Java IDEs vs Microsoft IDEs

Question

I come from a strong Java background and in recent years have been also developing in C#.

What I can never understand is how far behind (Personal Opinion) the Visual Studio IDE's are in compared with Intelli-J IDEA and Eclipse (Java).

There have been improvements by Microsoft from VS 2005 to VS 2008, but I feel they are not quite there in terms of taking the development experience to the next level.

What I want to know is, is VS 2010 any different?

Why is it that the tools and syntax editors are so much more "evolved" in the Java IDE's.

Just to name a few:

• Code Completion (Much more advance in Java IDE's)
• Ant Integration (Eclipse and IDEA) vs Visual Studio Build Events
• Lack of Code Repository integration in VS (Subversion and CVS) out of the box.
• Lack of Advance Re-factoring Tools in Visual Studio.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Visual Studio has definitely been coming on over the last few years - although many of the improvements have basically been things that Eclipse has had for ages (I haven't used IDEA myself).

You may well want to look at ReSharper, which brings more goodness to Visual Studio, along with the VS2010 Productivity PowerTools.

Also, have a look at Scott Guthrie's blog series about improvements in VS2010. Lots of goodies in there.

All tools have their strengths and weaknesses - these days I'm about as happy in Visual Studio as in Eclipse... although I'm much happier writing C# than Java :) One area where Visual Studio really shines is debugging though... I find things like the VS Watch window to be much better than Eclipse's equivalent.

Answer 2

I don't agree with you. I think VS is much more easy to use. For example, when i need to create a web application. I open VS and create a new project (Web Application). After the project created, i press f5 and tadda!... But if want to create my web application with Java, i need to install a server or some frameworks. Still i don't know how can i create a web application?

Or, Windows Application. At VS, you don't need do any thing to create a windows based application like web application. but if i want to create windows based application with Java, i had to do something.

I think VS IDE is more user friendly than Java IDE's.