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

  • August 31, 2006 at 10:12 am
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    Most of you ‘non-Netbeans’ folks need to try NetBeans 5 and you will understand why NetBeans beats Eclipse hands down. I’m a die hard Java programmer having worked with tools ranging from JBuilder,Forte,Eclipse and Netbeans. If you asked me 2 years ago, yeah Eclipse was on top of the game but NetBeans has juss come of age.
    All this stuff bout speed is utter rubbish. try it and you will immediately uninstall Eclipse

  • August 31, 2006 at 10:12 am
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    Most of you ‘non-Netbeans’ folks need to try NetBeans 5 and you will understand why NetBeans beats Eclipse hands down. I’m a die hard Java programmer having worked with tools ranging from JBuilder,Forte,Eclipse and Netbeans. If you asked me 2 years ago, yeah Eclipse was on top of the game but NetBeans has juss come of age.
    All this stuff bout speed is utter rubbish. try it and you will immediately uninstall Eclipse

  • August 31, 2006 at 3:45 am
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    IDEA is the best for pure coding purposes.
    The smart code completion, excellent refactoring all makes IDEA an excellent choice for coding.

    NetBeans is the best for Desktop GUI development and Java EE application development like JSF, EJB etc

    Eclipse is not strong in both areas.
    It has a better editor than NetBeans but definitely well behind IDEA.

    But Eclipse is best in one area.
    That is the support of numerous plugins.
    That too if you developing something which are not standard like Echo etc.. eclipse has plugins for that.

    But beware…..
    The best eclipse plugins are not free.
    I believe the great momentum behind eclipse is just to make money out of eclipse.
    IBM is making money out of eclipse by building WSAD over eclipse.
    BEA is making money out of eclipse by building their IDE.
    MyEclipse, Exadel and numerous others are also doing the same.

    These people have spoiled the concept of eclipse.
    They are not doing anything significant to improve the core eclipse functionality.
    J2EE support is very good in WSAD but crappy in eclipse, why?
    Because people don’t want their cash cows to be given away free.

    Eclipse is not truly open source anymore.
    Had these people put all these efforts on eclipse, it would have become the defacto IDE for almost any development.

    Eclipse is no more developer friendly.
    People have spoiled it by making it the basis for their business.

    At the end, you cannot do full fledged java development with the productivity you expect with eclipse alone.
    You will need any of these commercial offsprings like MyEclipse etc to achieve that.

    So i personally feel it would be safe to bet on NetBeans in the long term as it remains truly open source.
    NetBeans Enterprise Pack is free and it will be open sourced soon.
    NetBeans Mobility Pack is free and open source.
    NetBeans C++ Pack is free.
    NetBeans Visual Web Pack will be coming soon and it will be free and open source.

    Not that Eclipse is inferior to NetBeans.
    But people haven’t contributed significantly to improve Eclipse.
    They have contributed only to their commercial products based on Eclipse.
    Eclipse now feels stranded.

    We feel sorry for you Eclipse our Glorious King in the past.

  • August 31, 2006 at 3:45 am
    Permalink

    IDEA is the best for pure coding purposes.
    The smart code completion, excellent refactoring all makes IDEA an excellent choice for coding.

    NetBeans is the best for Desktop GUI development and Java EE application development like JSF, EJB etc

    Eclipse is not strong in both areas.
    It has a better editor than NetBeans but definitely well behind IDEA.

    But Eclipse is best in one area.
    That is the support of numerous plugins.
    That too if you developing something which are not standard like Echo etc.. eclipse has plugins for that.

    But beware…..
    The best eclipse plugins are not free.
    I believe the great momentum behind eclipse is just to make money out of eclipse.
    IBM is making money out of eclipse by building WSAD over eclipse.
    BEA is making money out of eclipse by building their IDE.
    MyEclipse, Exadel and numerous others are also doing the same.

    These people have spoiled the concept of eclipse.
    They are not doing anything significant to improve the core eclipse functionality.
    J2EE support is very good in WSAD but crappy in eclipse, why?
    Because people don’t want their cash cows to be given away free.

    Eclipse is not truly open source anymore.
    Had these people put all these efforts on eclipse, it would have become the defacto IDE for almost any development.

    Eclipse is no more developer friendly.
    People have spoiled it by making it the basis for their business.

    At the end, you cannot do full fledged java development with the productivity you expect with eclipse alone.
    You will need any of these commercial offsprings like MyEclipse etc to achieve that.

