Netbeans 5 vs. Eclipse?

[elias4444]

I was wondering what the general opinion was about the recent release of Netbeans 5? I've been an avid Eclipse user for the past couple of years, but was wondering if all the hype behind Netbeans was true. Is it worth switching? Anyone try it out yet?

[princec]

Seeing as I can't actually find anything wrong with Eclipse....

Cas

[aldacron]

I recently switched to Netbeans 5, but only because I wanted a change of scenery. Before, I wouldn't have considered it. It's much, much better than it used to be. There's no reason to switch if you are satisfied with Eclipse, though. I can't say one is better than the other anymore.

[princec]

I'd be interested to see NB5 running under Java 6 actually... I noticed that our fairly heavyweight Swing app at work here is twice as responsive and has beautiful text rendering under Java 6. I expect similar performance improvements under NB5... I'm not exactly a huge fan of SWT just because it's a cop out

Cas

[elias4444]

I guess that was my thought as well... I kind of like the idea of running Java-native stuff (except LWJGL of course :wink: ) mostly because I do a lot of cross-platform work. Anyone know when Java 6 is supposedly due out?

P.S. I'm going to go ahead and give Netbeans 5 a trial run here - I'll let you guys know how it goes (if I can ever transfer all of my Eclipse projects over).

[elias4444]

Ok, it's only been an hour, but I've gotta get some work done - so I'm switching back to Eclipse. I'm not saying Eclipse is better, but it is what I'm used to (and therefore more productive for me). Both IDEs seem very capable thus far, but I think Eclipse still has the edge in helping developers keep their code clean (I couldn't find an option in NetBeans to show unused variables or code warnings - it only showed me blatant errors).

Anyway... I think you just need to stick with the one you know.  :?

[aldacron]

Anyone know when Java 6 is supposedly due out?

Mustang Roadmap

[betwixt]

Haven't tried the new NetBeans, but the previous one was terrible. I used it when I started to learn java, but it got so slow time after time that sometimes I preferred command prompt to compile and run my code. I so tired and frustrated that I thought I never want to learn Java anymore and I started to learn C++. Then a friend of mine recommended Eclipse and wow it was like 10 times faster than NetBeans4.0 and I switched back to java 'cause I always had some really weird bugs while I was learning C++. But the new version of NB is definetly wearth trying out at least. Anyways I just think that you should find something that you like and stick to it... at least for a while.

[ilazarte]

I've been playing around with NB5 a lot recently because of the Matisse "insta-gui" stuff, but overall Eclipse is just stronger.  Is Netbeans not doing incremental compiles?  It always seems slow to test a change, while Eclipse quickly responds.  NB5 also has some bugs I keep running into when working with generated guis.  

I find the syntax helping infinitely better on Eclipse, as well as general sophistication of the IDE.  NB seems to be geared towards really simple development of the dragndrop/propertyedit variety, which is great and productive, but when it comes time to get into the heart of the code, Eclipse wins in terms of ease of use and truly rapid coding.

All in all, I think I'll just be adding NB5 to my IDE lexicon, but favoring Eclipse for when I need to get my hands really dirty.

[elias4444]

Yeah, I finally uninstalled Netbeans 5. I think if you're doing just plain Java application development with swing, it's fine and has some nice addins. But for this kind of stuff... Eclipse just rocks.

[MarneusCalgarXP]

I've tried Both, and now I use NB 5 just for designing SWING Frames (Matisse is really powerful for this job), and I do everything else with Eclipse !!!!

Eclipse rocks !!!!

[the2bears]

NB5 is working very nicely for me.  If Java 6 support is an issue for anybody you'll see support for it in NB long before Eclipse has it.

Bill

[MarneusCalgarXP]

Eclipse 3.2 has already support for Java 6...

[tortoise]

I had a big pool of really broken code. It was written against a really old version of LWJGL that I no longer had the jars for, was in a strange state as far as commits to the source repository (parts of the code was from the very first commit, others were from the very last, and everything inbetween), some stuff was completely missing, and all in all it was a complete mess.

A long time Eclipse fan, I first attempted to get it stable again in Netbeans 5. But the code being so horribly broken meant Netbeans just couldn't handle it. It crashed often, got really unstable, did weird things like refactorings I asked for would get undone 10 minutes later. I found myself fighting Netbeans a lot more than I was fixing the code. I gave up and went back to Eclipse.

Eclipse handled it no problem. Eclipse seemed more willing to accept the codebase was a pile and was content to let it sit broken and help me fix it wherever it could. With a large help from Eclipse the code is now completely clean, ready to go, and has been the basis of my games for the past month or so.

I can't offer any technical reasons behind what happened here, just as an end user say Eclipse came through and Netbeans didn't. And I still really hate Swing being used for heavy apps, even in OS X. So I'm still an Eclipse user.

[Evil-Devil]

Because of Eclipse's incremental compiler, you can have broken elements in your project. THat is really helpful as you allready stated.