IntelliJ IDEA vs Microsoft Visual Studio

IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages.
These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates.

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions).
On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization.

A very complete development environment support.

IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc.

Many plugins are available for almost any task a developer may need to cover. Plugins are developed by Jetbrains themselves or by 3rd parties through the SDK available for writing them.

IntelliJ IDEA hardly ever crashes or has any issues that plague other Java IDEs like file corruption or slowness.

IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme).

The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate, and clearly worded.

With ability to step into a certain part of a large method invocation (Shift+F7), drop frame, executing code snippets, showing method return values, etc.

There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here.

The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account.

These simplify the daily work, e.g. copy/cut a whole line without the need to select it.

Verify yourselves as a student to get more perks.

Creating an embedded database, running SQL script in a dedicated terminal, viewing tables and their contents, and creating a connection to an in-memory or embedded database is fully supported.

I pay $24 a month and i have access to all jetbrain peoducts , so i use their many tools , i tried many others like netbeans , eclipse , etc , they re good but intelij is on the space and the sky is the limit . Been using it for 5 years and i cant tell i got frustrated using .it

The Community Edition of Visual Studios and the Unity add-on can be downloaded and used free of charge.

IntelliSense is the general term for a number of features: List Members, Parameter Info, Quick Info, and Complete Word. These features help you to learn more about the code you are using, keep track of the parameters you are typing, and add calls to properties and methods with only a few keystrokes.

Visual Studio has a massive library of plugins to choose from.

The recently released 15.7 branch provides competitive modern language support.

In agile development teams, one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to team mates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project.

Makes production faster especially if git is used. One can see changed files at the go and commit (with push possibility) when ever one so desires.

Visual Studio 2017 supports a much more modern and modular installer. You no longer have to install many gigabytes of stuff you don't need. Everything is broken down into much smaller pieces and it's much more apparent which pieces you need.

Your Visual Studio Online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage.