When comparing SlickEdit vs DrJava, the Slant community recommends DrJava for most people. In the question“What are the best Java IDEs or editors?” DrJava is ranked 8th while SlickEdit is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose DrJava is:
Because DrJava is designed for beginners/students, it's set up so that users can run code without having to worry about set up.
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Pros
Pro Extensive support for programming languages
SlickEdit supports over 50 programming languages on nine platforms.
Pro Built-in beautifier
The beautifier formats code as you type to help improve readability and consistency.
Pro Compiler tools
Pro Scriptable
Write custom macro commands, functions, dialogs and tool windows.
Pro Over 13 emulations
Choose from fifteen keyboard emulations, containing the key bindings and behaviors necessary to emulate other editors (e.g., CUA, Vim, GNU Emacs, etc.)
Pro Extensive configuration options
Pro Easy access to Visual Studio workspace
SlickEdit opens Visual Studio workspace with no conversions needed.
Pro Symbol analysis support
There are powerful symbol analysis features in SlickEdit, including context tagging and references.
Pro Integrated debuggers for multiple languages
Integrated debuggers for GNU C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.
Pro Multi-Platform
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86
Pro Portable mode
Possibility to set up a portable installation, to run on a USB drive for example.
Pro Easy access to XCode projects
SlickEdit opens XCode projects with no conversions needed.
Pro Third party tool integration
Pro Popular version control system
Pro No need to set up a project
Because DrJava is designed for beginners/students, it's set up so that users can run code without having to worry about set up.
Pro Lightweight
DrJava is a lightweight IDE, at only 13MB. It starts up quickly and doesn't lag.
Cons
Con No command line option
This is a visual only editor
Con It's kinda slow
If you have a very large project or tag database, it can hang the UI.
Con Light on features
DrJava is primarily for students, so is kept fairly basic. For example, auto-completion is limited to class names.