Prelude
This post is intended as an introduction to why I love working with IntelliJ IDEA. If you haven't heard of it yet, it is an IDE, just like Eclipse or NetBeans, the only material difference being that it has an edition that costs money (but you can get a free open source license).
During this "review" I will be using the following notation to present my pros and cons:
This is something I like a lot.
This is something I don't like.
Pricing
After I have been using it for a few months I can say that it seems that being an essentially non-free product is a good thing: it feels that they are actively seeking to deliver better and more comfortable usage. It feels that their team doesn't just put in features, they try to do it in a way that is natural and easy-to-use and cool.
Disclaimer
These are just some of the experiences I noticed while coding. IDEA offers a lot more little "wow that was easy" or "wow that was clever" feelings, whenever it does something that feels just right in that situation. Those can only be experienced while watching someone working in IDEA, or better yet, trying it out for a few months.
I will probably post updates with new things in the future -- I will try to document all these moments when they occur.
