Eclipse vs NetBeans

Eclipse vs NetBeans …On which side are you on? Let us know which IDE you think is better and why.

Think of Java IDEs and two names that will come up are Eclipse and NetBeans. I have been using NetBeans for many years now and Eclipse has been a more recent addition to my Java armory. I have enjoyed working with both tools and as such don’t have a clear favorite. I prefer NetBeans a little more than Eclipse as I have been using it longer and am more comfortable with it.

The thing I am most surprised about is how rapidly Eclipse has grown and how it has well and truly eclipsed NetBeans over the past year or so.

In the article: Migrating to Eclipse: A developer’s guide to evaluating Eclipse vs. Netbeans, the author shows the differences between the two IDEs.

Just Eclipse or Eclipse in its WSAD avatar or MyEclipseIDE avatar is definitely good but hey..is it so good that nobody wants to be talk of NetBeans these days??? I haven’t as yet tried out the new NetBeans 4 Beta 2 but I do hope it is very good. So that the competition between Eclipse and NetBeans stays fierce and there is no clear winner.

The end user gets two very good IDEs.

* Apr08 Update – Do have a look at this new comparison of JDeveloper, Eclipse and NetBeans

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258 thoughts on “Eclipse vs NetBeans

  • November 16, 2010 at 11:52 pm
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    I think that netbenas is an a good IDE , but this idea was affected today that I found it doesn’t have support for AspectJ, I really think of this is very important. so the only plugin doesn’t work. .so good I hope this changes. .

  • June 29, 2010 at 7:37 am
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    No good. In Java(TM) sweatshops the swap space must stay busy and work long hours too.

  • May 9, 2010 at 7:14 pm
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    Guys Eclipse is GOD. U ppl dont know its powers. It's a 40 million$ project of IBM which is gift to the open source community. It is fully extensible. U can integrate as many tools as u want. For Ex-> if u want a game in ur IDE, then u can have it . Just install a game plugin . U can integrate any one of GUI builder(like AWT builder, or SWING Builder) also into ur eclipse. Just GOOGLE about it. 🙂

  • May 1, 2010 at 4:18 pm
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    c'mon guys, Eclipse is just a little brother of NetBeans. I do not understand why so many developers use Eclipse. Probably they haven't tried NetBeans yet. Eclipse has all those plugins, and integrations, because everyone uses eclipse, but apart from that NetBeans is way better, more different views, more user friendly, nicer GUI and so on.

    • February 10, 2011 at 12:42 pm
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      girls cant understand all of these because girls are made only for cosmetic design
      hey…………

  • April 25, 2009 at 9:47 pm
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    Hi, I’ve been using jdeveloper 10g for almost a year now, coming from Eclipse I must say that I hate jdeveloper. It’s counterintuitive, heavy, slow and have poor quality plugins, like the subversion client.
    Eclipse may seem more complicated to use for a beginner, but that’s because it’s also far more configurable than jdeveloper, has better plugins and doesn’t force you to do weird things with the project structure.

  • April 25, 2009 at 4:17 pm
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    Hi, I’ve been using jdeveloper 10g for almost a year now, coming from Eclipse I must say that I hate jdeveloper. It’s counterintuitive, heavy, slow and have poor quality plugins, like the subversion client.
    Eclipse may seem more complicated to use for a beginner, but that’s because it’s also far more configurable than jdeveloper, has better plugins and doesn’t force you to do weird things with the project structure.

  • August 4, 2007 at 8:25 am
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    Netbeans is just more intuitive than Eclipse. For beginners, netbeans is definitly the best option. Its easier to handle projects, easier to get ‘up & going’. I do tend to belive that IntelliJ is in a league of its own, but it is costy. For my own ‘home project developments’ I use netbeans, and intellij at work.

  • August 4, 2007 at 8:25 am
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    Netbeans is just more intuitive than Eclipse. For beginners, netbeans is definitly the best option. Its easier to handle projects, easier to get ‘up & going’. I do tend to belive that IntelliJ is in a league of its own, but it is costy. For my own ‘home project developments’ I use netbeans, and intellij at work.

  • April 30, 2007 at 10:11 pm
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    Being new to the whole netbeans eclipse thing, and a new Java programmer, I tried eclipse first and I was impressed, until it stopped working for no reason. Netbeans not only includes an GUI editor and doesn’t have to rely on dodgy plugins, it works!

