Tools of the trade - Intellij IDEA - Part 1

This is a multipart series where I want to show you what tools I use every day and some of my favorite tricks. If you would like to know anything specific or if you know any tricks, do reach out to me.

I feel developers need to get really good at using tools. I started off using Eclipse, but eventually got over it and started using Intellij IDEA. I have been a Vim guy and have not had a chance to learn Emacs. For a while I did use the Vim plugin in Intellij. It works great, but once you start using the in-built features of Intellij, you will see that it is a very powerful tool.

There are tons of screencasts, videos, tutorials and everything out there to learn these things. This is just me showing you one little thing every now and then, and hey, if you find it useful, cheers! I won’t tell you about a million different things at a time and I will also not tell you about the time I traveled to Oregon in the rainy season and how beautiful it was.

Bear in mind that I’m using a Mac. The key combinations might be slightly different, but the key map under preferences should help you find these.

Extend Selection

I use this A LOT. Really, A LOT! Extend selection selects blocks of code. On the Mac it is bound to Cmd + W. It’s not only useful for selecting, but you can navigate a lot better with this. If your cursor is at the beginning of a block of code, it is easy to use extend selection to select the entire block of code and do things with the selection. If you are pointing at an open paren, you can very easily extend selection to the close paren and navigate to the end with the right arrow key. You can do a ton of more things once you start getting used to it. The opposite of this is shrink selection. It is bound to Cmd + Shift + W.

I will not show you a video or a gif. Play with it today and if you find it useful, come back for more.