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IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

blog.jetbrains.com

71–80 of 141 posts

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#71

Java as base platform? Shit, didn't know that, and it totally explains the slowness on anything Can anyone please tell me a reasonably complex GUI program in Java that is actually fast and resource-efficient? Counter-examples include IDEA, Lotus Notes, JDownloader, SAP... I believe that while Java may be a nice programming language, you import slowness and resource starving of your system by using it.

You can make it MUCH faster by adjusting the VM settings if you want. They set the config as low as possible (because I guess some developer may have a low end machine)

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#72

Java as base platform? Shit, didn't know that, and it totally explains the slowness on anything Can anyone please tell me a reasonably complex GUI program in Java that is actually fast and resource-efficient? Counter-examples include IDEA, Lotus Notes, JDownloader, SAP... I believe that while Java may be a nice programming language, you import slowness and resource starving of your system by using it.

I'm not so much arguing as I am simply asking... what would you recommend instead for cross-platform desktop app development?

* GTK and even Qt are criticized for looking non-native or even ugly, and for being limited in their available components.

* Going the Atom route, of embedding Chrome and writing your app in HTML and JavaScript, is daft. The languages are poorly suited for the domain, installer bundles are fat and bloated, and the results are so slow and sluggish that they make Java apps look like assembly in comparison.

* Writing native versions for each target platform multiples the development effort, and the number of issues.

Java isn't perfect (nothing is), but it really does stand up well against the likewise-imperfect alternatives. If you use modern JavaFX, or customize Swing as I believe JetBrains has done, then users really aren't even aware that they're running a Java application (you just admitted to being unaware that IntelliJ was written in Java). Nothing touches Java for ease of cross-platform development, and packaging and deployment is comparatively simple.

If your Java app performs sluggishly, then it probably isn't because of the UI anyway. You're seriously citing a huge IDE, Lotus Notes, and freaking SAP as benchmarks?

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#73

Interesting that all of the discussion is rambling about IntelliJ in general (e.g. Is it slow? Is it better than this other IDE? Ermagherd, Java sucks! Etc). Nothing about the actual specific topic, which is that one of the most prominent development tools in the Java ecosystem now expects the current Java version to be installed. Expecting the current version might sound mundane to a Rubyist or Node person (and it m…

You can use latest Idea to write code on Java 1.4, I guess. The topic is about JRE used to launch Idea itself. You can use any JRE to launch your projects from Idea.

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#74
post #65

Java as base platform? Shit, didn't know that, and it totally explains the slowness on anything Can anyone please tell me a reasonably complex GUI program in Java that is actually fast and resource-efficient? Counter-examples include IDEA, Lotus Notes, JDownloader, SAP... I believe that while Java may be a nice programming language, you import slowness and resource starving of your system by using it.

Hm, I write Java for a living (Android) and Java being a nice language would be one of the last things about it to come to my mind...

Have you looked at using Kotlin instead?

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#75
post #30

I still can't seem to figure out: can IDEA + plugins = PyCharm & RubyMine & PHPStorm & WebStorm?

No, they can't. The special versions of their editors do things that are not possible in a plugin because of how much the UI changes the editor. The good news is that you can now get a license for all of the intellij based IDEs. It's not cheap, but worth it.

That's actually not correct. The functionality of all IDE's we have (with exception of AppCode and CLion) can be obtained via plugins on IntelliJ IDEA.

The smaller IDE's are focused around the specific platform / functionality.

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#76

I still can't seem to figure out: can IDEA + plugins = PyCharm & RubyMine & PHPStorm & WebStorm?

It comes about 95% of the way. The plugins usually lag slightly behind the individual IDEs and their are some minor UI tweaks.

They usually do not lag behind. They are made available as plugins the same day that the IDE is released.

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#77

Java as base platform? Shit, didn't know that, and it totally explains the slowness on anything Can anyone please tell me a reasonably complex GUI program in Java that is actually fast and resource-efficient? Counter-examples include IDEA, Lotus Notes, JDownloader, SAP... I believe that while Java may be a nice programming language, you import slowness and resource starving of your system by using it.

I right now I am switching back and forth betweeen doing Java 8 in IntelliJ and Swift in XCode. And IntelliJ is not the one that is slow and heavy.

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#78

Interesting that all of the discussion is rambling about IntelliJ in general (e.g. Is it slow? Is it better than this other IDE? Ermagherd, Java sucks! Etc). Nothing about the actual specific topic, which is that one of the most prominent development tools in the Java ecosystem now expects the current Java version to be installed. Expecting the current version might sound mundane to a Rubyist or Node person (and it m…

You can use latest Idea to write code on Java 1.4, I guess. The topic is about JRE used to launch Idea itself. You can use any JRE to launch your projects from Idea.

Sure, but developers in the corporate enterprise world often don't have control over the software installed on their workstations.

I realize that Hacker News skews toward a different industry segment, and it's hard for people outside of the enterprise to fully grasp its horrors. But believe it or not, expecting the current version of Java to be installed on a Java developer's machine is actually a pretty big shift!

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#79

Interesting that all of the discussion is rambling about IntelliJ in general (e.g. Is it slow? Is it better than this other IDE? Ermagherd, Java sucks! Etc). Nothing about the actual specific topic, which is that one of the most prominent development tools in the Java ecosystem now expects the current Java version to be installed. Expecting the current version might sound mundane to a Rubyist or Node person (and it m…

Honest question: why is backward compatibility an issue for development machines? It's an IDE, right, so you will still be able to edit the project that is backwards-compatible with 1.4 with it?

Re: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

#80

Java as base platform? Shit, didn't know that, and it totally explains the slowness on anything Can anyone please tell me a reasonably complex GUI program in Java that is actually fast and resource-efficient? Counter-examples include IDEA, Lotus Notes, JDownloader, SAP... I believe that while Java may be a nice programming language, you import slowness and resource starving of your system by using it.

I'm not so much arguing as I am simply asking... what would you recommend instead for cross-platform desktop app development? * GTK and even Qt are criticized for looking non-native or even ugly, and for being limited in their available components. * Going the Atom route, of embedding Chrome and writing your app in HTML and JavaScript, is daft. The languages are poorly suited for the domain, installer bundles are fat…

> what would you recommend instead for cross-platform desktop app development?

Write a web app and distribute said web app with browser runtimes. Either Chromium or Firefox. JavaScript might be a PITA, but you get a highly performant layout/UI engine, styling and portability for free.

Downside is that for stuff not supported in JS, like filesystem I/O or raw socket networking, you'll need either custom bindings or a NodeJS/PHP/... proxy service, but that's imho acceptable.

> If your Java app performs sluggishly, then it probably isn't because of the UI anyway. You're seriously citing a huge IDE, Lotus Notes, and freaking SAP as benchmarks?

These are widely used Java apps, developed by (in case of Notes and SAP) multi-billion dollar companies, and if even these massive resources cannot get speedy apps done, I might think it's the language/runtime environment at fault here.

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