I've used JetBrains' products in various forms (IntelliJ IDEA, Resharper for Visual Studio, and PhpStorm) for a long time, but every couple of years I was also exposed to Eclipse (Aptana Studio, and one or two other installs that I forget what they were for).
Eclipse just feels clunky and not very well designed. Like they forgot to find someone to do UX work. Plus the workspaces concept is really stupid, and the versions I was using couldn't open a file if it wasn't inside a workspace.
Well said. I've used Eclipse for several years, and _never_ felt that it was lacking... except perhaps in the department of finding which permutation of pieces to install. Then, I installed PyCharm (a Python IDE from JetBrains which basically is IntelliJ for Python), and was BLOWN AWAY by the polish.
It's not that it's faster. That helps. The thought that was put into how you can make it your own -- search boxes on the settings menu are mindblowing -- and the overall polish makes it extremely awesome. I expect that IntelliJ is similarly awesome for Java, because Jetbrains makes good stuff.
The few things I can think of offhand that I like about Eclipse are that I can drag tabs of code windows around and it automatically will split however I want (PyCharm doesn't let me do that as easily, though it does support split windows Just Fine), and the fact that Eclipse is a de-facto (and FREE) standard IDE that nearly everyone has examples for.
PyCharm, and IntelliJ by extension, has been the first IDE I've ever used that I've felt was worth spending money on.
This is well-said. Something I say quite often when Eclipse/IntelliJ comes up: for a while, as an Eclipse and occasional NetBeans user, I thought that I really hated Java. After finding IntelliJ, I realized quite quickly that while I don't love Java (and I do have a laundry list of things-it-must-do-better), what I really hated were my IDEs. IntelliJ for Scala is also just straight-up brilliant.
My only complaint is that even with all the tweaking in the world it's basically impossible to make their Swing-based editor component not look terrible on Linux.
Hmm... other than some issues with disappearing completion windows (probably related to me running XMonad), I haven't really found it to be that ugly on linux... Maybe not very slick, but frankly speaking, for the benefits it's small price :D
Well, yeah, it's workable, but coming from IDEA on Mac it's really distractingly poor. Doesn't seem to matter what settings I tweak or fonts I use--Swing on Linux is just no fun.
Eclipse just feels clunky and not very well designed. Like they forgot to find someone to do UX work. Plus the workspaces concept is really stupid, and the versions I was using couldn't open a file if it wasn't inside a workspace.