Along with all the other lemmings, this week I upgraded to IntelliJ IDEA 5.0. My short review is that it seems to have lots of cool and interesting new stuff in it, but I haven't got around to using any of it yet.
Anyway, after using the IDE for a few minutes, I noticed this strange little guy sitting at the bottom of the screen:
Curiously, I clicked on him and discovered that he manages the degree to which IDEA will interfere with your viewing of a file.
If you turn down the level of code inspection, the Inspector (as I started to call him) will turn his back. It's supposed to indicate he's no longer watching the code, but it looks a little like you've pissed him off by deactivating him, and now he's snubbing you.
Of course, it's obvious that JetBrains have a lot of big plans for this little guy. I mean, once you've got this friendly character sitting on your screen watching over your code, it's only a matter of time before...
By the way, his semi-official nickname is Hector the Inspector.
The Inspector rocks! I had all my settings in there in IDEA 4.0 but it took so long to run and change stuff I never bothered. Now he's sitting there watching my every move. Creepy, but cool. That's probably my favourite new feature next to Subversion support.
LMAO! I haven't yet turned the slider down so I didn't notice he turns his back. However the kicker is the "clippy" functionality you mocked up on that last screen shot. Classic!
Charles, you are brilliant!
You took the words out of my mouth. Absolutely brilliant...
Poor Hector. He has no genitalia, and no arms nor hands to tug it with. I wonder how he'll ever get to the BileBlog like this - maybe that was a deliberate decision by JetBrains?
ROFL!
Nice post
Nice post! I liked your use of the word "lemmings"!
N.
Umm... could be worse?
All the real lemmings (like myself) were using EAP builds of 5.0 for months.... I think a better analogy here might be bears, waking from hibernation....
Love the clippy thing :-)
Well, I tried 5.0 on Linux for 30 minutes, and found some significant bugs. I'll wait for 5.0.1... :-(
matt