As a counterpoint to this popular meme: Most developers I know are VIM converts (from TextMate).
I've never seen their choice of editor improve their coding speed. Haven't seen it on videos online. The idea that being fluent in VIM makes you an all around faster/better coder and the IDE is a crutch just isn't supported by evidence IME.
I use IntelliJ. The startup is a bit slower. And the minute or so pause if I change up dependencies can be annoying (though that's rare). On the other hand I always have method signatures at my fingertips, depend a lot less on the web version (of the same documentation), can jump into compiled libraries for exploring interfaces, and instead of a fuzzy "ack-like" symbol search, I have true jump-to-definition/open-class, etc. I have access to the FSC which provides continuous feedback as well. Ensime is a pale shadow of IntelliJ IME.
Maybe those things aren't important to some people. I find it makes me very productive though, and I haven't met a VIM user who can outpace me yet (though I did see some true VS.NET/RAD-tooling masters back in the day that could put me to shame).
All this just to say: Use what works for you. If that's IntelliJ, cool. If it's VIM, great. But there's a lot of anti-IDE sentiment out there. It's just another tool. Use it if it makes sense. Judge it on it's own merits. You are not less (or more) of a coder for using IntelliJ.
As long as you stay away from Eclipse at least. I think we can all agree on that. ;-) (Seriously Eclipse... It's 2014, and you still can't easily theme your IDE with a couple clicks?)
Well, I haven't tried Intellij, but in my experience the best coding environment is:
1. Visual Studio
2. gEdit
Visual Studio has incredibly good fuzzy code completion and gEdit has a total lack of features to be confused by and good font rendering. I just look at all the menus and buttons in Eclipse and I can't stand it. All this stuff can't possibly be necessary.
Since VS is not available for neither Scala nor Linux I'm left with gEdit.
IntelliJ keeps most of it's buttons hidden (in v13 at least). Might be worth a shot. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "fuzzy code completion", but IntelliJ supports case-insensitive-in-order-partial-symbol matching.
For example, "jsfmt" with match "jsonFormat", and display the matches as I type so I can arrow-down and hit ENTER if I see what I want (or just keep typing until the list filters down to the one I want).
Implicit invocations get underlined by default as well. Which is nice since I'm rarely at loss for understanding what the compiler is doing to make this code work.
With fuzzy I mean that I can search for "tunnel" and get "channel". It does sound fuzzy, unless it's hardcoded. Code completion in Eclipse isn't fuzzy, so "temrinal" doesn't get you "terminal". In Eclipse it's basically just a regex.
I've never seen their choice of editor improve their coding speed. Haven't seen it on videos online. The idea that being fluent in VIM makes you an all around faster/better coder and the IDE is a crutch just isn't supported by evidence IME.
I use IntelliJ. The startup is a bit slower. And the minute or so pause if I change up dependencies can be annoying (though that's rare). On the other hand I always have method signatures at my fingertips, depend a lot less on the web version (of the same documentation), can jump into compiled libraries for exploring interfaces, and instead of a fuzzy "ack-like" symbol search, I have true jump-to-definition/open-class, etc. I have access to the FSC which provides continuous feedback as well. Ensime is a pale shadow of IntelliJ IME.
Maybe those things aren't important to some people. I find it makes me very productive though, and I haven't met a VIM user who can outpace me yet (though I did see some true VS.NET/RAD-tooling masters back in the day that could put me to shame).
All this just to say: Use what works for you. If that's IntelliJ, cool. If it's VIM, great. But there's a lot of anti-IDE sentiment out there. It's just another tool. Use it if it makes sense. Judge it on it's own merits. You are not less (or more) of a coder for using IntelliJ.
As long as you stay away from Eclipse at least. I think we can all agree on that. ;-) (Seriously Eclipse... It's 2014, and you still can't easily theme your IDE with a couple clicks?)