Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:
IDEA is definitely a great tool as well, although it's commercial. Considering the price, though, it's a good change that that's the best $500 you'll ever spend on an IDE
It seems like this discussion crops up weekly. It would be interesting to see a good feature-by-feature comparison, or even better a "feel-by-feel" comparison. But it's hard enough to find a good unbiased, comprehensive review of even one of the main IDEs. I was appalled at how useless the "review" of IDEA 4.0 was in the latest Java Developers Journal (I guess you get what you pay for--they don't pay their writers). Anyone up to the task?
IDEA
is a great tool. But as I've mentioned elsewhere, Eclipse is very comparable from a feature standpoint; for most people, the difference boils down to personal preference. Sure, you will spend a lot of time in the IDE, so IDEA's $500 boils down to pennies per hour, but it's still a princely sum.
Also, I didn't care as much for JBuilder, but the last version I used was perhaps a year old, which in JBuilder time is about 27 versions.
-Jeff-
[ March 31, 2004: Message edited by: Jeff Langr ]