Netbeans 4.1 Released

njcoder writes "Netbeans 4.1 was released a few days ago. Though it is only a short time since 4.0 was released and only a minor version number increase, the new Netbeans 4.1 contains a number of significant enhancements. New features include enhanced support for J2ME (mobile) projects, a new Navigator component, enhancements to the Ant based project system, ability to define multiple source roots, enhanced support for J2EE applications including EJB support for creating Session, Entity and Message Driven Beans, bundled J2EE application server, bundled Tomcat server upgraded to the 5.5 series, Web Services support, Eclipse project import tool, and more. The days of a slow and ugly Netbeans seem to be over. Using the new Metal look and feel in Java 5 brightens things up a bit as well. More information can be found in the release info and go here to download the new version. Java boutique has a review, with screenshots, of the new released titled IDE Wars: Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?."

Comments

Netbroken

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what new features it has, is it stable? We used Netbeans for a while (a few months ago) at the company I work for in Austin, but we gave up on it because it crashed constantly. We ended up switching to Eclipse half way through the project at a great loss, but at least it's stable. I have very few good things to say about Netbeans...

Re:Netbroken

[njcoder]

I haven't had any stability issues running Netbeans 3.6 up to 4.1 on windows using JDK's 1.4.2 and 1.5. Ever since 4.0 and jdk 1.5 came out performance was a lot better too.

Re:Netbroken

[mboverload]

In classic Slashdot fashion, the summary fails to even tell us what Netbeans is.

Re:Netbroken

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used both NetBeans and Eclipse. NetBeans is by far the better Java editor. It's faster and more intutive. It's easier to use. It's easier to configure. It has better Java development features. The ONLY drawback, and yes it is a BIG drawback is the plugin support. If only a standard for plugins could be created and supported by both, I would be happy...

Re:Netbroken

[myanywhere]

THAT'S THE POINT! i love eclipse so much but some plugins just drive me mad...Eclipse.org released WTP : a set of plugins for web developer. i downloaded and installed but it keeps generating errors whenever i create a web project.. i downloaded eclipse 3.2 (the latest now) and tried to install WTP on it (so i can argue it was a clean up2date installtion) but all in vain... it kept thowing more and more exceptions in my face... i tried the "prepackage" eclipse distrbution at http://www.yoxos.com/ (i downloaded the free community edition)... but the installation fails everytime with "couldn't launch a vm command"... though the installer is based on eclipse and i could run it and select components to install!!

Re:Netbroken

[tiglionabbit]

I'm so glad I'm not alone about this. I tried using netbeans too, and hated it within minutes. Seeing similar problems with Azureus and a few other Java applications for Windows I began to hate the language. Are graphical applications in Java ever worthwhile?

Re:Netbroken

[smithberry]

I've been using Netbeans for the best part of a year. The first few pre 4.0 versions had occasional problems which could generally be fixed by clearing the cache.
Version 4.0 however is very stable for me, and I use it one a daily basis.

But I'll probably give it a week or two before I move to 4.1 just to be sure.

Re:Netbroken

[tiglionabbit]

No, I hated it because it would hang and crash all the time, and many of the features would fail or break in unintuitive ways.

SWT is faster than AWT

[guyfromindia]

The fact that Eclipse is built on SWT and NetBeans is based on AWT itself speaks volumes. From TFA "I have felt that Eclipse is getting slower over the versions, while, at least the word on the street is, NetBeans has evolved in the other direction." Maybe this is the author's perception, but again, I am not sure if NetBeans will perform faster than Eclipse with equal types of plug-ins loaded.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[grahamsz]

In principle SWT is faster the AWT or Swing, but not by a huge amount. The way an application is coded probably makes a far bigger difference to performance.

Swing apps are now directx/opengl accelerated which imho has made a pretty big difference, and done a fair bit to level the playing field.

I'm a little biased since i've been very impressed with Nb 4.0. Older versions were definitely slower than eclipse but 4.0 seems every bit as responsive.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[killjoe]

The latest eclipse milestone is much faster then the previous milestone, whatever speed difference there is now will probably disapear with the next version.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[jilles]

I use eclipse every day: it is slow. IBM was mistaken in thinking that SWT was a solution for performance issues in IDEs. I work with eclipse on a daily basis. I recently replaced 3.0.2 with 3.1M7. I've given up on the myeclipse J2EE plugins because these bring my system down to crawl. Netbeans offers similar features to the eclipse + myeclipse combo and is noticably faster on the same projects (basically the only thing eclipse does well IMHO is editing java code). By faster I mean that the dialogs are more responsive, I spend much less time waiting for the IDE to finish validating, manipulating large project trees in the project explorer is fast and responsive.

The rendering myth is bullshit both swt and swing use native, hardware accelerated routines to do the rendering. SWT uses native gui libraries to do this, swing uses java2d which in turn uses either directx or opengl depending on what os/vm combination you use. Rendering stuff on the screen is not an issue with either. SWT basically suffers from the same performance bottleneck as Swing: the event queue and rendering logic share the same thread. This means that lengthy event handling code blocks the UI. The solution is using a worker thread to off load lengthy operations. Using worker threads everywhere was the big improvement in netbeans 4.0 and is the reason why you are now seeing reports everywhere on netbeans outperforming eclipse. Good swing applications use worker threads. Many swing applications are coded by people who don't understand threading though. The same is true for swt. If you understand how to use threading you can build nice responsive UIs with both.

The eclipse UI blocks frequently. Opening/closing a large project tree is a good example. In netbeans there's no delay no matter how big your project is, in eclipse there is a noticable half second freeze even on small projects. Eclipse frequently freezes for a few seconds.

3.1 M7 is actually quite an improvement performance wise but they've not catched up with netbeans yet and will have to do much more to compete effectively. If you read the changelogs you'll see they are full of performance fixes. Apparently there are lots of performance issues to fix.

The reason I continue to use eclipse rather than netbeans is the Java editor. It is simply much better & smarter than the netbeans code editor (though slightly less responsive). I don't care for project wizards, I just want a smart code editor that helps me rapidly poor out code. Refactoring and code completions are where eclipse really shines. The debugger is nice too and quite handy if you install the right plugin for integrating with tomcat.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[OpenGLFan]

I can't say much about the newest (4.0+) versins of netbeans, but I do have an odd observation about the performance of Eclipse. Eclipse did feel odd and laggy on my brand new shiny Athlon 64 laptop, and when the laptop went in for repair and I was forced back to my 600MHz Pentium 3 laptop, I expected the performance to drag horribly.

But no, the performance wasn't too much slower! I knew I wasn't on the blazing fast laptop, but I saw much more performance degradation on other applications (firefox, thunderbird, command-line compilation, openoffice, etc.)

I have absolutely no clue why -- but eclipse seems to be "fast enough, but no faster." Has anyone noticed this effect, in eclipse or other Java applications?

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[sbrown123]

SWT basically suffers from the same performance bottleneck as Swing: the event queue and rendering logic share the same thread. This means that lengthy event handling code blocks the UI.

SWT has no thread for the event queue. You have to do the loop yourself (see readAndDispatch method on swt.Display). Rendering, since SWT uses native widgets, is done by the host windowing system. Because of this, SWT is generally always quicker and more responsive *graphically*.

Opening/closing a large project tree is a good example. In netbeans there's no delay no matter how big your project is, in eclipse there is a noticable half second freeze even on small projects.

SWT is not to blame for this delay on opening and closing projects. Eclipse does numerous operations (check for project dependencies, etc) whenever you open or close projects. NetBeans is either not doing these checks or is just doing them better.

If you read the changelogs you'll see they are full of performance fixes. Apparently there are lots of performance issues to fix.

Changelogs reflect completed changes, not changes needing to be done. With that said, it is possible Eclipse has less performance issues needing completion as compared to NetBeans. We'll never know.

Swing can create some really unique user interfaces because it is not tied down to the host windowing system's widgets. But these pretty interfaces have serious flaws. First, Swing has horrible issues with true type fonts outside Windows almost to the point being unreadable. Second, the user interface often operates in a manner foreign to other native applications. Third, I have found that windowing systems like Gnome, KDE, and OSX can cause wierd issues with it.

There are other downsides to NetBeans. NetBeans is ONLY a Java IDE. Eclipse on the otherhand is a platform for developing in various languages. NetBeans also has no capability, or desire for that matter (hello Sun), to run with FOSS implementations of the Java runtime. To me this is not a big deal but to others it might be.

SWT has problems too. I will not leave without mentioning its major flaw: JNI. Luckily, 1.5 introduced some performance improvements in this area.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[LDoggg_]

Swing apps are now directx/opengl accelerated which imho has made a pretty big difference, and done a fair bit to level the playing field.

Not by default. The openGL renderer is a command line parameter on the 1.5 jvm.
Its a nice feature that was long overdue.
It can't really be turned on by default because if there is no hardware acceleration for OpenGL, the software renderer (mesa3D for example) is slower than just rendering through AWT.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[njcoder]

I love this quote from Tim Boudreau... A lot of the comments on this story really illustrate his point:

"IBM has done this pretty amazing reality-distortion thing around Eclipse - there are some people now who actually believe that Eclipse was the first open source Java IDE, or the first modular one, or the first rich client platform, when NetBeans was doing all those things years before. The marketing effort around Eclipse is a work of art, and my hat is off to the marketing and PR folks who achieved it. It certainly proves that throwing lots of money at a tools marketing problem is one way to solve it. We're not about to let them get away with that twice."

IBM also complains about how the JCP is too controlled by Sun but if you look at the PMC's for the Eclipse projects you'll see a whole lote more IBM email addresses than anything else.

From everythingI've seen and read, Eclipse/SWT is a real dog on linux. Swing is slower on linux than on windows but not as bad as swt. I wish I could find the blog but I remember one of the netbeans developers mentioning he tried to lod the netbeans source tree in eclipse and it choked. I wonder what Eclipse developers are using to develop Eclipse? That's probably not a failing of SWT but for such a long time Eclipse fanatics have been talking about how slow netbeans it's nice to see blogs and forum postings talking about how people are switching to netbeans because of how slow eclipse has become.

