the JVM such as Scala and Clojure. I tend to agree that Java is a relatively unexciting language as it’s generally practiced — Java 8 contains a wealth of goodies that lots of people won’t be using for years since they’ve still got to support Java 6(!) apps. Where I disagree with the detractors is that using Java is something to feel sorry for a developer for: Java on its own isn’t much fun, Java and IntelliJ is one of my favourite programming experiences.

Intellij on Selenium

Hacking with IntelliJ

IntelliJ