Emacs vs IntelliJ IDEA

Overview

Emacs

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes322

IntelliJ IDEA

Stacks44.0K

Followers36.9K

Votes1.5K

Emacs vs IntelliJ IDEA: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Emacs and IntelliJ IDEA

1. Customizability: Emacs is highly customizable through its Lisp programming language and allows users to modify every aspect of its behavior, enabling a highly personalized editing experience. In contrast, IntelliJ IDEA, while offering some degree of customization through plugins and settings, may not provide the same level of flexibility.

2. Language Support and Tooling: Emacs supports a wide range of programming languages and provides extensive tooling for writing and debugging code. It offers built-in language modes, syntax highlighting, and integration with external development tools. IntelliJ IDEA, on the other hand, is primarily focused on Java and provides excellent support for Java development, including features like smart code completion, refactoring tools, and integrated debugging.

3. User Interface and User Experience: Emacs has a text-based user interface and typical interaction involves using keyboard shortcuts and commands. It is highly customizable but may have a steeper learning curve for new users. IntelliJ IDEA, on the other hand, has a graphical user interface with intuitive menus, toolbars, and a visual editor. It provides a more user-friendly experience, especially for those accustomed to traditional IDEs.

4. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Features: IntelliJ IDEA is a full-fledged IDE that provides a comprehensive set of features, including code analysis, version control integration, built-in build systems, and debugging tools. It offers a modern development workflow with features like intelligent code completion, code navigation, and project management. Emacs, although capable of similar functionalities through various plugins, may require more manual configuration and setup to achieve the same level of productivity.

5. Learning Curve and Documentation: Emacs has a steep learning curve due to its vast array of features and highly configurable nature. It requires users to invest time in learning its commands and customization options. IntelliJ IDEA, on the other hand, provides a more guided and intuitive experience, which may be easier for beginners. It also offers extensive documentation and tutorials, making it easier to get started and learn advanced concepts.

6. Community and Ecosystem: Emacs has a long-standing and dedicated community of users, with a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions developed over the years. It has a strong emphasis on customization and extensibility. IntelliJ IDEA, being a popular and commercially supported IDE, also has a vibrant community and ecosystem. It offers a wide range of plugins and integrations, particularly for Java development, backed by continuous support and updates from JetBrains.

In summary, Emacs excels in customizability and language support, while IntelliJ IDEA offers a more user-friendly interface, extensive IDE features, and better support for Java development. The choice between the two depends on the user's preference for customization, programming language, and desired development workflow.

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Advice on Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA

christy

Program Manager

Jul 1, 2020

Needs adviceon

Python

Eclipse

IntelliJ IDEA

UPDATE: Thanks for the great response. I am going to start with VSCode based on the open source and free version that will allow me to grow into other languages, but not cost me a license ..yet.

I have been working with software development for 12 years, but I am just beginning my journey to learn to code. I am starting with Python following the suggestion of some of my coworkers. They are split between Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA for IDEs that they use and PyCharm is new to me. Which IDE would you suggest for a beginner that will allow expansion to Java, JavaScript, and eventually AngularJS and possibly mobile applications?

2.03M views2.03M

Comments

Manabu

CEO, Co-Founder at WinguMD

Jun 13, 2020

Decided

I originally chose IntelliJ over Eclipse, as it was close enough to the look and feel of Visual Studio and we do go back and forth between the two. We really begin to love IntelliJ and their suite of IDEs so we are now using AppCode for the IOS development because the workflow is identical with the IntelliJ. IntelliJ is super complex and intimidating at first but it does afford a lot of nice utilities to get us produce clean code.

551k views551k

Comments

Samriddhi

Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling

Sep 26, 2020

Decided

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

1.04M views1.04M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Emacs	IntelliJ IDEA
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.	Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.
Content-sensitive editing modes, including syntax coloring, for a variety of file types including plain text, source code, and HTML.;Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.;Full Unicode support for nearly all human languages and their scripts.;Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface.;A large number of extensions that add other functionality, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, and more. Many of these extensions are distributed with GNU Emacs others are available separately.	Smart Code Completion;On-the-fly Code Analysis;Advanced Refactorings;Database Tools;UML Designer;Version Control Tools;Build Tools
Statistics
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 44.0K
Followers 1.2K	Followers 36.9K
Votes 322	Votes 1.5K
Pros & Cons
Pros 65 Vast array of extensions 44 Have all you can imagine 40 Everything i need in one place 39 Portability 32 Customer config Cons 4 So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked 4 Hard to learn for beginners 1 Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux	Pros 301 Fantastically intelligent 242 Best-in-class ide 190 Many languages support 158 Java 121 Fast Cons 20 Large footprint required to really enjoy (mem/disc) 16 Very slow 8 Bad for beginners 7 UI is not intuitive 5 Not nearly as many tools to integrate as vs code
Integrations
No integrations available	Java

What are some alternatives to Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.

WebStorm

WebStorm is a lightweight and intelligent IDE for front-end development and server-side JavaScript.

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.

PyCharm

PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

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Emacs vs IntelliJ IDEA: What are the differences?

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Emacs vs IntelliJ IDEA

Overview

Emacs vs IntelliJ IDEA: What are the differences?