"There are other downsides to NetBeans. NetBeans is ONLY a Java IDE. Eclipse on the otherhand is a platform for developing in various languages. NetBeans also has no capability, or desire for that matter (hello Sun), to run with FOSS implementations of the Java runtime. To me this is not a big deal but to others it might be."

Well, this is not the case. Netbeans is an open platform with a plug in architecture. It's had this since before ibm started pushing eclipse. There have been modules writen for c/c++ and fortran. Sun's development tool Sun Studio 10 is based on netbeans and it is for c/c++ and fortran. In fact when it was Forte there's this interesting blurb from this article:

With this release cycle, the Forte Developer suite has been migrated to the NetBeans open source platform, which is the foundation for Sun's Forte for Java integrated development environment (IDE). Sun's family of development tools now shares a unified IDE, creating the first tool that works seamlessly for all major languages and across platforms. This approach helps improve productivity, enabling developers to work in multiple languages with one environment.

For such a long time some Eclipse fanatics have been dismissing Netbeans because Netbeans was slow... well now eclise is slow.... Eclipse is a foundation for building your applications netbeans is just an idea... well... netbeans was a platform before eclipse was a foundation... eclipse has plugins.... netbeans has plugins too... you just don't need to hunt around for as many of them as you need for eclipse to be productive.... eclipse supports more languages... well good for them.. netbeans can too... My favorite... websphere studio is built on eclipse so if I learn eclipse I'll know websphere studio... HA! These people obviously haven't used websphere studio.

As for these open java platforms? 1: you can get netbeans to develop applications targetted for them with a bit of setup even if you can't get neatbeans to compile and run on them... 2: why is it sun or netbean's fault of these open java platforms can't keep up?

I think there's a lot of people that need to wake up to what IBM is doing. Yeah they do some really good things but there's a lot more to the story.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[drgonzo59]

OpenGL acceleration for Swing stuff _can_ be slower than the software version. The software version is mature robust and optimized while the OpenGL/DirectX support still can encounter bottlenecks. I developped a data acquisition app in Swing and with X11 on Linux there are really good graphic speed improvement with the latest jdk versionn but not running with opengl. I tried the
-Dsun.java2d.opengl=true
option and that made it run slower under linux (I have a nvidia drivers and FX57000). Most speed imporovement came from optimizing the regular (non-opengl) graphics pipeline like adding the use of DGA, keeping some images (pixmaps) in the local display evironment and so on. Now under Linux with the software (regular) rendering, the graphics refresh cycle of my app is 10x faster than it is on windows. Never figured exacltly why, but suits me fine, my app is tied to linux for now anyway.

For those wanting to experiment with some of the graphics option in 5.0 here is the page.

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[mattcasters]

bla bla bla...

That's why 3.1M7 is a milestone release, NOT a stable release...

You can read up on some of the performance enhancements here:

performance bloopers

Matt

Re:SWT is faster than AWT

[d-rock]

I agree. My biggest impediment to using NetBeans is the inferior code completion, which in Eclipse speeds things up tremendously. I really like the context-sensitivity of Eclipse; if I'm assigning to a variable of type java.util.Date, it will only show me completions that will return a java.util.Date.

Derek

Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[AntsInMyPants]

Judging from most of the comments when netbeans news is posted, it appears that the vast majority of slashdot users hate netbeans, especially when compared to eclipse. I do application and light web development using net beans and I find it very easy to use and responsive, even though I don't have the best quality hardware.

The UI is responsive and the controls are intuitive. Building web apps isn't too difficult either. So where is the love?

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[mcbridematt]

I'm a die hard NetBeans fan too. I'd be lost without it. I don't really have a problem with the use of Swing at all, and NetBeans looks nice when your using the native look'n'feel from the 1.5 JDK.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[njcoder]

Eclipse definately has become more popular. That's probably due to the weaknesses in the earlier (3.5 and bellow) versions of Netbeans. I've used both over time and wound up going back to Netbeans consistently.

Web application development is a lot easier for me in Netbeans. If you've never done any java web application development Netbeans is definately the tool. It's very well integrated into the system. Right after you install it you can start to develop, debug and test web apps. The bundled tomcat server makes the whole setup a snap. You can even set up breakpoints and watches in JSP pages. When I first tried Eclipse, I was very dissapointed that it didn't even have a JSP editor. I spent a day looking through the different plugins trying to decide on one. None of them (at the time at least) were free, at least not anything good.

The way IBM is marketting Eclipse seems to be mainly as a barebones IDE where other vendors can write plugins to sell to users. Meanwhile, netbeans comes with a lot more with the initial install. I tried MyEclipse but I didn't want to pay 32 bucks a year for something I thought should have been part of the package.

The refactoring support is a lot better in Eclipse though. You can install the RefactorIT module in Netbeans and get a lot better refactoring support. It's a commercial module with a free version that supports limited numbers of files. The pricing isn't too bad for the features you get and the Netbeans team is working on more advanced refactoring features.

From some blogs and news articles it seems like more people are making the switch to Netbeans now. I read something that stated there were 5 million total downloads of Netbeans since it's inception. 1 million of those were for versions 4.0 and 4.1. That's a pretty big leap starting with those versions.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[Tim C]

Well, the last time I tried it it looked awful and performed poorly. Add to that the learning curve of any new app and I really couldn't be bothered.

I may give it another go after my current project ends - I'm using Eclipse at the moment and certain aspects are driving me nuts.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[promantek]

I like using Netbeans much more than Eclipse as well.

Eclipse has this philosophy of "it can do anything since it's just a framework" philosophy, and somehow they pulled off a general, plug-in based application that works really well.

Eclipse doesn't actually exist as a Java IDE itself, the plug-ins make it a Java IDE, and it works. It has some cool features that Netbeans doesn't like compiling as you code, SWT, and a lot more you could name.

The bottom line is that Netbeans does one thing, does it well, and keeps it simple. Eclipse is great for a lot of people, but for me I like the Netbeans approach.

downloading 4.1 now....go netbeans!

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[LnxAddct]

For Web Application devlepment and J2ME development, you absultely can't beat NetBeans. It is also becoming my favorite IDE for general java app development as well, but I mean it really excels in those two previously noted areas. The new visual editor for J2ME is pretty neat IMHO and even the NetBeans profiler is great. NB 4.1 brings a whole new level of integration and ease of use not previously seen in any IDE. Its worth noting that the memory usage and speed has gotten a thousand fold better in this release too.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[Nataku564]

I just didn't like netbeans because it brought my system to a crawl whenever I used it. It was a few years ago, so I am sure it has improved - but I am an eclipse guy now. They had their chance.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[njcoder]

Just a note... Netbeans shares the same principle in being a framework and the IDE is built out of plugins. Except in Netbeans speak it's platform and modules indead of framework and plug-ins. The difference is that Netbeans gives you a lot more stuff built into the IDE that Eclipse doesn't.

So if you like Netbeans more than Eclipse you should be happy to know that Netbeans is also a platform and you can get plugins for it. This is a neat tutorial on building an application using the Netbeans Platform

If you're working on projects of less than 50 files you can get the RefactorIT plugin for netbeans for free that will add a ton of refactoring support. There's also JRefactory which is open source but I haven't used it.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[promantek]

wow that is really interesting. i've been using netbeans for years and didn't know this. learn something every day...

and here's the link to the modules (plugins).

this is really going to make a difference for me...thanks for the clarification.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[khchung]

Netbeans shares the same principle in being a framework and the IDE is built out of plugins.

I have dug into this claim last year due to some need from my job. If you traced the history of Netbeans, it was just a Jave IDE from the start. The claims from being a "framework" only comes later, probably due to competition from Eclipse. (Compared that with Eclipse which has the idea of being a platform from the start)

If you further compare the "framework" infrastructure of Netbeans vs that of Eclipse, in the view of really developing an application based on it (e.g. something like Azureas) you will find a lot of things lacking in Netbeans. E.g. of the top of my head, I can recall program update over the http is missing, instructions for stripping out all IDE/Netbeans specific stuff and pack your own application for distribution is also quite lacking.

But take all these with a grain of salt, it is over a year ago afterall.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[njcoder]

I think you're right on one count. Netbeans started out as a Java IDE when it started at as someone's student project under a different name. By the time it was open sourced and released as Netbeans it was already a platform and IDE. This happened before Eclipse came out.

The documentation for developing on the netbeans platform wasn't great but it's gotten a lot better. This blog entry is a good starting point to see what people are saying about the netbeans platform. It has a lot of links.

I've played around with the netbeans platform. All the IDE stuff are modules and easy to remove from the platform. The auto update is part of the platform as well. You can see who's built stuff on netbeans on their website. There's a long list.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[LWATCDR]

I have to admit I like it as well. I learned Netbeans and it did what I needed it to do. I do a lot of applications work with it and the visual forms system works great for me.
I was left with the option of getting work done or learning Eclipse. One day I will sit down and learn eclipse.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[Azghoul]

Just out of curiosity, why is it okay to pay for better refactoring, but not okay to pay for better jsp editing?

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[njcoder]

I guess it depends on your perspective.

The way I see it, I can live without refactoring. Having and integrated web development environment is a lot more useful. People make money developing web applications. I don't know anyone with a 'refactoring service'. :) Its like getting free ice cream and being offered to buy sprinkles vs being given free sprinkles and having to pay for the ice cream. To me, refactoring is the sprinkles. There have anly been a couple of times when I really wished it was there.

So to me, Netbeans is more free. They're both open source, but the tools I need come free.

Re:Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans?

[gedhrel]

We shifted to Eclipse in-house a while ago, when it was definitely better than Netbeans. Since then NB has gotten a lot better, and I occasionally re-evaluate it, but it would have to be _significantly_ slicker than eclipse (not "just as good as") to warrant the shift from Eclipse for our development team.

That's Eclipse plus a load of plugins, I should add: the JBossIDE, Omondo's UML stuff, and some other bits and pieces. That the plugins (especially for J2EE) need to be tracked down doesn't matter so much - since we've got them already - although the more integrated out-of-the-box nature of NB might be an advantage if you're selecting an IDE for the first time.

