The Integrative Stream

IDEA 5

I had a few residual Java things to finish up before turning into a full-time MBA seeker, so I just tried out IDEA 5.0 from Prague-based JetBrains. Earlier versions of IDEA were the best development environments available at the time. The software had (and has) quite a developer cult, too: when I fired it up on stage at a conference last year the software got applause (people seemed to like my talk, too).

They might have been a little ahead of themselves on this release, though. Since integration with Subversion (my version control system of choice for both software and personal documents) was new in this release, the first thing I did was start the new repository browser and point it to my home svn server. Somewhat to my surprise I was met by the blue screen of death. I’ll try it later on another PC.

The moral of the story is that copious pre-release testing is always indicated. JetBrains had this problem with version 4.0, too, although things got better with 4.5 (I never used version 4 in production, sticking instead with the “classic” version 3).