Arduino IDE vs IntelliJ IDEA

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Arduino IDE

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Arduino IDE vs IntelliJ IDEA: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA

Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA are two popular development environments used for programming and developing applications. While both IDEs provide tools and features to simplify the development process, there are several key differences between them.

  1. Languages Supported: Arduino IDE primarily supports the programming language specific to Arduino boards, which is a simplified version of C++. On the other hand, IntelliJ IDEA offers support for a wide range of programming languages including Java, Kotlin, Python, and many more. This makes IntelliJ IDEA a more versatile choice for developers working with different languages.

  2. Code Assistance and Auto-Completion: IntelliJ IDEA is known for its advanced code assistance and auto-completion features. It provides intelligent suggestions, code hints, and a comprehensive set of code snippets to improve productivity. Arduino IDE, on the other hand, offers limited code assistance features and lacks the advanced auto-completion functionality provided by IntelliJ IDEA.

  3. Extensibility and Plugins: IntelliJ IDEA has a robust ecosystem of plugins that can be installed to extend its capabilities. These plugins provide additional features, integration with other tools, and support for specific frameworks. Arduino IDE, on the other hand, has limited extensibility options and lacks a wide range of plugins. This makes IntelliJ IDEA a preferred choice for developers who require extensive customization and integration options.

  4. Debugging and Testing: IntelliJ IDEA offers powerful debugging and testing capabilities. It provides a comprehensive debugger with breakpoints, watches, and step-by-step debugging functionality. Additionally, IntelliJ IDEA supports various testing frameworks and provides tools for unit testing, code coverage analysis, and test report generation. Arduino IDE, on the other hand, has limited debugging capabilities and lacks comprehensive testing support.

  5. User Interface and Customization: IntelliJ IDEA offers a highly customizable user interface, allowing developers to personalize their workspace and configure their preferred settings. It provides various themes, color schemes, and layout options. Arduino IDE, on the other hand, has a more basic and limited user interface with minimal customization options.

  6. Project Management and Version Control: IntelliJ IDEA provides robust project management features, allowing developers to organize their code into projects, modules, and libraries. It also integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems such as Git, allowing for efficient collaboration and code versioning. Arduino IDE, on the other hand, lacks comprehensive project management features and has limited support for version control systems.

In summary, the key differences between Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA include the supported languages, code assistance and auto-completion features, extensibility and plugin support, debugging and testing capabilities, user interface customization options, and project management and version control features.

Advice on Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA
christy craemer
Needs advice
on
EclipseEclipseIntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA
and
PyCharmPyCharm

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?

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Replies (12)
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Pycharm is great for python development, but can feel sometimes slow and community version has Somme very annoying restrictions (like they disabled jupyter notebooks plugin and made it premium feature). I personally started looking into VS Code as an alternative, and it has some very good potential. I suggest you take it into account.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

The Community version of PyCharm is free and should give you what you need to get started with Python. Both PyCharm and IntelliJ are made by JetBrains. IntelliJ is initially focused on Java but you can get plugins for lots of other things. I subscribe to JetBrains' Toolbox: https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/ and have access to all of their great tools.

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Charles Nelson
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

I couldn't imagine using a development tool other than the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate All Products Pack. A single license allows me to work directly on my server running Ubuntu and/or my workstation running Windows 10 Pro simultaneously. My current project uses HTML, W3CSS, JavaScript, Java, Groovy, Grails, C, GO, Python, Flask, and Rust. For me it's worth every penny of the $150 license fee. And you can try it for free.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Hi, I will give my opinion based on my experience. I have used PyCharm, both community and Professional version. The community has limited functions, like you can't use a Jupyter notebook whereas it's available in the Professional version. PyCharm is slower compared to Visual Studio Code. Also Visual Studio Code is an editor which supports various languages. I myself have used both Visual Studio Code and PyCharm. I feel Visual Studio Code would be better choice. You may as well decide based upon your requirements.

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awesomebanana2018
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Visual Studio code is easy to use, has a good UI, and a large community. Python works great with it, but unlike some other editors, it works with most languages either by default or by downloading a plugin. VS Code has built in linting, syntax coloring, autocompletes (IntelliSense), and an api for plugins to do there own tooling.

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Ivan Martinez Morales
Software Engineer Intern · | 4 upvotes · 652.9K views
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I'd personally recommend Visual Studio Code as it gives you the flexibility of working in any language, so long as there are extensions to support it. It gives you the flexibility to learn Python, venture into Java, Javascript, and eventually AngularJS, and potentially mobile applications. It's also free and you can install it on your personal computer. I think Visual Studio Code would serve your intended use case best.

