JetBrains Academy plugin

With Educational Products, you can learn and teach programming languages in the form of coding tasks and custom verification tests right inside JetBrains IntelliJ Platform-based IDEs. Here you can find a JetBrains Academy plugin and install it: JetBrains Academy.

When you open your course, you will see the main tool windows: Project View, Task Description, Editor.

Project View

Project View shows the course syllabus: the list of lessons with lesson steps, or tasks. To navigate to a task, click on its name.

Note: You can hide the Project View window by clicking on the Project tool button or with the ⌘ 1 / Alt + 1 shortcut. This will give you more space for the code and task description. Click the Project tool button (or invoke the shortcut) once again to show the hidden Project View.

Task Description

The Task Description window gives you all the information you need to complete a programming problem or project stage.

Use Task Description icons for the following actions:

to check if a task assignment is done right for the quizzes and programming tasks;

to go to the previous/next task;

to drop all the task changes and start anew;

the Run button on the left side of the editor to run the code. Combinations ⌃ ⌥ R / Alt + Shift + F10 allow you to use the Run menu, where you can choose what you need to run;

to view the task page on Hyperskill and leave a comment.

Task Description needs to be visible, we do not advise hiding it completely. However, you can make it a bit less distracting by moving it out of the way.

If you work with two monitors, one of the best options is to switch the Task Description panel to the floating mode and move it to the second monitor or just place it near the main IDE window.

You can do so with the help of a special tool window settings icon.

Or if you prefer you can move the panel to the left, or to the bottom:

Editor

The Editor is your playground where you will mainly be programming. You can experiment here for the theory tasks and quizzes without being checked. For programming assignments in the Editor, you will find the code you need to fix, or you will write your own code from scratch. This code will be checked.

With this icon on the left, you can always run your code.

Note: If you want to quickly go back to the Editor and focus on your code, the best option is to use the Hide All Windows command (⌘ ⇧ F12 / Ctrl + Shift + F12). Just invoke it once again to get all the windows back.

Conclusion

As you can see, your IntelliJ Platform-based IDE contains useful tools directed at simplification of the learning process. With these tools, you can optimize your learning process, save some time, and get more familiar with your working environment.