I still prefer IDEA, it has to be said, but use Eclipse to maintain IDE compatibility with the devs I work with. This is more than just the ability to sit down at someone's desk and help them out - project layout, build strategies, etc, vary between IDEs. After selecting and getting used to an IDE one of the major stumbling blocks with shifting is the subtle difference between it and the thing you're thinking about moving to. So we keep an eye open, but will probably be using Eclipse for some time. But we're not blinkered about it.

This time, I supprised myself.

[bogaboga]

This time, I supprised myself. I seems I've been under some rock for sometime. Why? Because I really never knew that NetBeans a serious contender in the Java IDE field! My be this is because I'm no Java person.

For those in the know, how does NetBeans compare to ther Java IDEs especially on Linux?

Re:This time, I supprised myself.

[brsmith4]

If you aren't a java person, why do you care? Also, the answer to your question can be found by simply reading the comments posted to this thread. Sheesh...

Re:This time, I supprised myself.

[simetra]

It's good, and free, and as far as I can tell, is identical to it's Windows version, which makes going back and forth pretty easy. There's also a What's New with 4.1 demonstration at www.javalobby.org

Re:This time, I supprised myself.

[smittyoneeach]

Editors may come, and editors may go, but Emacs goes on forever.
Try it with the ECB!

Re:Netbroken. . . but it had webapp debugging!

[SSalvatore]

True, it was very unstable. But I would like it better than Eclipse (if it didn't crash and was faster). I was never able to find webapp debugging in Eclipse, so now I'm down to printouts.

There must be something better out there. Am I missing some webapp debug tool for Eclipse?

Another thing: I loved the Search/Highlight feature (like the google bar). I think that this is fundamental for OO programming: you search for an object identifier in a piece of code and then you are able to quickly look at all the methods that are called on that object so you get an immediate feeling of what the code is doing to manipulate the object. Ecplise does not have that.

But it works, so I am using Eclipse.

As for the question: noup, NB is not eclipsing anything. It was about to eclipse Eclipse but it crashed yet another time and missed its chance.

Plugins

[toofast]

I search Google for netbeans php plugin: 37,000 results. eclipse php plugin: 1.4M results.

Enough said.

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

That's precisely why it hasn't Eclipsed Eclipse.

Re:Plugins

[thammoud]

and I just did a search:

Eclipse Sucks 155,000
Netbeans Sucks 11,300

Conclusion: More people think that Eclipse sucks more than NetBean. ;)

Re:Plugins

[Spodlink05]

I search Google for netbeans php plugin: 37,000 results. eclipse php plugin: 1.4M results.

Enough said.

Not really. That proves there are more results for Eclipse than NetBeans from Google. That doesn't mean Eclipse is better, or that the results are even relevant. Half of them are probably about astronomy and coffee.

Re:Plugins

[njcoder]

Well if you wanted to keep with what he said.. you would have done this

See, sometimes it's not good to win.

Re:Plugins

[promantek]

your website has two entries that are quite telling about your post:

• PHP? Yeah, I like it.
• Senior Linux Administrator @ eclipse.org

so you like PHP, you do some work for Eclipse, and you like PHP with Eclipse better than netbeans with eclipse?

i've never done PHP with either and i'm not trolling just interested in how you based your opinion.

Re:Plugins

[Doc Ruby]

And there is more homosexuality than heterosexuality on the Net.

Re:Plugins

[Dan-DAFC]

I'm sure if you try you can come up with better criteria for evaluating Netbeans (a Java development platform) than its level of support for PHP.

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

To be honest with you, I never even tried NetBeans. I don't think NetBeans has "plugins" like Eclipse does, so I doubt you can do anything other than Java on it.

And yes, I work for the Eclipse Foundation, so I'm obviously biased. But all my PHP and Java coding is done on Eclipse. I was an Eclipse user long before I started working for Eclipse, so I wasn't brainwashed by my boss =)

It's Eclipse's versatility that makes me like it enough to not search for or try alternatives.

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

Not me. Without reading TFA, this last part of the Slashdot post got to me:

IDE Wars: Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?

I can use Eclipse as an IDE for PHP, Java and C (and pehaps even others). I don't think NetBeans can match or surpass this functionality, so to me, Eclipse is a far superior IDE.

Re:Plugins

[promantek]

netbeans is definitely a much more focused application than eclipse. i've been using it for years, but i couldn't tell you if it supported plug-ins. i don't think it does. never looked.

like you said, eclipse is so versatile and it doesn't sound like netbeans would work for you anyway. i hope i didn't imply your opinion was invalid because of bias.

cheers!

Re:Plugins

[njcoder]

" To be honest with you, I never even tried NetBeans. I don't think NetBeans has "plugins" like Eclipse does, so I doubt you can do anything other than Java on it.

And yes, I work for the Eclipse Foundation, so I'm obviously biased. But all my PHP and Java coding is done on Eclipse. I was an Eclipse user long before I started working for Eclipse, so I wasn't brainwashed by my boss =)

It's Eclipse's versatility that makes me like it enough to not search for or try alternatives."

Holy Crap! You work for Eclipse but you've never tried Netbeans. You don't even know that Netbeans is a tools platform like Eclipse is and Netbeans has been a tools platform for a lot longer. There are companies like Nokia still building on the Netbeans platform. The difference is, in the IDE, you get a whole lot more that you don't have to pay for. Even though you get a lot with the netbeans ide, there are still third party modules (plug-ins) developed for Netbeans. All the functionality built into netbeans the ide are built as modules.

I just find it really odd that you don't know anything about a product that is a competitor, in fact the only open source tools platform competitor... yet you come here and say why the competition sucks?

I don't know how you can even take yourself seriously.

Re:Plugins

[Dan-DAFC]

Fair enough, but I don't think the Netbeans people are even trying to compete with Eclipse on support for other languages (I may be wrong), so I think it's fairer to judge the two on their Java features.

Annecdotal blog evidence (which is only slightly more reliable than pulling numbers out of my rear end) suggests that there is a recent trend of Java developers switching from Eclipse to Netbeans (since the 4.0 version was released).

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't think either can compete with IDEA in terms of the combination of functionality and usability, but they certainly beat it on price.

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

I just find it really odd that you don't know anything about a product that is a competitor, in fact the only open source tools platform competitor... yet you come here and say why the competition sucks?

I didn't say the competition sucked, and that's not what I was implying either. I said that Eclipse suits *my* needs to a degree where I don't need to look elsewhere.

The work I do for the Eclipse Foundation is running the servers and hacking a bit of PHP code once in a while. I don't actually work *on* Eclipse itself, so I have no need to try competing products. It would be nice if I had the time to do so, as it would add to my culture, but I don't really have the time (or the interest).

You don't even know that Netbeans is a tools platform like Eclipse is and Netbeans has been a tools platform for a lot longer.

Sorry, my ignorance. I used Eclipse (well, IBM's WSAD) for J2EE development before actually being hired by the Foundation, but I had never even heard of NetBeans before working for the Foundation.

I don't know how you can even take yourself seriously.

I'm not quite sure what prompted you to even say this.

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

Here is the free plugin I use:

http://phpeclipse.de/

Re:Plugins

[dubbreak]

and naked = 33,800,000 results
while clothed = 2,160,000 results

So one would assume there are a lot of naked homosexuals that use netbeans out there. Of course the results say otherwise.

Re:Plugins

[njcoder]

"I'm not quite sure what prompted you to even say this."

I didn't think you would.

Re:Plugins

[EphemeralPhart]

11300.0/37000 * 100 = 30.5 %
155000.0/1400000 * 100 = 11.07 %

ergo 30 % of NetBeans users think NetBeans Suck
11.07 % of Eclipse users think Eclipse Suck

Gues that's why I'm gonna try Eclipse before NetBeans - but I will try both.

Problem is one can rarely decide without doing more than just poke arround - that's why I need to test the waters based on other's opinions.

Re:Plugins

[WarpGiGA]

"It's Eclipse's versatility that makes me like it enough to not search for or try alternatives."

- That's just sad to read, a developer who knows all best, he doesn't need to hear any bull about anything from anyone, coz he knows all best..

It's all good not to search for alternatives, but to ignore NetBeans completely is pretty funny to me when your'e working with IDE development.

If not for the fun and sheer productivity of it, then why not check out the competing products, if only for the industrial spying fun of it..?

- The best way to be right, is never to look at facts or other alternatives..

p.s. I have used approx. five Java IDE's NetBeans being very good in terms of Web Development.
4.x takes some getting used to for 3.x users, but it does seem to resemble Eclipse more in 4.x style (of commercial IDE's JBuilder is my favourite but the pricetag is mostly what made me change back to NB). I have never ever had any success with Eclipse, but on monday I will start using it at my new job.. wish me luck

Re:Plugins

[toofast]

It's all good not to search for alternatives, but to ignore NetBeans completely is pretty funny to me when your'e working with IDE development.

Who said I was a developer? I'm the sysadmin. The only code I do is in PHP; how can NetBeans be of any use to me? It can be all the IDE anyone claims it to be, but it's just a Java IDE, and that's useless to *me* for what *I* do, which is the point you missed.

The best way to be right, is never to look at facts or other alternatives..

I have tried plenty of PHP alternatives -- just not NetBeans. Should I be trying NetBeans for PHP development?

Re:Plugins

[WarpGiGA]

"Who said I was a developer? I'm the sysadmin."

Sorry about that :) I just failed to see difference between working on Eclipse and working for them.

"I have tried plenty of PHP alternatives -- just not NetBeans. Should I be trying NetBeans for PHP development?"

Oh PHP you say? I use a semi-plain editor for that, and I wouldn't know if there exists syntax colouring and function lookup for PHP, but I'm sure it wouldn't take much more than a weekend to do that, if one needed it.

PHP to me is like JavaScript, XML and HTML, and I see no reason why Eclipse should be a better tool for PHP tha NetBeans technically..

Fewer blatant adverts, please..