    So i personally feel it would be safe to bet on NetBeans in the long term as it remains truly open source.
    NetBeans Enterprise Pack is free and it will be open sourced soon.
    NetBeans Mobility Pack is free and open source.
    NetBeans C++ Pack is free.
    NetBeans Visual Web Pack will be coming soon and it will be free and open source.

    Not that Eclipse is inferior to NetBeans.
    But people haven’t contributed significantly to improve Eclipse.
    They have contributed only to their commercial products based on Eclipse.
    Eclipse now feels stranded.

    We feel sorry for you Eclipse our Glorious King in the past.

  • July 31, 2006 at 5:30 am
    Permalink

    I have been using NetBeans since I started programming in Java. I like it very much because for me it seems to be easier and more compact than Eclipse.
    But I have to agree that it is really slow if you do not optimize it: Most of the time I work on my notebook and in battery mode, if I switched down the speed of my graphic card, NetBeans would run choppy. But since I have changed the settings (you have to disable the DirectDraw with a starting parameter) everything works great.

    IMHO the new Netbeans Version has a lot new features.
    I also use Eclipse sometimes, mostly because of its good refractoring tools, like generating a constructor with fields (love that feature). I wonder why Netbeans does not have this, since it is, I think, not very difficult to implement.

    Another nice feature for people who don’t want to struggle with installing servers (like me), are the bundles that Netbeans offers. I’ve recently downloaded the new NetBeans Beta 5.5 Enterprise Bundle and everything I need for building up a Web application is already included.

  • July 31, 2006 at 5:30 am
    Permalink

    I have been using NetBeans since I started programming in Java. I like it very much because for me it seems to be easier and more compact than Eclipse.
    But I have to agree that it is really slow if you do not optimize it: Most of the time I work on my notebook and in battery mode, if I switched down the speed of my graphic card, NetBeans would run choppy. But since I have changed the settings (you have to disable the DirectDraw with a starting parameter) everything works great.

    IMHO the new Netbeans Version has a lot new features.
    I also use Eclipse sometimes, mostly because of its good refractoring tools, like generating a constructor with fields (love that feature). I wonder why Netbeans does not have this, since it is, I think, not very difficult to implement.

    Another nice feature for people who don’t want to struggle with installing servers (like me), are the bundles that Netbeans offers. I’ve recently downloaded the new NetBeans Beta 5.5 Enterprise Bundle and everything I need for building up a Web application is already included.

  • July 31, 2006 at 5:18 am
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    as titled, eclipse have more pluging, it is faster and used by everybody, simple to use also !

    netbeans ? the only good part is the gui desingning. But it is damn slow … conclusion use ECLIPSE if you are good in awt/swing designing !

    alex

  • July 31, 2006 at 5:18 am
    Permalink

    as titled, eclipse have more pluging, it is faster and used by everybody, simple to use also !

    netbeans ? the only good part is the gui desingning. But it is damn slow … conclusion use ECLIPSE if you are good in awt/swing designing !

    alex

  • July 27, 2006 at 7:47 am
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    I use NetBeans for 2-3 years. I’m generaly satisfied excpept the fact that it is a bit slow. I’ve tried Eclipse 2-3 times but I couldn’t understand its functionality. NetBeans seems much easier. I hope NetBeans will become faster in the future…

  • July 27, 2006 at 7:47 am
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    I use NetBeans for 2-3 years. I’m generaly satisfied excpept the fact that it is a bit slow. I’ve tried Eclipse 2-3 times but I couldn’t understand its functionality. NetBeans seems much easier. I hope NetBeans will become faster in the future…

  • July 23, 2006 at 9:45 am
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    i use both idea and netbeans. For gui designing i use netbean 5.0 and for coding i use idea. I love both of them 🙂

  • July 23, 2006 at 9:45 am
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    i use both idea and netbeans. For gui designing i use netbean 5.0 and for coding i use idea. I love both of them 🙂

  • July 4, 2006 at 11:10 pm
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    I am using JBuilder2005 for 7 months, then i switched to eclipse, but still i like Jbuilder due to its ease to use and properly integrated web applications. But when my seniors recommend me using netbeans 5.0 i was overwhelmed by its response on my machine. Its speed, J2EE integration and ease to use make me say BYE BYE to Eclipse and JBuilder

