Here is an interesting interview of Rob Harwood, one the main IDEA developers.  In this piece, Rob discusses mostly IDEA, but his remarks on Eclipse are respectful and well balanced, which is quite a change from what we usually hear from the “third IDE” advocates out there.  He also discusses Swing/SWT, components, the Open API, etc…

My preference for Eclipse is probably well known at this point, but I have the utmost respect for the JetBrains guys, who not only manage to keep up the pace against Eclipse, but are actually still able to sell a product while competing in a free (as in “no money”) market.

Congratulations, guys, and keep giving Eclipse a run for its money!