# IntelliJ IDEA 206 Hacker News commenters recommended IntelliJ IDEA and 105 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (18 owners). **Verdict:** The go-to IDE for Java and Kotlin, praised for built-in refactoring, code navigation and JVM debugging; the common complaint is heavy memory and resource use. ## Why people recommend it - Powerful built-in refactoring tools (5 comments): "I'd come from the world of IntelliJ IDEA which had all manner of code navigation, inspection, refactoring, and testing functionality built in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836687)) "Drawing a mindmap of your refactoring plan is barely more than IntelliJ (let alone Claude Code) can already do at the click of a button." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226334)) "had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function, renaming and creating empty classes/boilerplate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979106)) - Best IDE for JVM languages (5 comments): "Java is the only language that I've found vscode support poor, so I keep buying Idea license exclusively for Java projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715369)) "I noticed a real productivity increase when going from Cider/VSCode to JetBrains/IDEA/IntelliJ for Kotlin code editing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130385)) "I would still need IDEA (at least Community) to perform Java -> Kotlin migration and smooth Java interoperability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46262035)) - Excellent code navigation and search (6 comments): "I've had mostly problem-free experiences with intellij (ultimate-only feature I think). One click finds declarations both in business code and buried deep in libraries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48133868)) "I'd come from the world of IntelliJ IDEA which had all manner of code navigation, inspection, refactoring, and testing functionality built in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836687)) "Something like IntelliJ made the very large reference section irrelevant, as you got to see source and Javadocs right there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274834)) - Strong debugger (3 comments): "I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075)) "only find myself touching things like IntelliJ when I really need to dig into something with a debugger" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586387)) "I found it easier to enter a debug session within Intellij then 'vibe' and explore the internal apis" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128934)) ## What people warn about - Resource hog, uses lots of RAM (2 comments): "it's always been a resource hog and always perpetually just beyond the faculties of the typical developer workstation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020938)) "the swapping induced by IntelliJ overflowing my system RAM is supposed to reduce the inefficiencies of using too little memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48396460)) - Weak AI agent integration (2 comments): "IntelliJ is vastly superior to any other java IDE but their AI agent implementation sucks pretty hard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186265)) "Intellij knows my Frob class does not have a static Blurb method, yet will still allow an LLM to generate a code completion of "frob.blurb()"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198343)) - Bugs and declining quality (4 comments): "IntelliJ-family IDEs will report incomplete search results as complete when they are rebuilding their search indices." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46717061)) "their product quality significantly dropped since 2022, as they've cut themselves from their main source of engineers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49021165)) "fails to layout dialogs correctly the first time they're displayed, just like every other Swing application" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48025299)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend - [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend - [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi.md): 126 recommend - [Xcode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode.md): 100 recommend - [JetBrains Rider](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-rider.md): 68 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "IntelliJ IDEA", https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).