[java] Eclipse vs. Net Beans

I prefer NetBeans for Java, but I've not seen any particular differences in the two in any of the functionality that I tend to use.

I have been forced to use NetBeans for about a year and found it the worst piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of using, bar none. Maybe things have improved with later versions, and your mileage may vary, but there is not a single good thing I can say about it. Even free it's too expensive.

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Original post by Kippesoep I have been forced to use NetBeans for about a year and found it the worst piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of using, bar none. Maybe things have improved with later versions, and your mileage may vary, but there is not a single good thing I can say about it. Even free it's too expensive.

Hmm, ouch! Any specifics I should be wary of?

I tried both and quickly settled on Eclipse. The main difficulty I had with
netbeans is that it seemed to have a much more "prescriptive" framework,
which made it hard to import an existing cluster of projects.

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Original post by Rydinare Hey guys. I'm relatively new to doing serious Java development. I recently had been using Eclipse, but I found some annoyances that were utterly driving me nuts. Then I tried NetBeans last night, and I found it simpler. Unlike Eclipse, there wasn't a major hassle to get it to do what I wanted (at least so far). I just was curious what the rest of you prefer and what your experience with each is. [smile]

What problems did you have with eclipse?
It has a steeper learning curve than netbeans, so it might be just that you were looking for the feature in the wrong place.
Netbeans does some thing better, like GUI builder is built in, but tends to be slower.

Eclipse by a long shot. Excellent piece of software.

I'll throw my vote in there for eclipse.

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Original post by captainfreedom Quote: Original post by Rydinare Hey guys. I'm relatively new to doing serious Java development. I recently had been using Eclipse, but I found some annoyances that were utterly driving me nuts. Then I tried NetBeans last night, and I found it simpler. Unlike Eclipse, there wasn't a major hassle to get it to do what I wanted (at least so far). I just was curious what the rest of you prefer and what your experience with each is. [smile] What problems did you have with eclipse? It has a steeper learning curve than netbeans, so it might be just that you were looking for the feature in the wrong place. Netbeans does some thing better, like GUI builder is built in, but tends to be slower.

If I remember correctly (it was late when I was playing around), the latest thing that bit me was I created a new project. First, the project had to be one level below the workspace, which I found a bit annoying. Then, I set the project where I wanted it, but I had files that were up and over to an area outside the project. It was giving me grief about providing classpaths outside the project. Then, I had some other source files, namely C++ files, that I didn't want worked on inside eclipse. Yet, the option to remove the directories was missing on some of the folders. On one, I told eclipse to ignore and it deleted my folder. Luckily, I was able to restore from source control.

Ultimately, it seems like Eclipse was requiring a very strict model for how you should set up your projects; frankly too strict for me. Unlike Eclipse, Net Beans let me set up things how I wanted. Having never used Net Beans, I got further with it in 10 minutes that I got with Eclipse in much longer.

Also, the .metadata folders are annoying. I typically like to put the project files on a separate branch from my source. Perhaps there is a way, but it wasn't obvious.

I would write out the pros and cons of each, but I don't have that kind of time atm. So I'm going to just say: Eclipse is where it's at.

Worked in both and basically started with NetBeans and followed up to 5.0, but found Eclipse much better.

Now doing java and PHP development in it - just switch workspaces and there you go ;)

Try both and see what suits your needs and personal taste.

I use netbeans and love it. (For C++ though not Java).

I dabbled in eclipse but went straight back to netbeans.

For NetBeans (version 4.1, IIRC) I remember it taking several minutes to start up (on a high end PC at the time -- Eclipse started up an order of magnitude faster), and taking a similarly long time to shut down. In fact, I found the fastest way to quit NB was to type "/**" to start a JavaDoc comment, as that instantly crashed the whole IDE to the desktop (it rarely ran stable for more than 15 minutes anyway). It also clashed with the ZoneAlarm personal firewall I used on my home PC at that time, being unable to compile the code while the firewall was up, yet unable to verify the JAR whilst it was up. That's just a few of the crashes and bugs I remember. Added to that is an interface that (imho) has been surpassed in suckiness only by FileMaker Pro and you may understand why I hate it with such a passion. I renamed my Start menu shortcut for NB to "Crap I don't want to use but am forced to anyway" and rejoiced when I could finally uninstall it and switch to Eclipse (which of course isn't perfect either, but most niggles [at least to me] are minor).