[gmjohnston]

C'mon, guys. An announcement of something is one thing, but this "article" is just a bunch of marketeering that would be more appropriate as an item under the "Advertisement" column.

Re:Eclipsed Eclipse?

[toofast]

Actually, you don't have to wait. Just pull the latest milestone or nightly build from this page:

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/inde x.php

Eclipse

[HRbnjR]

You can see what's coming in the next version of Eclipse here:
http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/PC/platform/ec lipse_project_plan_3_1_2005_02_14.html

The Web Tools Project is adding Eclipse support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSD, XSLT, SVG, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, SQL, XQuery, etc:
http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/index.html

And keep in mind that Eclipse can currently run on an entirely Free Software platform using GCJ (with prebuilt RPM's included in Fedora Core 4!):
http://klomp.org/mark/gij_eclipse/setup.html

Re:Eclipse

[SSalvatore]

How about webapp debugging?. Using the old Forte (I dunno how they call it now), which was NetBeans based, I could step through my servlet code. I cannot do that in Eclipse, partly because it has no servlet engine in it.

Re:Eclipse

[arthurs_sidekick]

Not that I don't also like Eclipse, but I want to note that Netbeans has had excellent XML/HTML/JSP/CSS editing capabilities since at least 3.5. Current incarnations are really good with, e.g. JSPs: Netbeans 4.x does tag completion on custom tags, INCLUDING the URIs you need to reference in the taglib directives and the attributes of your custom tags. Netbeans added an 'auto-import' feature in 4.x that closes the gap with Eclipse somewhat (don't know what package name a class lives in? Alt-Shift-I will bring up a list of candidates, much as with Eclipse's 'quick fix' Ctrl-1) Netbeans 4 generates an ant build script that will load all your external libraries and 'war' them up for you (Eclipse does not do this out of the box, and I'm not sure why nobody's needed to scratch that itch yet). This means you're not tied into the IDE to build your web app. Netbeans 4.x already has, in non-beta form, support for the new language features from JDK 1.5. Truth be told, for developing any moderately complex web application, right now an out of the box Netbeans 4.1 is, IMO and on balance better than Eclipse with MyEclipse (which you pay $30 a year for). Eclipse's task list and background compilation are, for me, its two best features right now. To be honest, the fact that the functionality I use all the time is available for Eclipse via plugins whose quality is not always topnotch bugs me a little bit. The WTP will close the gap on the Servlet/JSP side, but Netbeans 4 has a *lot* going for it.

Re:Eclipse

[njcoder]

I tried this in eclipse. I was never very happy with it. It wasn't very smooth from what I remember. Especially within the JSP's. If I remember correctly it stepped through the generaged java code for the JSP not the actual JSP. With Netbeans I can step throw everything including taglibs. You can attach to remote servers as well.

At the time I don't even think MyEclipse was much better at debugging. NitroX seems great but it costs 300 bucks.

Not trying to start an IDE war but I'm generally curious because I was never satisfied with the results... How are you doing your debugging in Eclipse and can you step through JSP's and taglibs?

Re:Eclipse

[gedhrel]

The generation of a headless Ant file sounds really handy. It _is_ possible to invoke Eclipse in a headless mode to drive a build; but I must confess that I don't do things that way here*. We tend to have our projects in an eclipse-friendly layout but maintain a build script to automate deployment more-or-less by hand. (Eclipse doesn't particularly get in the way of this.)

* I tried it, I liked it, but the project we were thinking about using it for had well-established Ant build scripts already and migrating would've been a pain.

Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a while?

[TheShadowHawk]

While I previously used Netbeans (3.6) and liked it, I have since moved to Eclipse (3.0.1) and love it. The large amount of plugins and comstomization of Eclipse just makes it the winner in my book.

However if I alt-tab away from my Eclipse window for a while then come back to it to do more coding, it seems to be reloading itself and acts very slow for a minute or two. It drives me crazy.

Any idea what the heck is causing that? Is there some memory cache setting that needs tweaking or what?

how's the netbeans compiler?

[snorklewacker]

When I write Java in Eclipse that isn't a web app (believe it or not that exists), it's like there's no compiler at all. I save, things get compiled. This confused the heck out of me at first (it's apparently on by default), but I came to love it. Also, if I make a typo or braino, eclipse instantly shows it to me without having to wait for a compile cycle. Does NetBeans have this feature, or do I have to explicitly invoke the compiler all the time?

Re:how's the netbeans compiler?

[jsight]

Netbeans does an approximation of this that catches some compilation issues, but not others. The nice thing is that it's more lazy approach can make it feel a little faster at times, though.

Also, the first Java IDEs to really do what you are talking about were Codeguide from Omnicore. Other IDEs have since eclipsed them on features, but their current product is still quite good!

Re:how's the netbeans compiler?

[mike_sucks]

Ooo! Got a link to a HOWTO? Is this using JDE?

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[john_anderson_ii]

I use eclipse on Linux and Windows. I don't have the lost focus for a while problem on Linux, but it happens all the time on windows. I think it's because some or all of the JVM has been swapped to disk, but I haven't really looked into it.

App/EJB Container

[centinall]

So what App/EJB Container does this new version of Netbeans come bundled with? Is it open source? Perhaps JBoss or Apache Geronimo(although i don't think it's complete yet)?

Re:"Great IDEs"..

[njcoder]

Netbeans does support HTML, XHTML and CSS editing text editing. I wouldn't use it as the main tool for those but if you're building a web application that needs those types of files you can edit everything in the same IDE.

Things like Perl and PHP may not be too far away for netbeans either. They have the Coyote project which brings in support for Jython and Groovy.

It's nice to have everything in one space but sometimes it just makes sense to have different applications for specific purposes.

Re:Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?

[arthurs_sidekick]

Netbeans also has C/C++ modules. I don't know how the projects compare, but it's been there in Netbeans for quite a while.

Re:Netbroken. . . but it had webapp debugging!

[DeafByBeheading]

I think that this is fundamental for OO programming: you search for an object identifier in a piece of code and then you are able to quickly look at all the methods that are called on that object so you get an immediate feeling of what the code is doing to manipulate the object. Ecplise does not have that.

From the search menu...

Java Search:

... blah blah standard search features blah blah...

Search for:

()Type
()Method
()Package
()Constructor
()Field

Limit to:
()Declarations
()Implementors
()References
()All occurences
()Read access
()Write access

[] Search the JRE System Libraries

One of my favorite things about eclipse is its powerful search capabilities...

Java Boutique

[JasontheMason]

I must say, it is very pleasurable to finally read an article on such a well designed web site. I congratulate them on their superior column width and small ad space.

Netbeans and Eclipse

[Earlybird]

As with any competing products, there is a certain amount of contention between adherents of Netbeans and Eclipse users alike; much vitriol has been spilled recently, mostly by aggressive Sun employees and Netbeans developers who seem overly defensive about their favourite product's worth -- they have seen Eclipse steamroll and, ahem, eclipse their own IDE effort and gather all the momentum and attention that the Netbeans project never could.

It's too easy to blame IBM and its financial support. Clearly, there is a huge demand for an extensible, vendor-neutral IDE platform, a demand Eclipse immediately satisfied. There is also a huge demand for native widgets that Sun seems to have ignored or overlooked; the world is thirsting for good, cross-platform GUI toolkits, and for many people and companies, Swing has never been a real option. Sun has never seen the beam in their own eye that is Swing. Java GUI apps have never really taken off because of the real and perceived weaknesses of Swing, but with SWT and Eclipse we're seeing renewed interest in Java as a language for "real" GUI apps.

I'm in the SWT camp myself. I prefer to deal with native widgets in the IDE -- and Eclipse performs and looks very well on Windows (with non-Windows platform support catching up) -- and as an end user, Swing apps have always peeved me; for example, when I got an LCD monitor, no Swing apps could exploit ClearType, which all Windows apps -- Eclipse included -- do automatically by virtue of using a single font renderer. When you emulate something that is constantly evolving, you will always get an imperfect emulation; not to mention that satisfactory emulation of a whole OS -- because GUIs is more than just look and feel -- is nigh impossible; note, for example, how Windows XP themes don't work on Swing apps.

I also love the fact that I can develop native applications with Eclipse's RCP (Rich Client Platform) framework, and I can do it with ease unparallelled since the days of Borland Delphi.

Netbeans probably has an edge when it comes to J2EE support at the moment. Developing framework-specific tools -- J2EE, XML, etc. -- has always been secondary to delivering Eclipse proper. Eclipse has many rapidly-evolving subprojects covering plugins for J2EE, web standards, aspect-oriented programming, graphical modeling, performance/quality testing and so on.

While not all ready for production, the quality of these tools is often amazing; as significantly, a lot of thought is always put into making tools extensible and based on reusable frameworks. For example, the graphical modeling plugin is based on a generic graph-editing framework (the GEF) which can be reused in your own applications. Eclipse itself I find to be a momentous and beautiful engineering effort, based on solid, pragmatic OO design.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[Rodness]

I was a strong supporter of netbeans up through 3.6. When they went to 4.0, and their ant based architecture, they screwed things up.

If you have an ant-based project, the idea is that you can add some xml entries to the config files and your buildfiles to hook the gui commands to your targets. Sounds good, right?

Wrong. Netbeans takes the road that if you want to own the buildfile, you own everything. You have to write targets to run the program in the debugger, you have to manage the classpath, you have to write targets to run/compile/debug a single file, to run/compile/debug your whole project, etc etc and so on.

A few weeks ago I watched a coworker join my development project with eclipse. He took a copy of the source tree, pointed eclipse at the top level directory, and it promptly figured out the classpath. Running and debugging worked exactly as you expect. Adding support for the existing ant buildfile was also easy, and didn't interfere with what eclipse offered.

This impressed me, and my coworker convinced me to take it for a testdrive. I had previously spent about 3 weeks researching and arguing config files with netbeans, and I had eclipse ready to write production code in a few hours. (And that was my first time using the tool, now I can configure it much faster.)

