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Friday Java Quiz: Know Your IDEs Capabilities

It has been my experience that most Java developers nowadays use an IDE (or IDEs) for their daily work. Knowing the capabilities of these IDEs may make you more productive. However, most developers also has a tendency to learn just enough of their IDEs to "get the job done" and then stop at that point.

Pair programming is a wonderful avenue for transmitting IDE know-hows between programmers on a team. "Just hit Ctrl-F12," Brian told me in a recent pair programming session. I liked what I saw and have been hitting Ctrl-F12 all the time ever since.

Q: What does Ctrl-F12 do?

Strict rules apply: no Bing-ing; and you have to write down your final answer before hitting Ctrl-F12. The question is biased towards JetBrain's IntelliJ IDEA. I don't know what Ctrl-F12 does in other IDEs.

Bonus Q: How can your IDEs help you when you receive a stack trace in an email form your testers or customers?

"I didn't know you can do that!" was the reaction from Mike the last time I used the feature in a pairing session.

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Posted by Weiqi Gao on March 12, 2010 7:16:11 AM CST #


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Re: Friday Java Quiz: Know Your IDEs Capabilities

Comment from Lance Finney on March 12, 2010 7:55:59 AM CST #
Ctrl-F12: First time, it pops up a dialog with the current class's methods and properties. Second time, it adds the inherited member. Bonus: Use the "Analyse Stacktrace" feature to have the stacktrace show in a panel where the line numbers are converted to links to your code.
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Re: Friday Java Quiz: Know Your IDEs Capabilities

Comment from Anonymous on March 12, 2010 8:09:14 AM CST #
Hi Weiqi,
I strongly agree with your observations about pair programming: It really IS a great way to learn from fellow programmers.

But I ask you, is this really worth a blog post? I mean c'mon, are you going to write a post for every single feature you're discovering? Let me spare you some work:
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/docs/IntelliJIDEA9_ReferenceCard.pdf
Programmers should be able to at least consider using a cheat sheet...
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Re: Friday Java Quiz: Know Your IDEs Capabilities

Comment from Weiqi Gao on March 12, 2010 9:41:59 AM CST #

In my experience, not enough programmers take full advantage of their IDEs. I count myself as one of those who are lacking in this regard.

I actually debated the question you asked, and came to the conclusion that it's worth a post. If only to help one person who may not know.

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Re: Friday Java Quiz: Know Your IDEs Capabilities

Comment from Anonymous on March 12, 2010 4:24:58 PM CST #
link to stackoverflow

There is a T-shirt with short-key. I just told my co-worker today, I ended up typing more shortcuts. I love alt+enter , cntr+shift+enter


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