  • April 30, 2007 at 10:11 pm
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    Being new to the whole netbeans eclipse thing, and a new Java programmer, I tried eclipse first and I was impressed, until it stopped working for no reason. Netbeans not only includes an GUI editor and doesn’t have to rely on dodgy plugins, it works!

  • April 18, 2007 at 8:27 am
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    Eclipse is the absolute winner in making plugins and other RCP stand-alone stuff. But it’s so complicated, boring and hard. Sometimes i was going mad when tried to configure the build path and other output paths.
    I find that NetBeans is much more dev friendly but there is a lack of functionalities.
    It’s sad to say, but there is no perfect IDE

  • April 18, 2007 at 8:27 am
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    Eclipse is the absolute winner in making plugins and other RCP stand-alone stuff. But it’s so complicated, boring and hard. Sometimes i was going mad when tried to configure the build path and other output paths.
    I find that NetBeans is much more dev friendly but there is a lack of functionalities.
    It’s sad to say, but there is no perfect IDE

  • February 24, 2007 at 6:52 pm
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    How does everyone rate Netbeans 5.5 against JDeveloper 10.1.3?

  • February 24, 2007 at 6:52 pm
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    How does everyone rate Netbeans 5.5 against JDeveloper 10.1.3?

  • February 1, 2007 at 12:39 am
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    Too many people are complaining about Matisse guarded code block. But I think it is a good way to separate UI from data and logic. In software engineering process, this is good habit to separate them just like MVC pattern. So I don’t think it is a disadvantage. I think 90% of GUI programs don’t require too much customization code. Even if it does need, most of customization can be resolved by the code panel of property sheet. If it cannot satisfy your need, I would suggest you not to use Matisse to build it. Why not manually write it?
    So in all, why not use Matisse to build 90% ‘normal’ GUI programs and manually write the 10%, which need too much customizations. Matisse guarded block can be seen as an advantage over hand-written chaotic code generator.

  • February 1, 2007 at 12:39 am
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    Too many people are complaining about Matisse guarded code block. But I think it is a good way to separate UI from data and logic. In software engineering process, this is good habit to separate them just like MVC pattern. So I don’t think it is a disadvantage. I think 90% of GUI programs don’t require too much customization code. Even if it does need, most of customization can be resolved by the code panel of property sheet. If it cannot satisfy your need, I would suggest you not to use Matisse to build it. Why not manually write it?
    So in all, why not use Matisse to build 90% ‘normal’ GUI programs and manually write the 10%, which need too much customizations. Matisse guarded block can be seen as an advantage over hand-written chaotic code generator.

  • January 9, 2007 at 9:55 am
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    These are somewhat early impressions, and are entirely personal opinions (and your mileage will surely vary, and we can agree to disagree), but …

    (1a) Matisse GUI builder is nice, so long as you don’t need to attach a DocumentListener to any JTextComponent objects … and then you’re adding the code by hand. (The same issue apparently exists for any event fired by some instance member inside your component.)

    (1b) Can’t directly get access to non-beanified things like the Box class components (glue, strut, etc.).

    (1b) Seem to need to write custom code to attach a non-default list model (etc.)

    (1c) Also rather forces a top-down monolithic approach to building the GUI just to let the connection mode do anything worthwhile. That is, if you create individual panels, add them to the palette, then build them into a larger panel or frame, you can’t access the sub-pieces in connection mode. (Or at least, I never saw how to.) Granted, events can still be wired otherwise, but seems to defeat the existence of this ‘mode’.

    (2) On the same hardware (512MB RAM) and on the same project of files, eclipse stays far ahead of me, while Netbeans drags behind me, performance-wise.

    (3a) Eclipse editor has a right-hand gutter that visually shows all the places the currently selected variable is used in that file. (and where comments are, and …) I couldn’t find whether Netbeans offers that, but certainly not out of the box.

    (3b) Behavioral gripe: Pressing ‘space’ at certain times in the netbeans editor does code template replacement… I suppose I should apologize for using one of netbeans’ many ‘magic strings’ as my own variable name. It seems that ‘shift+space’ would be a more sensible default setting for this behavior — yes I found it in the preferences. The message here is that, as a user, if I want a special action to take place, I’ll do something special to get it. Hitting space bar when typing in code is a long way from a special action.

    (4) Eclipse auto-compile is rather nice. This is its own holy war, but when I mis-type code in Eclipse, I get immediate feedback about all the other classes that just got borked (and it happens *fast*… see point 2).