Bottom line: eclipse is a tool which is much better thought out than netbeans. it offers alot more functionality to the debugger, alot less painfully. netbeans 4.1, whoopdeedoo. i'm sticking with eclipse.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[caulfield]

Easy there, fanboy. The article was about Netbeans, not Eclipse.

All I have to say is that I percieve SWT to break the core reason for Java in the first place--write once, run anywhere. That will never be the case for SWT, and that is why SWT will always be marginalized. Try running your favorite SWT app (including Eclipse) on a Mac. Java was supposed to alleviate platform differences.

As an example, you mention ClearType. ClearType is a platform-specific technology, and although it looks pretty on SWT apps in Windows, running that same app on other platforms produces no benefit. Granted, sub-pixel rendering is a nice feature, but why not implement it at the LaF level, and not at the native peer-esque SWT level, so that it requires no extra platform-specific manipulation. The Mac OS Aqua LaF already does this quite well, and I'm sure the other Swing LaFs will have it soon. (Interesting to note, Java 5 now supports AA type, so sub-pixel hinting is sure to follow.)

Just because Swing started out slow doesn't mean it's not fully functional now. There are a bevy of good Swing apps (including NetBeans and JEdit) that are a testament to this fact. Also, you completely forget to mention the NetBeans platform as a viable alternative to Eclipse platform apps. So before you extoll Eclipse as the saviour of Java you may want to compare NetBeans on its merits, and not on your zeal for Windows-only Java apps.

You may want to debate C#/.NET, since it seems to be better positioned for what you appear to want to do.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[Earlybird]

• Easy there, fanboy. The article was about Netbeans, not Eclipse.

The article may have been about Netbeans, but it was very much a comparison of Netbeans against Eclipse; Eclipse is mentioned twice in the Slashdot story.

You actually completely missed the intent of my comment, and in the same turn managed to embody the exact same defensive attitude I was describing. As Eclipse has grown in popularity, so has the poison spewed by Netbeaners; the Eclipse community, in fact, has been rather surprised and annoyed by the aggression. Calling somebody a "fanboy" is not exactly a step on the road to civilized discussion. Please do realize that I myself have not attacked Netbeans in any way: I merely explained Eclipse's position in relation to Sun's stuff.

As I was saying, Eclipse filled a demand that Sun/Swing/Netbeans could not satisfy: you may not accept it, but one of the major reasons Eclipse is so popular is precisely for the reasons I emphasized.

I'm not interested in converting anyone, and I'm quite happy letting you use your GUI emulation software and your IDE. But for me, and for countless other users and developers, Eclipse represents a different philosophy that makes more sense.

• All I have to say is that I percieve SWT to break the core reason for Java in the first place--write once, run anywhere.

Anyone who has done any serious amount of work with Java knows that the "write once, run anywhere" mantra is an illusion.

Personally, I prefer the route taken by Ruby, Python etc.: provide solid standard libraries and abstractions of OS mechanisms, but generally let the user do whatever he likes. It's wonderfully easy to write cross-platform tools in Ruby, and you're not locked into a cage where you can't access OS primitives that the VM authors didn't think about including. (Unix domain sockets, real file locking and process control are some examples.)

It's also curious what this "anywhere" really means. Last I checked, FreeBSD still did not have a stable version of Java 1.4, let alone Java 5.0; compared to a platform such as Ruby or Python, Java's platform-portability is rather pitiful, and Sun's restrictive licensing does not help one bit.

• Try running your favorite SWT app (including Eclipse) on a Mac. Java was supposed to alleviate platform differences.

I have no problems admitting that the current SWT implementation is flawed on OS X; but that's a problem with the implementation, not the concept. There's every reason why SWT can succeed on the Mac.

• As an example, you mention ClearType. ClearType is a platform-specific technology ...

Sub-pixel rendering is related to monitor hardware, not platforms. I used the term ClearType in the general sense, not as in the Microsoft-trademarked stuff.

• ... and although it looks pretty on SWT apps in Windows, running that same app on other platforms produces no benefit.

This is patently wrong. Other platforms that implement sub-pixel rendering will benefit because Eclipse uses their font rendering systems. On the Mac, Eclipse uses Carbon and thus gets sub-pixel rendering for free, just as on Windows. On Linux, Eclipse uses GTK+, which I believe also implements sub-pixel rendering at the toolkit level. Similarly, if GTK+ itself is upgraded with new features or optimizations, Eclipse apps immediately benefit; Swing apps do not.

• Granted, sub-pixel rendering is a nice feature, but why not implement it at the LaF level, and not at the native peer-esque SWT level ...

Precisely because it's in the province of the GUI subsystem. An application should not need to implement a whole GUI subsystem.

For example, Eclipse apps can use TrueType and (if you have Adobe Type Manager installed) Type 1 fonts. Eclipse apps can use the native printing subsy

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[DrEasy]

Try running your favorite SWT app (including Eclipse) on a Mac. Java was supposed to alleviate platform differences.

Am I missing something here? Eclipse runs fine on my old iBook.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[gedhrel]

It's also curious what this "anywhere" really means. Last I checked, FreeBSD still did not have a stable version of Java 1.4, let alone Java 5.0

Check again. I've been running the native 1.4 JSDK on FreeBSD for ages, and have found it to be rock-solid for all that time. (EJB/J2EE development and deployment, using Eclipse (as it happens) to remain compatible with the other developers on the team - although I have to say I prefer IDEA)

The Java 5 port's currently in alpha on that platform.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[Earlybird]

The FreeBSD Java home page says: "The current release of the JDK and JRE available via the FreeBSD Foundation is 1.3.1". As for 1.4.x, use "in a production environment is at your own risk", according to the porting team. The Java 5 port is, as you say, alpha quality.

Re:Netbeans and Eclipse

[gedhrel]

It seems disingenuous to quote half of what the porting team say. The preceding sentence:

"The JDK 1.4.2 patchset has reached a point where it is suitable for almost all uses."

echoes my experience and that of regular reporters on the freebsd java mailing list. YMMV: what problems have you experienced recently running Java 1.4.2 on FreeBSD? (The list would like to hear, or you could simply raise a PR)

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[Dan-DAFC]

Apparently the latest Eclipse milestone is much improved in this regard (so I'm told, I don't use it myself).

My problem with Netbeans is that the built-in editor is severely lacking in functionality when compared to both Eclispe and IntelliJ IDEA. I really want to like Netbeans, because I found it much easier to jump in and get started with it than Eclipse and it's much cheaper (i.e. free) than IDEA. But I gave up on it because it doesn't have things like IDEA's intentions (I believe there is something similar in Eclipse), automatic generation of getters, setters and constructors from fields, that thing where you press control and click on a class name in the source to go to that file, and several other niceties. Its refactoring support is also lacking when compared to that of its rivals.

To be fair most, if not all, of the issues I've mentioned are planned for future releases according to their website, but it's not there yet .

No mention of IntelliJ?

[radish]

Why only compare NetBeans to Eclipse? IntelliJ IDEA has for a long time been the most innovative Java IDE (IMHO) and it's the only one I use. Many of the features I see in Eclipse now were in IDEA first. Whilst I have no problem with Eclipse, I like to (a) get those cool features first and (b) support the guys at JetBrains who continually come up with the goods.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[Dan-DAFC]

I too am a fan of IntelliJ, but it's not always easy to convince the boss to stump up for a licence when the other Java guys are happy with Eclipse.

IntelliJ is kind of like Opera to Eclipse's FireFox. It's the commercial innovator with the smaller market share competing against a free alternative that is backed by big players in the IT arena. There's an interesting parallel in the way these applications have been developed. In both cases the open source projects have gone for a flexible platform enhanced by a huge array of plugins whereas the commercial players have opted for a more integrated approach with everything you need bundled and presented nicely out-of-the-box.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[radish]

They do great deals if you're buying a bunch of licenses - we get them for under half price. Not sure what the minimums are for such deals.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[caulfield]

Right on. IntelliJ is very slick. I'm a bit annoyed how the Eclipse fanboys hijack any thread about Java. In typical IBM fashion, they seem to think the Java world revolves around them.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[Pastis]

IDEA always feeled much more polished than eclipse to me. It's very intuitive user interface makes me a more productive programmer than eclipse.

The only advantage I see using eclipse now is because of the many plugins it has. But a year ago, IDEA was still a clear winner. In the last conference I went to, a quick polling (from a Borland guy) revealed that 60% of the users used eclipse, while 30% used IDEA. So people don't have so much problems stumping up for licenses. Maybe it's because I am in an European country. I guess that in other parts of the world, financing has a different impact on such decisions.

With regard to IDEA and plugins, there are many plugins for IDEA too, so it's clearly extensible.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[fishdan]

I have to agree with Intellij nods -- they are the best. I have been using Intellij from 3.x on. When we moved to 4, I reevaluated everything. When we moved to 5 I reevaluated again -- so I've used them all recently. If the price point is not an issue -- and it should not be be, because Intellij saves at least 1 hours a week per developer -- then Intellij is the clear winner. IF price IS an issue -- examine Intellij from it's feature standpoint. Get the demo version. Write something cool in it. Check out all the refactoring options the menu. Look at the "reformat code before checkin" option. Look at the excellent compatibility with Version Control. Then think about all that and look at the price again.

the one caveat I'll give is that I don't use make any gui programs -- just CLI, Web and server stuff.

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[justins]

Why only compare NetBeans to Eclipse? IntelliJ IDEA has for a long time been the most innovative Java IDE (IMHO) and it's the only one I use. Many of the features I see in Eclipse now were in IDEA first. Whilst I have no problem with Eclipse, I like to (a) get those cool features first and (b) support the guys at JetBrains who continually come up with the goods.

We don't pay for software here on Slashdot. Didn't you get the memo?

Re:No mention of IntelliJ?

[njcoder]

Netbeans and Eclipse are more alike than other Java IDEs. They are both open sourced and available for free. In addition each project is built on a base that can be used by other developers as a foundation for building rich client applications.

IDEA and the JBuilder X Developer are really good IDEs, better than both Netbeans and Eclipse in a lot of ways, but they aren't free and they aren't platforms. IDEA goes for about 500 and JBuilder for about a grand.