And before you mention it: If it was just one installation, I'd chalk it up to that installation, but I've had to use 3 separate ones that all exhibited the same symptoms.

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Original post by Kippesoep For NetBeans (version 4.1, IIRC) ...

I'm not sure if I ever used NetBeans 4, but 5 and certainly 6 have much improved from what you describe. There's no noticeable difference in startup times between NetBeans and Eclipse. I've never crashed either one. The UIs are almost identical.

I used NetBeans for a few years a long time ago, as soon as I had a computer with enough memory (back to 1998, with 64Mb, I had a garbage collection -and a freeze of about 20 seconds- every 10 minutes)

Then I used Eclipse, and it was way much quicker, and I didn't changed since. But to be honnest, I have a few complaints about it :
- at each new release, it becomes more and more bloated, hence taking more and more time to startup.
- To take advantage of their SWT thing -for writing new plugin or standalone app-, one has to learn yet another graphic toolkit. Given the time I took to be comfortable with Swing, I am reluctant to loose time to learn another toolkit, given that the advantage for me is quasi inexistant (plus the fact that one have to add a strong dependancy with a native library).

Eclipse, because it has more responsive interface. SWT blows swing clear out of the water.

I've also found NetBeans somewhat clumsy and unpolished.

Disclaimer: if your work depends mostly on visually designing UIs, then NetBeans is likely a better choice.

IntelliJ

/Lizard

Interesting. Perhaps I should give Eclipse another try. Any getting started tutorials with Eclipse (particularly for Java) that one can recommend? Thanks.

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Original post by Rydinare Interesting. Perhaps I should give Eclipse another try. Any getting started tutorials with Eclipse (particularly for Java) that one can recommend? Thanks.

Linky.

The above link is a start-page for IBM's eclipse articles. They have a few good tutorials which you could Google for. I guess since they made Eclipse, they know a thing or two :D

Interesting you should mention IntelliJ, LizardCPP. I had the pleasure of evaluating IntelliJ 7.0 at work for about a month while waiting for the stable release of NetBeans 6.0. I should say first and foremost that IntelliJ proves that NetBeans' lack of responsiveness has nothing to do with Swing, because IntelliJ is always responsive and uses Swing.

There are a number of features I really love in IntelliJ, especially the attention to detail given to the code editor, which is where we spend most of our time. One basic feature it lacked was highlighting all references to the variable under the caret, however this and many other lacking features can be found in the mountain of third party plugins available to install directly from the IDE. After installing a few plugins and changing a few settings, I had what I have to call the ultimate Java editor inside IntelliJ.

Unfortunately where IntelliJ turns to crap is its lack of intelligent and consistent code completion. In this regard, NetBeans 6.x absolutely leaves IntelliJ for dead. Heck, even Eclipse leaves IntelliJ's code completion for dead.

Here's what I like about NetBeans 6.1:
* It's the only IDE with proper Maven support (via a plugin)
* Its code completion is second to none
* Its interface is clean and straight forward
* Its almost always the first IDE to have support for new and emerging Java technologies
* Matisse is much improved (though still a bit quirky)
* For those of use with lots of pixels (and perhaps multiple monitors), it's possible to have multiple editor panes and undock any pane. At work last year, my main monitor had two code panes side by side, with the spare monitor containing the undocked project tree and another code pane, also undocked.

On the subject of Maven in NetBeans, I recently noticed a new synergy: code completion via ctrl-space now gives you the option to search the Maven repository for a class. So if you've heard about a class but didn't know where to find it, if it's in the Maven repository (most likely) it can be added to your project in a couple of seconds (add a few more seconds for getting javadocs and sources where available). That feature is so damn sexy!

If only NetBeans wasn't so damn slow.