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Overview

Software developers know the importance of using the best tool for the job. Often this means choosing a world-class integrated development environment (IDE), which JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA certainly is. But the best developers don't just have the right tools, they are experts in those tools. This is a guide to becoming that expert. The basics of navigating and understanding IDEA are covered; but this refcard is really about unlocking all the powerful features of the tool, possibly making you orders of magnitude more productive than you were before.

About the Author

Hamlet D'Arcy has been writing software for about a decade, and has spent considerable time coding in C++, Java, and PHP. He's passionate about learning new languages and different ways to think about problems, and recently he's been discovering the joys of both Groovy and Scheme. He's an active member of the Groovy Users of Minnesota and the Object Technology User Group, is involved with a few open source projects, blogs regularly at http://hamletdarcy.blogspot.com, and can be contacted at hamletdrc@gmail.com.

Comments

Faridus replied on Mon, 2009/05/04 - 12:41pm

Great Paper as usual (i'm new at Refcardz BTW)

I also agree in saying that you have to master your IDE to be as efficient as possible, BUT all these fancy IDE lack one thing in common:

Consistent and meaninful commands.

Unfortunately even IntelliJ sucks from this point of view.

I strongly object to using muscle memory to learn exotic commands. I prefer using muscle memory to code and develop.

Some examples here:

* Why use "Ctrl+Shift+J" instead of a simple "Ctrl+J" ? (ex vi users know what I mean)

* The refactoring shortcuts are also inconsistent. I remade them all from scratch (and added a Mac version as well) so that that they actually MEAN something. I used the prefixed command for the refactoring so that they all begin with Ctrl + R. When you want to rename a class you can do a Ctrl + R, Ctrl + R for Refactor/Rename

Ctrl + R, Ctrl + M for Refactor/Move

Ctrl + R, Ctrl + V for Refactor/introduce Variable

Ctrl + R, Ctrl + M for Refactor/introduce Constant

and so on...

People should IMHO create their own shortcuts and use them. Even in a team these should be discussed so that everybody will eventually use th same shortcuts without having to learn some weird key combinations...

michaljohn replied on Thu, 2009/05/21 - 5:35am

I strongly object to using muscle memory to learn exotic commands. I prefer using muscle memory to code and develop. Lorenz University