Intellij IDEA Overheats your PC, use Eclipse instead

Chelariu Andrei
The Fresh Writes
Published in
3 min readFeb 13, 2023

A comparison between two powerful IDEs for developers

Designed by Chelariu Andrei

First of all, we need to have a beter understanding of this two IDEs to decide which one fits with our preferences.

IntelliJ IDEA

This is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for JVM languages designed to maximize developer productivity.

Ultimate version is a commercial, full-featured IDE developed by JetBrains. It is known for its intelligent code completion, refactoring support, and an intuitive user interface. IntelliJ IDEA also offers a range of features for working with other technologies, such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It is a popular choice among Java developers and is considered to be one of the best IDEs for Java development.

Community version is available for free, offers support of a number of languages including Java (obviously), Kotlin (which was developed by JetBrains). IntelliJ IDEA includes features like advanced forecasting, code analysis, and smart code completion.

Eclipse

Comes with all the benchmark features that are expected from a top IDE has become a major platform used in both open source and commercial projects. Highly versatile and flexible, Eclipse was designed to serve the needs of complex enterprise projects and embedded system application development

On the other hand, is an open-source IDE that has a large community of developers contributing to its development. It has a wide range of features for Java development, including a debugger, code editor, and integration with version control systems. Eclipse is also highly extensible, with a vast library of plugins available for a wide range of development tasks.

System Requirements

IntelliJ IDEA has the following hardware requirements:

  • 2 GB RAM minimum, 4 GB RAM recommended
  • 1.5 GB hard disk space + at least 1 GB for caches

Eclipse IDE can run on anything that supports JVM . The hardware requirements are basic:

  • 0.5 GB RAM minimum, 1+ GB RAM recommended
  • 300 MB hard disk space minimum, 1+ GB recommended

So, we can see that the processing requirements are higher for Intellij IDEA. This is not a big deal. But you have to take into account the capabilities of the laptop because it can overheat. It is certain that in a few years these requirements will be covered even by the cheapest computers. But, if the hardware requirements will also increase for Intelij IDEA?

What IDE I use

I started my adventure in developing web applications with eclipse. Yes, the hardware requirements are lower, it consumes less memory, it is free to use, but for a beginner it is difficult to use, instead the Intellij IDEA is more user friendly.

After 2 years of programming with eclipse, I made the switch to Intellij IDEA and I am very nicely surprised. The resources are more requested for the laptop, but as developers we must assume this when buying a laptop.

The best part for students is that they can have one year free to use Intellij Ultimate witch is awesome. If you are interested to get one year free license for Intellij IDEA Ultimate check the official website from JetBrains.

Conclusions

Both IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and Eclipse are highly capable IDEs for Java development, and the choice between the two comes down to your individual needs and preferences. If you’re looking for a commercial, full-featured IDE with a range of features for other technologies, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate might be the right choice for you. If you’re looking for an open-source, highly extensible IDE with a large community of contributors, Eclipse might be a better option.

IntelliJ and Eclipse are two of the leaders in the integrated development environment market. While making lives easier for developers, they have revolutionized the way modern IDEs work.

Done!

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

Stay tuned for more about the topic!

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