Dumb IDEA Plugins
While perusing intellij.org in search of the latest and greatest IDEA plugins, I couldn’t help but notice how some of them are…well…useless. So a brief summary of the top losers might be in order. Note to any plugin authors: I am not mocking you, I am mocking your plugin. I realise you likely wrote it for fun and as an educational exercise, and take no responsibility etc. If someone wants to feel insulted, then I’d like to nominate people who use these plugins and/or asked for them in the first place.
I’m also going to ignore plugins which are clearly meant to be toys (connect4, google, tetris, sonar), and focus on ones which allegedly provide worthwhile functionality. The first of this sorry bunch is ConfirmExit. A plugin designed, presumably, for those incredibly clumsy oafs who keep hitting ctrl-F4 (or command-Q, or the linux equivelant) by accident. Perhaps a diet is in order, to trim those chubby fingers before that long IDEA session you’re about to attempt.
A Spelling plugin also exists! Initially I laughed hysterically at this silly plugin. Upon further reflection, it seems that people like Fred Grott do exist outside of ’special institutes’, and I guess they need all the help they can get.
Tagify is also another plugin worth noting. It will convert html, placed in html files (where it belongs, many would argue) into out.println() statements. The advantage of this plugin is that it enables you ignore the years of effort many people have poured into coming up with solutions to prevent you from ever having to do out.println(htmlstuff).
It’s pretty annoying that there aren’t really any cool IDEA plugins. Most seem like playful halfhearted attempts at hacking up something ‘fun’ in a day or two. The clover plugin though does look interesting, in that it actually does stuff in its own right that has slightly more than passing novelty value. Having said that, it’s hard to decide if the lamentable lack of decent plugins is due to IDEA having all the cool things one would want built-in, or whether the openAPI is not rich enough for anything beyond gimmicks.
June 28th, 2003 at 5:40 pm
You’re mocking a spelling checker? I’m a Finn but I like to write my comments in english, just in case our company gets more ‘international’ someday. Besides the english is de-facto language for programming. I guess a good spelling checker could make my comments more readable.
Not all of us are native english speakers you insensitive clod! ;-)
June 28th, 2003 at 7:20 pm
Pfft, English is my second language too!
June 28th, 2003 at 9:51 pm
If you are after cool, check out the intentions api plugins.
June 29th, 2003 at 11:10 pm
Actually, IdeaJAD is the only plugin I use, and I use it quite frequently. It helps a ton when you’re navigating through crappy 3rd party libraries with worthless javadocs, which, you know, does seem to happen now and then.
June 29th, 2003 at 11:26 pm
Maybe there’s no cool plugins for IDEA because the plugin writers are developing them for jEdit? Admittedly, jEdit relgates things that are likely native function in IDEA to plugins.
June 30th, 2003 at 3:19 am
Sturgeon’s law.
June 30th, 2003 at 4:06 am
IDEA has a lot of cool stuff inside, there is little room for plugins in general. BTW i am also not a native speaker when it comes to english and from time to time, i certainly write wrong english in my comments, but hey: WHO CARES? I am quite sure that even with mistakes, my comments are 100% understandable. So, 0points for the spelling plugin ;-)
As a IDEA user i check the plugins from time to time and i didnt see any reason to check them so far. Asides from reading the descriptions…
June 30th, 2003 at 8:20 am
Just to shut you up (or to provide you a new target) Eugene is writing a RSS aggregator plugin. IDEA is soon to be your kitchen sink :)
On the more useful side, there are also talks about a remote pair-programming tool, and remote code pointers. Check his blog at [http://www.eugenebelyaev.com/begblog], I know you must have been there already, Hani.
June 30th, 2003 at 5:32 pm
Their API blows. Needs much more documentation. At least last time I looked. It is very limited. I tried to write a plugin to wrap comments on the margin. I spent too much time wrestling with the API and gave up. It was difficult to figure out how to do the simplest things.
July 1st, 2003 at 8:27 pm
I can say of one IDEA Plugin I use and like. I use the Bean Shell Plugin. Bean Shell rocks for quick, simple, and good QAing of simple tasks. I know some people simply say (Why not just keep an empty IDEA Project open and use that?), I prefer Bean Shell!
P.S. If you want spell checking, I would have to suggest using Outlook and keep an empty e-mail open at all times. F7 is a rather faded key on my keyboard :).
-mele
July 3rd, 2003 at 12:27 am
You are getting quite annoying. Why don’t you try to create a useful plugin by yourself instead of criticizing the others?