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Regular readers will know that I like IntelliJ and it's the tool that I use whenever possible at work and for my open source development. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my current project is making heavy use of the IBM toolset. You name it, we're using it - WebSphere MQ, MQ Integrator, DB2, WebSphere 5.0 and WebSphere Studio Application Developer which is the WebSphere version of the Eclipse platform.

I have tried Eclipse before and it wasn't something that I found easy and intuitive to use. Looking back, I didn't really give Eclipse much of a chance because I found that IntelliJ more closely fitted in with the way that I like to work. So, since we're using WebSphere on the new project, I figured that we may as well take advantage of the tooling that IBM provides to make our lives easier. So, what are my first impressions?

Well, IBM has done a fantastic job of integrating the Eclipse platform with WebSphere. For example, you can create a new J2EE project containing an EJB in an amazingly short amount of time. All you need is a few mouse clicks and you can deploy your application into the embedded WebSphere 5.0 instance. I like this a lot because it just makes building J2EE apps easy. Click click click deployed. Nice. The other really great feature that I like is the way that WSAD gives you a really simple way of editing the WAS configuration and deployment descriptors for components such as EJBs. By following a simple form-based approach, there's no messing around with raw XML files and this can only be a good thing.

However, all is not great in the world of WSAD because there are a whole host of things that I really don't like. Perspectives - what are they all about? Why do I have to switch perspectives to see common Java code in my J2EE project? Also, why do I have to create so many individual projects? Why can't I just create a single project in which to hold all of my J2EE code? I really like the way that WSAD can drop a project into WAS with a single action, but automating a (nightly) build/test process with Ant is becoming more and more complex.

Then there's the actual editor itself. The format code feature is hilarious when you have an import statement longer than 80 characters! I'll post a screenshot next week, but essentially each sub-package will appear on a separate line. Talking of import statements, IntelliJ makes suggestions as to when a class should be imported and typing Crtl-Enter automatically inserts the appropriate import statement. With WSAD, I have to find the mouse and click on the lightbulb icon in the left gutter. Does anybody know if there is a keyboard shortcut for this? In fact, WSAD is very light on keyboard shortcuts for a whole host of refactoring features. Incidently, I think the IntelliJ refactor (and the preview) is much more powerful.

WSAD and IntelliJ are cleary very different tools aimed at different types of developers. WSAD is much richer in terms of the number of features and app server integration, but IntelliJ is much more of a coder's development environment. I think that adopting WSAD for this project is the right decision because ultimately it will save the less experienced developers a great deal of time. The thing that I'm stuggling with is that WSAD seems to be a tool that you adopt fully or don't adopt at all. Personally, based upon my current experience with WSAD and given the choice I'd pick IntelliJ. Thankfully I'm reviewing Developing J2EE Applications with WebSphere Studio for JavaRanch and it's proving to be a very useful and timely book.