  • July 4, 2006 at 11:10 pm
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    I am using JBuilder2005 for 7 months, then i switched to eclipse, but still i like Jbuilder due to its ease to use and properly integrated web applications. But when my seniors recommend me using netbeans 5.0 i was overwhelmed by its response on my machine. Its speed, J2EE integration and ease to use make me say BYE BYE to Eclipse and JBuilder

  • June 14, 2006 at 6:56 pm
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    I used NetBean for about two weeks last year. I have to say that I don’t hate it, and I don’t like it either. It was kind of slow (P IV 1.5GHz with 1GB ram). I am using Eclipse (MyEclipse) for about 7 months now. It is good for stand-alone application development, but not for web applications. I have no plan to switch to other IDEs because my group uses it. For me, IDEs are development tools, nothing more. When I am learning new things, I always use test editor (vi is my choice).

  • June 14, 2006 at 6:56 pm
    Permalink

    I used NetBean for about two weeks last year. I have to say that I don’t hate it, and I don’t like it either. It was kind of slow (P IV 1.5GHz with 1GB ram). I am using Eclipse (MyEclipse) for about 7 months now. It is good for stand-alone application development, but not for web applications. I have no plan to switch to other IDEs because my group uses it. For me, IDEs are development tools, nothing more. When I am learning new things, I always use test editor (vi is my choice).

  • June 13, 2006 at 3:50 am
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    Eclipse ? NetBeans ? Visual Studio 2005 is the winner ! ;-D

  • June 6, 2006 at 2:02 pm
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    Dear lord, someone just gets lost in here. I’ve programmed with notepad and my trusty command prompt for a few years now- but am moving into doing serious work (which I assume means I need an IDE). Netbeans or Eclipse? Some that I’ve spoken to say that Eclipse IS the industry standard now (despite the fact that it flaunts the standards, as far as I can tell), and others say that if my boss is a Linux ONLY kind of person, she’d shoot me if I tried to teach her that. Suggestions?

  • June 6, 2006 at 2:02 pm
    Permalink

    Dear lord, someone just gets lost in here. I’ve programmed with notepad and my trusty command prompt for a few years now- but am moving into doing serious work (which I assume means I need an IDE). Netbeans or Eclipse? Some that I’ve spoken to say that Eclipse IS the industry standard now (despite the fact that it flaunts the standards, as far as I can tell), and others say that if my boss is a Linux ONLY kind of person, she’d shoot me if I tried to teach her that. Suggestions?

  • May 9, 2006 at 1:29 am
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    I’ve read almost all the comments in this forum, where users complained about some issues over the time regarding NetBeans.
    It’s amazing how quickly NetBeans has evolved and it now has hell lot of features that has no equivalent in Eclipse like Mattise, Profiler etc.
    But some core features remains the same from the beginning.
    NetBeans still has to enhance it’s code completion, comment/uncomment etc.
    Source code navigation is excellent in eclipse where as I doubt whether this is available in NetBeans or not.
    The biggest problem in Eclipse is they are too much concerned about other perspectives/languages as a result we get lots of plugins for those perspectives but hardly for any core feature.
    More over the best eclipse plugins are commercial. Which can be put together as
    eclipse < NetBeans eclipse + lots of free plugins

  • May 9, 2006 at 1:29 am
    Permalink

    I’ve read almost all the comments in this forum, where users complained about some issues over the time regarding NetBeans.
    It’s amazing how quickly NetBeans has evolved and it now has hell lot of features that has no equivalent in Eclipse like Mattise, Profiler etc.
    But some core features remains the same from the beginning.
    NetBeans still has to enhance it’s code completion, comment/uncomment etc.
    Source code navigation is excellent in eclipse where as I doubt whether this is available in NetBeans or not.
    The biggest problem in Eclipse is they are too much concerned about other perspectives/languages as a result we get lots of plugins for those perspectives but hardly for any core feature.
    More over the best eclipse plugins are commercial. Which can be put together as
    eclipse < NetBeans
    eclipse + lots of free plugins

  • May 3, 2006 at 11:41 am
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    FYI for everyone, my company has developed a great product that is bridging the gap between these two great platforms – Matisse4MyEclipse, the first Swing UI to combine features of NetBeans and Eclipse for the Eclipse platform. This will be part of the MyEclipse 5.0 release, but is currently available for FREE download. http://www.myeclipseide.com

    Let us know what you think. We develop our products based on developer feedback!

    -Jens

    [URL=null]null[/URL][URL=null]null[/URL][URL=http://www.myeclipseide.com/ContentExpress-display-ceid-77.html]MyEclipse[/URL]

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