First of all I need to say that I'm a happy daily Eclipse user; Eclipse does (almost) everything I want from a Java IDE.
In the past I also used JDeveloper using Oracle's proprietary Application Development Framework (ADF) and experimented a little bit with NetBeans.
But I actually never tried IntelliJ. Maybe because the price tag of $499 and because Eclipse is working good enough for FREE.
IntelliJ IDEA 7.0 was released recently and the fully functional Beta version of the JetGroovy plugin provides excellent Groovy and Grails support.
A lot of people were very enthusiastic about this JetGroovy plugin I gave it a try this evening and I was really amazed as it worked perfectly:
Code completion/assistance
- Groovy code completion for keywords, classes, fields and methods
- Cross-resolution between Groovy and Java classes, methods and fields
- Syntax and error highlighting
- Groovy-aware refactoring
Grails application and artifact creation
- Grails applications can be created from using a wizard
- Grails artifacts (like domain classes, controllers, views etc.) can be created using a wizard
GSP support
- Groovy code completion
- Tag completion (both Grails core and custom created tags; even tags with custom namespaces are resolved ;-) !)
When developing Groovy and/or Grails projects then IntelliJ is a real recommendation.
I hope one day we will see the same functionality provided by the Groovy Eclipse plugin.
