Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA

We’re frequently taught to use a text editor when we’re learning to write code so that we understand the fundamentals. However, if we treat our IDE as a text editor, we are doing ourselves a disservice. As professional developers, we no longer need to learn the fundamentals; we need to deliver working applications. We can use the features of an IDE to help us with this.

IntelliJ IDEA is an extremely fully-featured IDE that can help professional developers with almost any task they need to perform, and this can be overwhelming to get to grips with. Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA uses two approaches to help newcomers and experienced users alike:

• Tutorials that walk through writing code and developing applications that show when, why and how to use IntelliJ IDEA features to create working applications.
• A questions-and-answers approach that demonstrates which features can be used to solve the problems that professional developers face.

Seeing how to use IntelliJ IDEA from these different angles not only showcases the most useful features but also teaches multiple approaches for using these features. No matter which technologies you use or how you like to work, reading this book will help you find an approach that enables you to work comfortably and productively with IntelliJ IDEA.