    (5) Netbeans provides no ‘File – Import’ feature? I have to step outside the IDE to copy the file in myself (or do the equivalent via the Favorites window, which seems horribly misnamed), meaning I have to navigate the file system twice: once to find the file, again to find the package I want to drop it into. Then, I have to update the package and import statements. Eclipse makes this a zero-think operation. right-click package, import, find file, everythings done and the project’s status reflects this (see point 4).

    (6) On a Mac, Netbeans throws up the CFMachPort (?) error message when I have it run my app. While you can conspire to make Eclipse do that as well, it doesn’t happen normally, whereas it does it every time with Netbeans.

    (7) On the other hand, if you want out-of-the-box capabilities for JSP work (etc), netbeans looks like it probably beats Eclipse … but I don’t do a lot of work in this area to make a solid judgement.

    So, point #7 [possibly] notwithstanding, the ‘features’ that are present in netbeans seem self-incomplete in just about any area I encountered … and this was while trying to use netbeans for its #1 feature: building a Swing app with the GUI builder. I’ll probably still use it to layout the panels and frames (unless matisse can be decoupled and used independently) but I’ll certainly import the files over into eclipse to work on the real business logic. To each their own.

  • January 9, 2007 at 9:55 am
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    These are somewhat early impressions, and are entirely personal opinions (and your mileage will surely vary, and we can agree to disagree), but …

    (1a) Matisse GUI builder is nice, so long as you don’t need to attach a DocumentListener to any JTextComponent objects … and then you’re adding the code by hand. (The same issue apparently exists for any event fired by some instance member inside your component.)

    (1b) Can’t directly get access to non-beanified things like the Box class components (glue, strut, etc.).

    (1b) Seem to need to write custom code to attach a non-default list model (etc.)

    (1c) Also rather forces a top-down monolithic approach to building the GUI just to let the connection mode do anything worthwhile. That is, if you create individual panels, add them to the palette, then build them into a larger panel or frame, you can’t access the sub-pieces in connection mode. (Or at least, I never saw how to.) Granted, events can still be wired otherwise, but seems to defeat the existence of this ‘mode’.

    (2) On the same hardware (512MB RAM) and on the same project of files, eclipse stays far ahead of me, while Netbeans drags behind me, performance-wise.

    (3a) Eclipse editor has a right-hand gutter that visually shows all the places the currently selected variable is used in that file. (and where comments are, and …) I couldn’t find whether Netbeans offers that, but certainly not out of the box.

    (3b) Behavioral gripe: Pressing ‘space’ at certain times in the netbeans editor does code template replacement… I suppose I should apologize for using one of netbeans’ many ‘magic strings’ as my own variable name. It seems that ‘shift+space’ would be a more sensible default setting for this behavior — yes I found it in the preferences. The message here is that, as a user, if I want a special action to take place, I’ll do something special to get it. Hitting space bar when typing in code is a long way from a special action.

    (4) Eclipse auto-compile is rather nice. This is its own holy war, but when I mis-type code in Eclipse, I get immediate feedback about all the other classes that just got borked (and it happens *fast*… see point 2).

    (5) Netbeans provides no ‘File – Import’ feature? I have to step outside the IDE to copy the file in myself (or do the equivalent via the Favorites window, which seems horribly misnamed), meaning I have to navigate the file system twice: once to find the file, again to find the package I want to drop it into. Then, I have to update the package and import statements. Eclipse makes this a zero-think operation. right-click package, import, find file, everythings done and the project’s status reflects this (see point 4).

    (6) On a Mac, Netbeans throws up the CFMachPort (?) error message when I have it run my app. While you can conspire to make Eclipse do that as well, it doesn’t happen normally, whereas it does it every time with Netbeans.

    (7) On the other hand, if you want out-of-the-box capabilities for JSP work (etc), netbeans looks like it probably beats Eclipse … but I don’t do a lot of work in this area to make a solid judgement.

    So, point #7 [possibly] notwithstanding, the ‘features’ that are present in netbeans seem self-incomplete in just about any area I encountered … and this was while trying to use netbeans for its #1 feature: building a Swing app with the GUI builder. I’ll probably still use it to layout the panels and frames (unless matisse can be decoupled and used independently) but I’ll certainly import the files over into eclipse to work on the real business logic. To each their own.

  • December 14, 2006 at 7:41 am
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    i have been using Netbeans on a Windows box for over 18 months and the stability is fine.

    Umm… It’s fine if you ignore the 512Mb of RAM recommendation.
    Start with 1GB and more won’t hurt.

    It’s the memory people!

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