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Isaac Povey
Casual Software Engineer at Skedulo · | 3 upvotes · 653K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ really is the best for Java, I switched from eclipse years ago and never looked back. As for javascript, python and angular either using the standalone products from jetbrains (pycharm for python, webstorm for js) or installing the relevant plugins for InteliJ will be your best bet. Pycharm etc. are really just InteliJ with some additional plugins installed.

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Pranshu Verma
Engineer at Cisco Systems · | 3 upvotes · 652.9K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

If you starting with Python then PyCharm is better. For Java I would suggest to go with IntelliJ IDEA but people also prefer eclipse so I would say try both and then decide. For JS/Angular/React I would suggest go with VSCode. I personally use it and prefer as its light weight and have good integration with chrome for frontend development.

PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA are both products of JetBrains. They have a free (limited feature) and paid edition. Eclipse is free. VSCode is also free.

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Pritam Nandy
Engineering Manager at Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited · | 1 upvotes · 600.4K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

This is a very easy to use tool and gives you the opportunity to start coding right after the installation with almost everything setup automatically by the tool.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

Pycharm is all you need to get start coding in python or any of its framework. Its an awesome tool you should give it a try :)

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Brian Turner
System Architect at Mary's Watch, Inc. · | 1 upvotes · 652.9K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

Easy to learn and everything you need

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

All three are great, however, I believe that IntelliJ IDEA's multiple IDE's are slightly more straight-forward and more up-to date than Eclipse. If I had to choose one specifically for Python projects I would go with PyCharm.

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Decisions about Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA
Manabu Tokunaga
CEO, Co-Founder at WinguMD · | 10 upvotes · 497.4K views

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.

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Pros of Arduino IDE
Pros of IntelliJ IDEA
  • 1
    Larger community online
  • 301
    Fantastically intelligent
  • 242
    Best-in-class ide
  • 190
    Many languages support
  • 158
    Java
  • 121
    Fast
  • 82
    Code analysis
  • 79
    Reliable
  • 76
    Out of the box integration with maven, git, svn
  • 64
    Plugin architecture
  • 61
    Integrated version control
  • 12
    Code refactoring support
  • 11
    Best java IDE
  • 7
    Local history
  • 6
    Code Completion
  • 6
    Kotlin
  • 6
    Integrated Database Navigator
  • 6
    Built-in terminal/run tools
  • 5
    All
  • 5
    Free for open-source development, students and teacher
  • 5
    Base for Android Studio
  • 5
    Free If you're a Student
  • 4
    ERD Diagrams
  • 4
    Free
  • 4
    Cross platform
  • 4
    IDE
  • 4
    Database/Code integration
  • 3
    Out Of The Box features
  • 3
    Column Selection Mode
  • 3
    Server and client-side debugger
  • 3
    More than enough languages for any developer
  • 3
    Typescript support
  • 3
    Multicursor support
  • 3
    Reformating Code
  • 3
    Intuitive
  • 3
    Command-line tools
  • 3
    Android Integration
  • 3
    Vim support
  • 3
    Special icons for most filetypes in project list
  • 3
    Supports many frameworks
  • 3
    Built-in web server
  • 3
    Live Templates
  • 3
    Scala support
  • 2
    Works fine with mac os catalina
  • 2
    A lot of plugin
  • 2
    Just works
  • 2
    Integrated Ssh/Ftp Managers
  • 2
    Full support
  • 2
    Task managers
  • 2
    Diff tools
  • 2
    File Watchers
  • 2
    Support for various package managers
  • 2
    Integrated Code Linting
  • 2
    Clean UI
  • 2
    Open source
  • 2
    So modernised
  • 2
    Efficient, one Stop solution

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Cons of Arduino IDE
Cons of IntelliJ IDEA
  • 1
    No debugger
  • 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
  • 5
    Constant reindexing
  • 4
    Needs a lot of CPU and RAM power
  • 3
    Built in terminal is slow
  • 3
    Doesn't work that well with windows 10 edu
  • 1
    Ruby is a plug in
  • 1
    Pesky warnings increase with every release
  • 0
    AAD

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What is Arduino IDE?

It makes it easy to write code and upload it to the board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing and other open-source software.

What is IntelliJ IDEA?

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.

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What are some alternatives to Arduino IDE and IntelliJ IDEA?
PlatformIO
PlatformIO is an open source ecosystem for IoT development. Cross-platform build system and library manager. Continuous and IDE integration. Arduino and MBED compatible. Ready for Cloud compiling.
uno
We built uno, a small tool similar to uniq (the UNIX CLI tool that removes duplicates) - but with fuzziness. uno considers two lines to be equal if their edit distance is less than a specified threshold, by default set to 30%. It reads from stdin and prints the deduplicated lines to stdout.
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
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!
See all alternatives