It has been an exhilarating day. I configured Jenkins to build a Groovy application that I wrote at work using the Gradle build script that I wrote on Monday. Then I figured out how to get my Grails web app that I developed with NetBeans imported into JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. Both of these were accomplished with minimal reference to the great oracle, the internet. This reassured me that I am still a competent developer even if I’m not twenty something any more.
I get an adrenalin rush from figuring out these problems. The thing that was missing when I was working on the Grails web app earlier this year was a good development tool. NetBeans is a good development tool for what you pay for it (it is free). But it is designed for developing Java applications and hasn’t kept up adequately with the evolution of the JVM ecosystem of languages and developer tools. Eclipse (another free development tool) is better but again it is very Java centric.
IntelliJ IDEA on the other hand is written for paying customers. It has a consistent development model across the languages that it supports and is still actively evolving along with the platforms it supports. Even the free community edition outshines NetBeans and Eclipse.
The proof is in the ease with which I accomplished tasks in hours or days, that had taken me weeks or months when I was developing with NetBeans. I am now firmly convinced that one should not scrimp on one’s tools. And now it is time to say good night.