IntelliJ IDEA is a great development environment. I enjoy it very much. It complements the OS of pleasure, Linux. I mostly the Ubuntu distro or a derivative. Here's a easy way to get yourself an IntelliJ launcher so you don't have to run the bin/idea.sh file if you don't want to.
One of the worst things to debug can be something that works just fine in your local development environment but does not work in a deployed environment. If you deploy to Tomcat, you can debug it remotely. If you use IntelliJ IDEA, you can do it with style.
If you ever try and startup Intellij and see this error: "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file....", you'll know that something's not quite right. It turns out that Intellij version 7 and above require JDK 6 to run properly. So, make sure to double-check the following points.
Debugging time is a blessed time in one's day where the hotkeys for continue, step into, step over, and others often grace the pads of the programmer's fingers. This can be quite a rewarding experience. Now ponder on the disappointment that materializes on the programmer's crestfallen brow when the step into button is pressed and upon the screen displays the all-descriptive and utterly useless "/** compiled code */". Maven mixed with IntelliJ to the rescue -- download the sources!
Development on JEE projects can be a real pain sometime. 1/2 of this (sometimes in literal minutes) is because of the need to spin up the server in order to run your code. This server startup time can be a killer of one's development momentum.
True to its mantra, IntelliJ IDEA delivers some goodness is making this pain a little more pleasurable -- if that's possible.
posted by Jake on under Operating Systems
IntelliJ is my current favorite IDE. Ubuntu is my current favorite Linux flavors. Put 'em both together and waddya' get? My current favorite day on the job.