For the Java developers out there...

I've been using early build of IntelliJ's Idea 5.0 for a while now, and, wow. Idea has a number of really impressive features, but, somehow, IntelliJ manages to make Idea do the shitwork of Java development really well.

I just refactored a method, adding a parameter to a constructor. I had previously stubbed out some code so that the needed extra parameter was available in all the places this class is instantiated. Idea's "add parameter" refactoring didn't just change the constructor signature; it went through usages of the class and updated the calling code to pull in the new parameter.

That is pretty impressive.

There are many examples of things like this "just working." Idea really saves me time, which is much, much more than I can say for other tools.

Other good stuff: XML and JSP editing are much better (including validation, refactoring, and formatting); Java 5 support works well; the static code analysis is far more useful in 5.0