There's actually a pretty up to date feature comparison table for Netbeans, Eclipse, IDEA and JBuilder (free and non free) on the Netbeans.org site. It seems to be very fair even though Netbeans put it up.

There were a couple of things I saw that weren't accurate. Eclipse now has code folding and Netbeans has better JavaDoc support than seems to be indicated.

I've tried different IDEs. I used to use a text editor with syntax highlighting for java, jsp, xml, etc. I was able to set it up to compile single java files and if I spent some more time I could have probably put some ant integration into it. I also wrote some macros to do things like generate getters and setters for class members. This was all done with free tools. This is a step up from when I first started java development in notepad :)

I wanted to find an IDE that made things a bit simpler for me. Since I was primarily concerned with web applications, those are the features I looked at most. Netbeans really fit the bill for me. With Eclipse I still had to build the whole directory structure for the webapp, all the configuration files, etc. It was not much better than using the setup I had before. In fact it was worse in someways because I didn't even have the syntax coloring for jsp anymore. So I tried a couple of the plugins for web apps but didn't really like them too much and didn't find them worth the price compared to the free setup I had before.

With netbeans, I didn't have to worry about anything when it came to developing webapps. Tomcat was bundled and well intigrated, there was a good jsp editor with code completion, starting a new web project created all the directories, config files and ant build scripts and I could stop using system.out.println to debut jsp pages because the debugger actually steps through the jsp files. Only thing I really had to do was include the jdbc driver jar files in the appropriate directories but if I wanted to I could use the pointbase database that comes bundled.

This all gave me a big productivity boost. If you've always wanted to try and see what Java web development was all about Netbeans is the way to go. Once you download the IDE you can start going because you don't have to configure a database, http server or servlet engine This isn't all that hard if you're familiar with it but it is time consuming and if you've never done it before can be overwhelming.

I'm sure this was all by design. Sun wants more people to start developing for Java. They've made it easy and free to do so with Netbeans. Not only webapps but also swing based java applications and applications for mobile devices. It does serve Sun's interest but it's also good for the general Java community as well to have more developers entering it.

It's also good for IDEs like IDEA. Once people start working with Java development they will be exposed to IDEA at some point and may decide to switch once they've gone from and IDE that does some handholding to one that seems to read your mind.

A couple other things I like about Netbeans is the JavaDoc support. The javadoc ant task is generated in the project build file and all you have to do is right click and select it from the menu to generate the javadocs. Also the Auto Comment tool is pretty neat. I'm a big fan of JavaDoc comments, especially if you're working with a team or on an open source project. I also like how the code completion tool also has the java

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[njcoder]

like netbeans has had for years :) Right click on the toolbar and click on the Memory toolbar :)

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[kubrick]

However if I alt-tab away from my Eclipse window for a while then come back to it to do more coding, it seems to be reloading itself and acts very slow for a minute or two. It drives me crazy.

Apparently Windows is very aggressive about forcing all memory allocated by minimized windows out into VM. There's an attempt at a fix for this in the latest milestone (3.1M7)...

Hmmm.

[Kent Recal]

Netbeans.. eclipse... netbeans... eclipse....

can't decide. i think i'll stick with vim.

Re:Hmmm.

[quarkscat]

Vim?
Ver?
Vi not at least try NEdit?

Re:Hmmm.

[jimm]

Emacs, you insensitive clod :-)

Really, I've tried Eclipse. I've tried NetBeans. I'll stick with Emacs, thankyouverymuch.

Of course, I prefer Ruby or Smalltalk over Java, but that's a different Holy War.

Re:Hmmm.

[UnanimousCoward]

vim? What's vim? I'm a vi guy myself...

Sun silliness

[cahiha]

Sun has megabytes of unfixed bugs, but instead of focusing there, they are trying to compete with a highly successful, well-written free tool. This push for NetBeans ultimately comes from Sun's pathological desire to own and control everything: Sun absolutely hates the fact that Eclipse doesn't require their proprietary toolkit and that Eclipse can compile with open Java tools. Sun wants a desktop based on Sun Java, a server-side platform based on Sun Java, an office suite based on Sun Java, and an IDE based on Sun Java. It's really the same thing Microsoft is doing, only that resource constraints and public opinion constrain them a little more (e.g., they can't start a new GUI project from scratch, they just have to hack Sun Java into Gnome).

Eclipse is the only sensible choice for a Java IDE at this point: NetBeans may be a little better in some areas, and Eclipse in others, but those differences are minor. The deciding factor is that Eclipse has become the de-facto standard platform for plug-ins.

Re:Sun silliness

[Anonymous Coward]

This push for Eclipse ultimately comes from IBM's pathological desire to own and control everything: IBM absolutely hates the fact that NetBeans doesn't require their proprietary gui toolkit and that NetBeans can compile with standard Java tools.

Re:Sun silliness

[cahiha]

It doesn't matter who came first. Eclipse is the free, vendor independent system, and it has by far the larger user community. Unlike Netbeans, Eclipse also runs on entirely free platforms, which is one of the reasons it can ship with Linux.

Netbeans may be "coming back with a vengeance", but it is still just an IDE, and Eclipse is still the IDE that plugins are written for.

Sun's competition with Eclipse is wasteful of their own resources and confusing to the market. And it's pointless: no matter how good a job Sun does on Netbeans, they have nothing lined up that is compelling enough to overcome the huge advantage that Eclipse has.

Re:Sun silliness

[cahiha]

Eclipse is hardly vendor independant

Eclipse is open source and can be built and run with open source tools.

Netbeans depends in an essential way on Sun Java; no Sun Java means no Netbeans.

Once Netbeans compiles and runs with a legal, independent Java implementation, then it will be vendor independent, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon.

It's barebones out-of-box configuration is a direct result of it being the "starter edition" for IBM WebSphere Studio. All those plugins only exist because the good parts of WS are proprietary.

What difference does it make what proprietary plug-ins some company makes for Eclipse? Eclipse with its open source plug-ins is competitive with NetBeans. That's what counts.

Re:Sun silliness

[cahiha]

Nobody in the open source world has even attempted an AWT/Swing implementation, and until then almost no Java desktop software will work

You are quite right that until open source or free Swing implementations exist, most Java desktop software will continue to be dependent on Sun's proprietary implementation and that is unacceptable. Sun should take steps to correct that.

But even fixing the legal problems that Java has doesn't fix the technical problems with libraries. Swing would suck even if it were open source (although maybe people could at least fix it).

Also to imply that SWT was developed with gcj in mind is simply false.

SWT works with gcj, that's all that matters.

I also have my doubts that the open source/gcj shills here do any real programming in java.

For all the above reasons, I avoid Java as much as I can these days (for a few years, Java was my primary language). If I wanted to use a proprietary platform, there are better proprietary platforms to choose from. Eclipse, however, is useful for other things besides Java, and Eclipse is also useful for the Java programming I still do.

it doesn't matter

[cahiha]

NetBeans may be a decent IDE, but is it substantially better than Eclipse? Does it have any specific, compelling advantages? If not, then what's the reason to use it or waste time on its development?

Eclipse not only is fully open source, it's what everybody is developing plug-ins for. And, unlike NetBeans, Eclipse actually runs on open source implementations of Java, which means that it ships with Linux distributions.

Why does Sun keep wasting resources on NetBeans? Don't they have anything better to do?

Re:it doesn't matter

[JMandingo]

I have used both NetBeans and Eclipse, and chose the latter for the open source and because the IDE was better organized IMO.

That being said, I have gone back to my do-all editor (Multi-Edit) and command line ant builds because Eclipse was juuuuust slow enough to be annoying, even on my brand new Dell laptop. I use the IDE only when I need to step through something in the debugger.

Re:it doesn't matter

[WarpGiGA]

Why does Sun keep wasting resources on NetBeans? Don't they have anything better to do?

What's wrong with that? This generation of IDE's is IMHO still in it's infantile years, and I think it's very healthy to have competing products, it will broaden the oppurtunities for experiments and research in different ways to do a task.

FYI: Sun uses NetBeans as it's foundation for it's Sun Enterprise Studio/IDE, so it's not like they are going to drop NB in a jiffy. A while ago I read about the two IDE's working a plug-in/module standard, that would be a great beginning for the time being.

Swing sucks

[cahiha]

Well, you haven't told us what platform you run on (Windows?). Under X11, Swing sucks horribly, and not just in terms of performace. The worst part of Swing is that it almost looks like a native toolkit, but it behaves wrong in so many ways.

There are decent cross platform toolkits. There are even decent cross platform toolkits that do their own rendering. Swing is not one of them.

Re:Swing sucks

[The_egghead]

Unfortunately, I think Eclipse pretty much blows under X11 (GTK+). At least compared to the GUI toolkits available on Win32 and OS X, GTK just doesn't cut it. I'm holding out hope that someday we'll have SWT bindings for QT, but due to licensing issues I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

Re:Swing sucks

[cahiha]

Eclipse seems OK on my Linux machine.

However, Gtk+'s X11 backend is pretty awful, mostly because it tried to do theming and transparency when X11 didn't have the right graphics primitives for that. With the new X graphics model, that's being fixed. Qt isn't really any better, and it's hamstrung by being a cross-platform toolkit.

The right thing to do would be to write a native X11 backend for SWT.

Re:Swing sucks

[jilles]

I don't use linux. Obviously desktop linux is not a priority for IDE developers. SWT has basically sucked big time on linux and nobody seems to care. In the absense of a unified, consistent native look and feel, the swing L&F is probably not so bad under linux.

Eclipse fanboys assume eclipse is faster because of SWT. And that is my whole point. On windows this performance advantage does not really exists and eclipse is noticably slower than the swing based netbeans. Apparently other factors than GUI toolkit are an issue here.

Re:Swing sucks

[cahiha]

In the absense of a unified, consistent native look and feel

How would you know? You don't use it. Go install Ubuntu or boot Knoppix. You'll see: the Linux desktop has a far more unified L&F than either Windows or Macintosh.

the swing L&F is probably not so bad under linux.

