I have heard from people who swear by one or the other. Both are full-featured, excellent IDEs. But each has slightly different strengths. This is not meant to turn into a holy IDE war. Please downvote any flamebait answers. Thanks.
This is the analog of this question.
I tried to switch to IntelliJ because of the new Android Studio. But I'm very disappointed now. I'm using Eclipse with the Code Recommenders Plugin. Here is a simple example why Eclipse is so awesome:
I want to create a new SimpleTimeZone. SimpleTimeZone has no Constructor with zero arguments.
Ctrl + Space in Eclipse
Ctrl + Space in IntelliJ
In IntelliJ I get no informations what kind of constructors SimpleTimeZone has.
After Enter in Eclipse
I get the previously selected constructor filled with predefined variable names. And I can see the type of every argument. With Code Recommenders Eclipse guesses the right constructor by the previously defined variable types in the current scope and fills the constructor with these vars.
After Enter in IntelliJ nothing happens. I get an empty constructor. I have to press Ctrl + P to see the expected arguments.
or try something simple. Type
syso<Ctrl+Space>
Eclipse: System.out.println()
IntelliJ: syso
The open nature of Eclipse platform makes thrive the plugin writers community. There are tons of plugins available for all kind of tasks.
In eclipse you can maximize the editor and in IntelliJ you can click escape, which is similar functionality. But in eclipse you can restore. There's no equivalent "un-maximize" in IntelliJ which is even more frustrating.
I've summed up my comparison of Eclipse 3.6 and IntelliJ 10.5 in a blog (focused more on what I like in II or miss there compared to Eclipse)