Sunday, November 01, 2009

Something product feature comparisons won't tell...

Try this in Idea -

public class MyClass {
private static abstract class MyAbstractClass {
public void method() {
someMethod(); <--- hit alt enter on someMethod
}
}
}

When you hit alt-enter at someMethod and hit enter without looking at the list of options, the sheer brilliance of the implementation is to create an abstract method "someMethod" - absolutely lovely! The actual list demotes the usual default "create method someMethod()" as a second option while promoting to first (and default because of the enclosing abstract class) option "create abstract method someMethod()".

Ya I'm sure sometimes one doesn't want abstract method but the point is that it works surprisingly well and its a choice someone though was worth promoting above the plain simple "create method someMethod()" option. Love it!

The problem with product comparisons is that someone
is bound to turn around and say - oh you can do this in Eclipse - but you really can't. Maybe you can generate abstract methods - but the sheer joy and surprise of having your IDE generate the exact thing you wanted without any additional user gestures cannot be captured in a product comparison where you go specifically choose the option. There might be a feature to do the exact same thing but when it pops up and the defaults the system uses makes it stand apart.

Oh and yeah - IntelliJ Idea is free and open source now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So what? I've had to do that maybe 10 times in my life.