That's not for you to judge, it's for Linux users to judge, and as a Linux user, I'm telling you: it sucks.

I don't use linux. Obviously desktop linux is not a priority for IDE developers.

Exactly: IBM tries to build something on top of the native toolkit, while Sun doesn't. That's why IBM deserves the support of Linux users.

On windows this performance advantage does not really exists and eclipse is noticably slower than the swing based netbeans. Apparently other factors than GUI toolkit are an issue here.

Yes, something else is going on. While Swing claims to be cross platform, it makes a lot of assumptions that work for Windows and don't work for X11. Swing gives you the worst of everything: bad cross-platform capabilities, poor performance, bloat, and bad platform integration.

Re:Swing sucks

[Trepalium]

Yes, that's exactly what we need. Yet another, incompatible, alien, single-purpose toolkit so that people can complain even MORE that Linux has no consistent look-and-feel for it's desktop applications. Re-inventing the wheel won't help things any, because all the same mistakes will be made along the way of reinventing it.

No, the right thing to do would be to fix X11 (and xlib) and GTK+(GDK)/Qt. We need more people working TOGETHER rather than apart.

Re:Swing sucks

[mikaelhg]

While Swing claims to be cross platform, it makes a lot of assumptions that work for Windows and don't work for X11.

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =6193066

Also, Sun seems to actively work against Linux on the desktop by introducing these kinds of "features" which substantially slow down Swing applications on newer Linux kernels.

Re:Swing sucks

[cahiha]

No, the right thing to do would be to fix X11 (and xlib) and GTK+(GDK)/Qt. We need more people working TOGETHER rather than apart.

Gtk+ and Qt do need to be fixed, but that is not sufficient. The idea that one should achieve standardization through a single codebase is the way Windows and Macintosh work; it's a stupid idea. And it doesn't work anyway, because both Windows and Macintosh have dozens of toolkits as well, just like X11.

X11 defines standards for how toolkits should behave, and then different toolkits should adhere to those standards. It's unfortunate that Gtk+ and Qt adhere to the current standards so poorly, and those toolkits should get fixed. At the same time, X11 perhaps needs to define some more standards for things like theming.

Gtk+ is a C-based toolkit and Qt is a C++-based toolkit; you can bind them to other languages, but you pay a hefty price compared to toolkits written in those languages. GUIs aren't going to get anywhere if we are shackled by the limitations of C/C++.

people can complain even MORE that Linux has no consistent look-and-feel for it's desktop applications

People always complain about that, no matter what the facts actually are.

Re:Swing sucks

[njcoder]

"Exactly: IBM tries to build something on top of the native toolkit, while Sun doesn't. That's why IBM deserves the support of Linux users."

Using the native toolkit doesn't seem to be a a popular choice in the open source world even though a couple popular open source applications use swt instead of swing.

From sourceforge.net:

• Java AWT (109 projects)
• Java Swing (832 projects)
• Java SWT (144 projects)

Sun works on the linux ports of their jre and jdk for linux which includes making performance enhancements and better integration which they distribute free of charge. They also fund the development of an important open source project OO.o and have released a lot of other stuff as open source as well as working to help other projects like Gnome. Your implication that IBM deserves the support of Linux users and Sun doesn't is obviously biased.

Re:Swing sucks

[Trepalium]

The idea that one should achieve standardization through a single codebase is the way Windows and Macintosh work; it's a stupid idea.

I never advocated such an idea. I only wish to see things work together more smoothly. Quite frankly, it's usually better to improve an existing effort rather than start a new one from scratch. It reduces duplication of effort, and provides improvement everyone can benefit from. There is, however, more to working together than just using the same code. Thanks to the efforts of the Gnome and KDE folks working together, the clipboard works as expected between applications, window manager hints have been standardized between desktops, drag-and-drop works and they are working better together all the time.

X11 defines standards for how toolkits should behave, and then different toolkits should adhere to those standards.

X11 only defines the mechanism for the toolkits. It does not define the policies for them. In fact, the X clipboard isn't even standardized in X11, however the defacto standard followed by KDE and Gnome is documented somewhat. The "mechanism, not policy" mantra behind X11 has been a mixed curse. On one hand, it's open ended, so you can achieve a lot of things with it. On the other hand, it's open ended, so a lot of different, sometimes conflicting, things are achieved on it.

Gtk+ is a C-based toolkit and Qt is a C++-based toolkit; you can bind them to other languages, but you pay a hefty price compared to toolkits written in those languages.

Most languages need to bind to C to get even the most rudimentary of services. You can't really open a file or socket without libc (sure, you can use the syscalls, but that's extremely non-portable). Anything that wants to talk to X has to link to libX11.so. Binding to C is so extremely common that most other languages have explicit support for it. I'll grant you that C++ isn't as easy, and far fewer languages have direct support for C++ objects, but there's no reason the shim between languages has to be a performance hog.

GUIs aren't going to get anywhere if we are shackled by the limitations of C/C++.

You lost me here. How are GUIs being "shackeled by the limitations of C/C++" today? Aside from ease of development, and ease of debugging, I can't think of a single language feature that any other language has that would be a limitation on GUI development. Sure, managed languages are nice, and they make development a heck of a lot easier, but for lower-level development they usually aren't the best choice, if for no other reason than performance and the fact you end up unable to reuse the code in any other language.

Re:Swing sucks

[cahiha]

X11 only defines the mechanism for the toolkits. It does not define the policies for them.

There used to be standards for policies as well. Arguably, they needed to be rewritten from scratch, but Gtk+ and Qt didn't bother: they just hacked something together.

In fact, the X clipboard isn't even standardized in X11, however the defacto standard followed by KDE and Gnome is documented somewhat.

Data transfer in X was standardized. The standard needed to be rewritten to account for new needs, and that has happened.

Thanks to the efforts of the Gnome and KDE folks working together, the clipboard works as expected between applications, window manager hints have been standardized between desktops, drag-and-drop works and they are working better together all the time.

The Gnome and KDE developers broke things in the first place: they should have looked at the existing standards and revised them where necessary before they started hacking. Instead, they made a mess and are now trying to clean it up. So far, they have only been partially successful (for example, preferences and remote applications are still broken in both Gnome and KDE).

Most languages need to bind to C to get even the most rudimentary of services. You can't really open a file or socket without libc (sure, you can use the syscalls, but that's extremely non-portable)

libc does not contain portable code for opening sockets. Furthermore, the POSIX and UNIX APIs, even though usually implemented in C, are actually fairly language neutral; the same cannot be said for Gtk+ or Qt.

Anything that wants to talk to X has to link to libX11.so

Absolutely not: there have been several X11 libraries and toolkits that do not link to libX11.so, including ones for Java, C#, Python, Perl, and Lisp.

if for no other reason than performance

C and C++ are efficient for computation-bound inner loops; those are not an issue in a toolkit. The issues in a toolkit are memory management overhead, code size, and object dispatch, all areas where C and C++ are exceptionally poor.

and the fact you end up unable to reuse the code in any other language

I can't reuse C or C++ in any other language; at best, I can carefully construct foreign function interfaces, but that's not the same.

Gnome and KDE are the desktop standards for Linux now, and we need to live with that. Their UI conventions aren't bad, although their technical underpinnings are seriously broken. It will take many years still to fix the mess that Gnome and KDE created, which would have been avoidable if their developers had used their heads before they started coding.

One should say, however, that Gnome and KDE are no worse than Windows or Macintosh: the things that are broken in Gnome and KDE are also broken in Windows and Macintosh; Gnome and KDE wanted to be like those desktops, and they succeeded. They just didn't notice that they were aiming low.

Swing had the right idea with doing a rewrite in a HLL, but Swing doesn't even integrate with the Gnome and KDE desktops as they are.

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[insin]

I use the KeepResident plugin to force Eclipse to hold on to its memory.

I'll let the author do the talking for me on the subject of how nice it is and how well it works:

"Yes, this is an evil nasty hack. But it's an evil nasty hack that works really well."

Sun don't want to accept SWT

[khchung]

Why does Sun keep wasting resources on NetBeans? Don't they have anything better to do?

My take is Sun refuse to accept the SWT. If Sun accepts Eclipse, it means they endorses the use of SWT and that's a slap on the face to their own Swing developers.

May I be the first to say...

[SeaFox]

Cool Beans!

Re:J2EE support is nice

[Urusai]

I've evaluated JBuilder, Netbeans, and Eclipse. I prefer to use Eclipse, which seemed by far the best for vanilla code crunching. I had to download the in-development web tools to do J2EE, it was kind of messy to set up. It currently doesn't support the Java 5 language enhancements either, IIRC. Netbeans looks to be the best for J2EE currently (of the IDEs I looked at). The Eclipse Web Tools in their current (pre-release) state are clumsy and unstable, but generally effective. I was just doing a small servlet/bean application, so the real pros might be aware of deeper quirks or deficiencies.

Eh?

[RichM]

Would anybody like to explain what exactly "Netbeans" is, in simple language for us "normal" developers?

Best thing...

[vikstar]

about any new Netbeans release is the sweet new splash screen.

Re:Eclipse isn't an IDE

[automatix]

In late 2003, we looked at both Eclipse and Netbeans (3.6) as platforms to build a cross-platform fat-client app on. Netbeans at that time kicked Eclipse in terms of features, documentation, samples, support, and everything else. During development, it had its quirks but on the whole we were very impressed.

Nb4 was under development/test at the time but wasn't quite ready enough for us to build on (even though we started using it as an IDE).

Don't forget the data-aware components...

[YodaToo]

...(mostly) shameless plug...

SWT/SWING

[LadyLucky]

From the java boutique article:

The heart of all this conflict really boils down to one issue: performance. SWT vs. Swing. Java developers have been debating SWT vs. Swing since the release of these two IDEs. More specifically, the debate has been about using SWT or Swing on Linux platforms.

