JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

Yesterday the Utah Java User Group held its regular monthly meeting, and to shake things up a bit, they decided to make it an IDE Shootout between some popular IDEs: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, and BEA Workshop. During the meeting, the audience was polled to find out which IDE they were currently using, and about 75 people raised their hands for Eclipse, while only 10 for IDEA, and another 10 split between the other 2. At the end of the presentations, the audience was asked to vote on two awards for the IDEs. The first was called the “Second Look Award” and reflected the idea that after spending years and years getting used to one IDE, it can be challenging to move to a new tool. The UJUG site described it like this:

The UJUG ‘IDE Second Look Award’ signifies the impact of both the presentation and the abilities of the IDE presented. Switching to a new IDE is difficult. Typically, a Software Engineer has used the same IDE for many years, slowly becoming a master of it. To even consider looking at a different IDE is the willingness to take a step into the unknown. The Salt Lake City, Utah Java User’s Group shows its appreciation to the presenter for preparing and creating an influential presentation and to the developers of the IDE, convincing the largest number of people to take the first step of considering a new IDE.

Winner: IntelliJ - Etienne Studer

The second award was the:

UJUG IDE People’s Choice Award
The UJUG ‘IDE People’s Choice Award’ signifies the impact of both the presentation and the abilities of the IDE presented. The Salt Lake City, Utah Java User’s Group shows its appreciation to the presenter for preparing and creating an influential presentation and to the developers of the IDE which impressed the largest number of UJUG attendees.

Winner: IntelliJ - Etienne Studer

We would like to thank Etienne for his expertise and the great presentation that helped IntelliJ IDEA win these significant awards.

In a team environment, it’s rather easy to run into a conflict of versions, when you are working on the same piece of source code. Now IntelliJ IDEA 7.0.x helps you avoid version conflicts, and keeps a watchful eye on the changes that you and your teammates commit to the repository.
Suppose you open a file for editing and start typing, without synchronizing your local copy first. If somebody else has already modified the same file and has committed changes to the repository, IntelliJ IDEA detects the newer version in the repository and displays a banner on top of the editor, suggesting you to view the differences between your local copy and the repository version of the file and update the file before proceeding with your changes:

To make this feature work, click the button in the Repository or Incoming tabs of the Changes tool window at least once prior to editing.
Information about all the changes committed to the repository, but not yet checked out locally, is also available in the Incoming tab of the Changes tool window: