Question

I’ve been using Slickedit for about ten years. I really like it. Eclipse has almost become a standard in the Java community, so I think it might it might pay to learn a little bit of it to make transitioning to new jobs easier ( I own my own copy). My experience has been that bosses/coworkers are less hostile to me using Slickedit once they see what it can do and if they see that I can manipulate code their way on their computers when discussing a problem.

To that end I was wondering what features Eclipse has that Slickedit does not……or what features seem easier, more efficient in Eclipse.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I’ve never used Slickedit either, except for a trial several years back, I think, but here’s a quick list of other features to consider (from both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA):

• As fvu mentioned, lots of common refactorings like extract variable, parameter, field, constant, method, class, interface, superclass; pull up and push down members; surround with…; move, copy, clone, rename classes, methods, variables, etc.
• Templates that let you type a short combo and a hotkey to create commonly-typed blocks, like “psvm” expands to a main method, “sout” expands to System.out.println(); lots of these included, plus able to create your own
• Advanced plain text or regex search and replace and “Find usages” of variables, methods, classes, etc. in specific scopes like project, project + libraries, custom paths and files using regex path matching
• Extremely smart and fast code completion (moreso in IntelliJ than Eclipse) with different completion modes that learns your usage patterns and can suggest appropriate completions based on context, expected types for your current location, and more in Java, XML files, and technology-specific files like Spring, Hibernate, Ant, Maven, etc.
• Hundreds of “intentions” that, with a couple of keypresses, will do things like create classes, methods, getters, setters, constructors, and other language constructs; reverse conditions; split/join variable declarations and initializations; add a field to a constructor’s parameters; add imports; add maven dependencies; … and on and on
• Integrate with all your other dev tools like web servers, databases, build tools, version control, issue trackers, etc., so that you can control them all from the IDE

That’s the major stuff off the top of my head. I hope it gives you some idea of what to expect in the popular IDEs. If Slickedit does all that stuff well, you should have an easy time picking up another IDE.