Which is better NetBeans or Eclipse for java coding? Why?5 Answers

Javier Ortiz Bultron, Software Quality Engineer at Smith & Nephew1.9k Views • Javier is a Most Viewed Writer in NetBeans.

It really depends on the task at hand. Some projects have constraints in what you can use. Here are some examples:

1. Company Policy: Some companies dictate which IDE to use for different purposes among other restrictions.

2. Legacy Projects: Working with legacy projects sometimes require a specific IDE and sometimes a specific version. Usually you want to avoid changing the source as less as possible.

3. Language: Specific IDE might have better support for a specific project.

4. Project: Project is tied to an IDE and is not feasible to move it to a different IDE.I've had plenty of experience in the options above and for those reasons among others I've used Eclipse and NetBeans. In the Java realm usually the projects can be used in any IDE, specially if using Maven or Gradle (not sure about Eclipse Gradle support). Thise are really portable and come down to IDE preference. 

Here are some of the reasons for each IDE: Eclipse:    Pros:

1. Huge amount of plugins.2. Big ecosystem.

    Cons:1. Hard to start with due to the low out-of-box functionality. Most of the

basic things need plugins to be installed and configured.2. So many changes between versions. It's really complex to figure out

the right one to use.3. Interface is not user friendly. This might be due to me working on

NetBeans since day one, but is the same feedback I get from fellow programmers.

 NetBeans:    Pros:

1. Bigger out-of-box exprience. There are a few flavors of the IDE, those being a set of bundled plugins already bundled based on technology (C, Java SE, Java EE, PHP, etc.). Even if you pick the wrong one, you can get what you need by creating or opening a project.

2. User friendly interface.3. Since is done by Oracle, it has support for newer Java versions earlier

than any other IDE. This is important if you want to live in the bleeding edge of technology.

4. After version 5.0, the platform is pretty stable and upgrading is seemless.    Cons:

1. The amount of plug-ins or 3rd party plugins might be low. Eclipse seems to have bigger 3rd party support.I agree with Anton Epple on Maven support on NetBeans being superior but not perfect.

I consider IDE's as well as languages as tools in my tool box. Just use the right wrench for the trouble at hand. I won't recommned "marrying" yourself to certain IDE as you might struggle moving between projects and their constraints.

If learning I would suggest using an independent project structure like Graddle or Maven that can be used in any IDE and is 100% portable vs. an IDE specific format.Written 11 Nov 2015 • View UpvotesRelated QuestionsMore Answers Below

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Why is NetBeans better than Eclipse?

Anton Epple1.1k Views • Upvoted by Javier Ortiz Bultron, Current NetBeans Dream Team member.

All major IDEs are pretty good and you can use any of them. But when things are very similar in their feature set, small things matter, and since as a developer you'll spend a lot of time with your IDE, they matter more. I personally prefer NetBeans, here's why: 

I'm working as a consultant in many different companies. Many of them use Eclipse. And every project has their own Eclipse. A specific version setup with a couple of plugins, and everyone has to use that. So I end up with one Eclipse installation per project. That's simply annoying. It's probably not such a big problem, if you're working on the same project for 2 years.

Most projects I'm working with use Maven, so often I can simply use NetBeans. The Maven support in NetBeans is definitely miles ahead of Eclipse. In Eclipse things like Annotation Processors don't work out of the box in Maven projects. So you need to find a plugin, learn how to configure it, and then make sure it's compatible with your other plugins. 

That's tedious and a waste of time, especially if you're in a project only for a week to help fix some problems. In Eclipse I also had problems with generated classes, as Eclipse has it's own compiler that sometimes clashes with javac when you also use Maven to build. Often the build runs without problems from the commandline, but doesn't when starting it from Eclipse. I'm sure this is a solvable problem, but I prefer to spend my time coding. Another problem is that Eclipse doesn't listen to the file system for changes which forces you to refresh very often. If you're in a project that uses Maven, NetBeans is the better choice, because it simply works.

That said NetBeans has it's problems too, e.g. while a maven repo is indexed it slows down horribly, which is annoying. But alltogether the tools are much better integrated and it's designed to get out of your way. E.g. when I wrote a book on JavaFX I wanted to show how to create a project with all three major IDEs. With NetBeans it was a 3 step process, with Eclipse it took 8 steps.

That's my personal perspective. To you other things might matter more.Written 11 Nov 2015 • View Upvotes

Mashrafi Mohammad, An experienced Java Programmer and Software Engineer at Google.

486 Views

It's up to you.First,download NetBeans(Download link:https://netbeans.org/downloads/s...) and Eclipse(Download link:http://www.eclipse.org/downloads...) both.Then use the both of them.

If you like NetBeans,use it.Or if you like Eclipse,use it.

But I recommend you to use Eclipse.Because,

Eclipse was created by IBM. In the ranks of old-line corporations, those three letters carry a lot of weight. I've been told that back in the 1960's, a common term for what's now know as the IT department was "IBM Department". Before there was Microsoft, IBM was basically Alpha and Omega for what they called "Data Processing". PHB's relied on their IBM rep to take care of tedious chores like thinking. When they had a problem, IBM told them what to do.

IBM open-sourced the Eclipse IDE back around 2001. It was a major-league IDE even then, and now it was free, which wasn't the case for most of the competition.

Eclipse is also more than just a Java IDE. Unlike most of its competitors, Eclipse is a general-purpose framework, and not even specifically an IDE - although the various Java IDE versions of it are the most popular. It's also capable of serving as an application framework, and as development platform for non-Java languages such as C/C++, Python, Perl, and shell scripting. I've used Eclipse plugins for all of these at one time or other. None of the preceding is a primary reason why companies pick Eclipse, but it is something that intelligent decision makers take into consideration.

NetBeans has a somewhat different history. Although it's a good product, it has been through a number of major evolutionary stages. Its major advantages are that since it was a production from the very people who invented Java (Sun), it should in theory anticipate improvements to Java and support Java-specific features. To a certain degree, it does, although Sun could have done more, especially when it came to JavaBean development and JSFWSYWIG design, which are 2 aspects where NetBeans does have an edge on Eclipse to begin with. Because NetBeans doesn't attempt to be all things to all people, it does tend to provide better support for "grunt" development, whereas Eclipse is more my cup of tea, since I'm more prone to develop systems with multiple components interacting in complex ways and non-Java components.

None of the major IDEs is really all that bad, and each has its own particular set of virtues. To a certain degree, it's just a matter of figuring out which horse you want to place your bet on. As the saying goes, "Nothing succeeds like success", and Eclipse has been successful for a very long time now.Updated 28 Dec 2015

Mark Stephens, Java Developer at IDRsolutions396 Views • Mark is a Most Viewed Writer in Eclipse (software).

Even within Java, there are many different types of coding. If you are writing SWT applications, use Eclipse. If you are using Maven, NetBeans has really awesome Maven support which makes my coding experience much more pleasant.Written 11 Nov 2015

Garry Taylor, Writes Java,C,Python, Objective-C, PHP, C#,Swift323 Views

I like NetBeans for it's JavaFX support, which seems to be lacking in Eclipse, last time I looked.

Eclipse also feels like the MS Office of IDEs, it's massive.Written 10 Nov 2015