One of the arguments against SWT is simply this: it's not part of the Java specification. SWT proponents argue that the responsiveness of a native application can outperform any pure Java implementation. Who is right? That is still up in the air, but it does seem that performance issues have at the very least leveled out, leaving the ultimate determination up to the other features of the IDEs

That's completely wrong. People like SWT not so much for the performance but for the fact that it acts like a native application. You get sub-pixel rendering on LCDs, and so forth whereas Swing is constantly playing catchup.

That Swing is part of the J2SE is a non-benefit. I'm using the IDE, not waging some holy war or caring about how it's implemented. I can't see how as an IDE user I would be happier with Swing because it is part of the J2SE.

Re:SWT/SWING

[njcoder]

"I'm using the IDE, not waging some holy war or caring about how it's implemented. I can't see how as an IDE user I would be happier with Swing because it is part of the J2SE."

I guess that depends on what types of applications you are developing and for what audience. One of the reasons people use an IDE is for the GUI building tools that give you a quick and visusal way to develop gui apps. If you're using Eclipse you're most likely going to be using the SWT tools. If you build your app using SWT you have to worry about distributing the SWT libraries as part of your application since it's not part of the base java system. If you're useing Eclipse as a foundation to build you're application you have to do the same.

If you develop for swing you know that if your user has a jdk they'll have the swing libraries.

If you want to provide your own look and feel to your application to set it apart, swing seems to be the easier choice with the new SynthLookAndFeel in Java 5 that makes it easy to create new looks and feels without any coding.

Re:SWT/SWING

[salimma]

Actually, Eclipse's official GUI designer, Visual Editor, supported Swing before it supported designing SWT GUIs .. and without VE, creating an SWT application in Eclipse is PITA.

You have a point though. On some platforms (*cough* Mac) the Java implementation makes it really hard to run GUI designers on Eclipse, due to some issues about running more than one graphical toolkit that I won't pretend to fully understand.

Re:SWT/SWING

[DrEasy]

If you're using Eclipse you're most likely going to be using the SWT tools.

It would be interesting to know the stats on this. Personally, I do my Swing development using Eclipse (by hand, no fancy GUI editor for me!), and in fact I have no knowledge of the SWT libraries.

Re:SWT/SWING

[pixelfreak]

That's completely wrong. People like SWT not so much for the performance but for the fact that it acts like a native application. You get sub-pixel rendering on LCDs, and so forth whereas Swing is constantly playing catchup.

This is a platform specific problem. While it's not perfect, Swing Looks and acts very much like a native application on OS X with full support for sub-pixel rendering, etc. One major exception with NetBeans is how the main menu is attached to the window, not the top of the screen. However, there are several other Java applications that move the menu bar to the top of the screen on OS X, such as SynRO Soft's XML editor, oXygen.

http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor_mac_os_x.html

Re:SWT/SWING

[M. Baranczak]

One major exception with NetBeans is how the main menu is attached to the window, not the top of the screen.

Before anybody else gets the idea to fix this behavior by setting the system property com.apple.macos.useScreenMenuBar, I just want to warn you that this doesn't work so good. If you're running NetBeans in multi-window mode, the menubar will only be visible when the "toolbar" window is on top, which makes it kind of useless. In single-window mode, it works a little better, but not perfectly - for example, most of the keyboard shortcuts disappear.

I don't really consider this a major shortcoming, anyway. The job of an IDE is to make me program more efficiently, not to make me 'comfortable'.

Re:Eclipse isn't an IDE

[LnxAddct]

So ignorant,its not even funny. This goes for plugins too. Netbeans, imho, has surpassed eclipse in capabilities. Download Netbeans and look at what you have, then download Eclipse and look at what you have. You'll find that Netbeans is way more feature rich. Also, even after you install your favorite eclipse plugins, Netbeans still usually has a few key features that eclipse just can't compete with. Most programmers at my job used to use Eclipse, most heard bad things about Netbeans from the older days when it was stagnant in development and slow. Since 4.0 (and even better with 4.1), alot of people have been changing to Netbeans, it just works and everything integrates wonderfully.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[farialima]

There is a solution to your problem: http://suif.stanford.edu/pub/keepresident/.

That's actually the great thing about Eclipse: there's usually (always ?) a plugin that does what you need.

The difficulty is just to find it.

Re:"Great IDEs"..

[lscotte]

Awesome PHP plugin for Eclipse. Includes Smarty support also http://phpeclipse.sf.net/

Perl plugin also exists for Eclipse. http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/

Swing is proprietary, SWT is not

[cahiha]

IBM absolutely hates the fact that NetBeans doesn't require their proprietary gui toolkit

SWT is under the CPL, so it is not proprietary. Swing is not under an open source license, and even the Swing specification is Sun-proprietary.

NetBeans can compile with standard Java tools

The question of what "standard" Java tools is not relevant. What is relevant is that in order to use NetBeans, you are dependent on Sun proprietary code.

The fact that Sun, for marketing purposes, likes to misrepresent Sun Java and Swing as "open" and "free" doesn't make it so; the licenses are clear: Sun Java is proprietary, as is the Java definition.

Re:Netbroken. . . but it had webapp debugging!

[IdentifiedDareDevil]

I use MyEclipse plugin for Eclipse for J2EE development (source level debugging of JSP, etc).. Its a $29 annual subscription.

Where's the MSI

[fluor2]

They do provide netbeans-4_1-windows.exe, but where's the distributable .MSI??

When I shall deploy this to hundreds of PC, do they want me to go install this manually on each PC?

Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi

[Anonymous Coward]

I use eclipse myself, but netbeans does have generator for getters/setters. You just need to expand the class in the navigation tree, and go to manage properties. If you add a property, you get a field, a getter and a setter. Sorry for being vague, but it's been a while since I used netbeans.

--Coder

What's in a name

[hconnellan]

The other reason is that Sun does not like the name. The name was chosen specifically to appose Sun (i.e. eclipse of the sun).

Netbeans Explained

[AdjustableTool]

Here is a good set of links to a detailed explanation of Netbeans, for the benefit of developers.

You might also find this entry useful for future reference.

Re:Swing Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

If Swing behaves wrong its the PLAF which can easily be patched unlike all of these other toolkits, furthermore Swing 1.4 and higher has a new GTK look and feel and Java 1.6 will delegate rendering of GTK components to the underlying native system so its L&F in GTK will be perfect.

Cough... bollocks. The GTK LAF does no such thing. It's yet another "looks a bit like a native toolkit, but isn't... and is still typically ass-slow Swing."

Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?

[pajama]

Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?

No. Next Question.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned...

[mclaincausey]

that SWT's codebase is quite ponderous due to having to write different widget code for five platforms. I love Eclipse and use it for Java/C/++, and only rarely use NetBeans--but I think this consequence of native widgets should be pointed out.

Perhaps if Sun could hack Swing's native look and feel capabilities to be a little more pervasive, we would have a better solution.

Re:Netbroken. . . but it had webapp debugging!

[sucati]

You can debug JSPs w/ any app server that preserves JSP servlet source files. In Eclipse you just add the folder of the jsp_servlet source files to the project source and debug as usual. I imagine you could do the same w/ Netbeans.

But Swing is faster than SWT

[Trejkaz]

Whereas SWT is faster than AWT, Swing is faster than SWT.

CVS interface lacking?

[drig]

Okay, so I decided to take a look at Netbeans. I've been an eclipse user for a year or so and Emacs before then. The JSP refactoring in NB is very good. Better than Eclipse and even MyEclipse. But, I'm finding the CVS interface lacking.

MyEclipse allows you to see at a glance what directories/packages have code that has been modified. That saves me from searching through for the files that I've changed. NB shows you the icon on the file itself, but it the directory is closed, then you can't tell anything about the files.

Is there a plugin or a setting that I can change which will show more information?

Also, how do I replace a file with the latest from CVS? If, for instance, I've made a change I don't like? Do I erase the file then update the directory? What if I don't want to update the other files in the directory? Eclipse's "Replace With" and "Compare With" options are very nice.

Finally, how do I tell NB to collapse the names of the packages? In Eclipse, I have it setup so java.lang.reflect shows up as j.l.reflect, which saves a lot of real estate. My project's main package structure is net.reliableresponse.notification, which is a bit much on a 1280x1024 screen.

Thanks,
-Dave

Netbeans vs. Eclipse: my $0.02

[Khelder]

As someone who's used both, I'll chime in.

I've used NB to build some Java applications that were mostly GUI. Prior to 4.0, the project support in NB was pretty broken, but now I think it's great. I really like being able to customize how the IDE does builds, javadoc creation, etc., by customizing the ant files.

I also really like the GUI builder in NB. I haven't tried the GUI builder in Eclipse yet, but from what I see of it on the net, it doesn't seem as polished. Also, I happen to like Swing, and have no need or interest in learning SWT.

My current project doesn't have a GUI, and my teammates have convinced me to try Eclipse.

The big win for me with Eclipse is the "quick fix" (ctrl-1 by default). It brings up a pop-up menu of common options for fixing the problem where the cursor is. This can include adding an import (it nearly always figures out the right one), adding a parameter to a method call, changing the invoked method to include the parameter you've used (with the correct type), creating a new local variable or class member variable, and wrapping the current line in a try/catch block (with all requisite catches). Once you get used to it, you can just type code and later use quick fix to define variables for you, so you don't have to manually type declarations as much.

As someone else pointed out, the refactoring is also a lot better. I'm really happy to see NB getting better refactoring, both built-in and through commercial add-ons, but the built-in refactoring is much better in Eclipse. I agonize a lot less about naming of classes and methods now, because it's really easy to change it later. More sophisticated refactoring, like pushing methods up or down in the class hierarchy, is also easy.

One thing I still use NB for is javadocs. The NB javadoc problems browser is a really nice way to find problems with javadocs and easiliy fix them. Eclipse has some support for writing javadocs, but no centralized "fixer" like that.

Another area where I prefer Eclipse is version control. The "Team synchronization" perspective is nice because it lets you easily view conflicts, changes you've made, and changes in the repository separately or all together. Also, the visual diff is nice.

I will probably continue to use both of them at times (and emacs now and then, too), and wish them both great success.