The Eclipse open-source development platform has far outdistanced Sun Microsystems Inc.’s NetBeans in terms of developer and vendor support, but Sun has vowed to continue to innovate around NetBeans while practically everybody else in the Java world is supporting Eclipse, says eWeek.
Eclipse Casts Shadow on Sun
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Eugenia Loli
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I thinks this article is a little late with this, it looks like the tide is already reversing on Eclipse. The new release of NetBeans 4.1 serously rocks and should eat into Eclipse mind share! NetBeans already received a lot positive publicity in the press as it is superior to Eclipse in pretty much any respect especially if you run it on Linux or Solaris — much faster and much better looking with more tools well integrated into one package. NetBeans is definitely worth the switch from Eclipse. Plus as the article says Eclipse camp is already starting to suffer from confilict of interests from all the parties involved — not a very good sign. I’m sticking with NetBeans for myself.
as a person that uses both netbeans and eclipse. Let me first say that I haven’t touched the brand new eclipse (3.1 i think) or the newest netbeans (4.1) but I’d hands down take netbeans any day, its a much slicker and easier interface to work with.
> Let me first say that I haven’t touched the brand new eclipse (3.1 i think) or the newest netbeans (4.1) but I’d hands down take netbeans any day, its a much slicker and easier interface to work with.
Yes, Eclipse is more or less half decent IDE on Windows, but is is absolutely butt ugly and dog slow on Linux or Solaris — an absolute no-go for me.
Tried both and i’m sticking to VS.NET + C# (not a big fan of java).
Netbeans 4.1 is a VERY good improvement over the 3.x series. Never realy liked Eclipse because of its cluttered UI.
> Yes, Eclipse is more or less half decent IDE on Windows, but is is absolutely butt ugly and dog slow on Linux or Solaris — an absolute no-go for me.
Eclipse looks exactly the same in windows and my gentoo installation, did not notice any speed difference.
It suffers from the “java apartheid” attitude. At my work we use eclipse over netbeans purely because our java is middleware, and we use macromedia flex on the client. Eclipse supports actionscript to some extent, netbeans does not. So working with eclipse is about 100x easier than either using different editors for different, closely coupled files, or using netbenas, which is good for java but might as well be ntoepad for anythign else.
<P>
I think this is one reason why netbeans will suffer. In the vast majority of places where java is used, it is middleware, and there are different technologies on either side of it. But netbeans just ignores this.<P>
It is a shame, because it definitely is a superior java IDE out of the box.
> Eclipse supports actionscript to some extent, netbeans does not.
What do you mean by “Eclipse supports actionscript to some extent, netbeans does not”? Both NetBeans and Eclipse support JavaScript syntax on which ActionScript is based on, so I don’t think Eclipse differs much from NetBeans in that respect.
The first thing is that the comment about the name “Eclipse” and how Sun was apparently bothered by it at one point is just rediculous. If that even factored in 1% in Sun’s decision not to support Eclipse, then they are out of their minds.
Second, Eclipse is fantastic. Before Eclipse, I tried Netbeans and a bunch of other IDE’s, and Eclipse was the closest one to actually making me productive without too much overhead of working inside a framework. At this point, I could not program without Eclipse and anything else will have to play catch up in a big way. Whatever will replace Eclipse not only has to be better, it has to be way, way better. I don’t think Netbeans is that.
That said, I’m using 3.1M7 on Fedora and it is pretty slow. I recently downloaded the newest Netbeans and I was quite surprised that, with the exception of the putrid disgusting non-AA fonts, Netbeans actually looks much nicer asthetically. It also seems much cleaner and better organized.
Eclipse is extremely powerful, but it takes some getting used to and actual learning and still is rather rough around the edges in terms of conceptual polish where some concepts could be much better implemented (two cases in point, tasks and setting position marks inside code). Lots and lots of things aren’t obvious with it, and it’s hard to discover a lot of the functionality just by using it without having someone show you the way or seriously digging around. For example, it took me a fairly long time to get comfortable reassigning keys, but now I see that it’s quite powerful and the new “filter” is really slick. I wish every menu structure in every application allowed you to filter like that.
It does seem like Netbeans is more intuitive overall, but I just haven’t really ever used it enough to tell. Regardless, Eclipse is close to unstoppable at this point. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sun doesn’t like the idea of Eclipse doing so well because it’s somehow tied into the SWT vs. Swing debate in so far as Netbeans would in theory support Swing much better than SWT. However, the GUI builder in Eclipse also supports Swing components natively on their own and you can also embed Swing components inside SWT.
This will sound strange, but I use SWT *and* Swing pretty extensively in my own application. SWT is nice for some things, but overall I think Swing is a much better API. SWT gives you some low level control, but it’s not nearly as feature rich as the basic Swing feature set, much less combined with the huge third party support for Swing.
The bottom line is that IBM has it right with whom to target. From the standpoint of Microsoft and it’s tools story, both Eclipse and Netbeans have a lot of catching up to do. They are probably more solid and have overall higher quality than VS.NET, but VS.NET just has so many features and has the entire Windows stack to leverage and draw upon for integration. For example, *both* IBM/Eclipse and Sun should be working to make it easy to integrate the OpenOffice API as a web services framework. Furthermore, they both absolutely suck in regards to providing a decent browser component. With Eclipse/SWT you get stuck with IE on Windows with incomplete event monitoring and control, and Swing has a completely unusable and worthless HTML component. They should both check out http://jrex.mozdev.org and move beyond a us vs. them scenario.
Sun should join Eclipse in the goal of taking on Microsoft. I have to think Eclipse is by far the most widely deployed client-side Java application there is, so that in and of itself says something. Even if it’s not the most widely deployed, Eclipse is just an unbelievable piece of technology.
The Platform-Support (well, or the lack of it) makes me feel a bit unwell with Eclipse (which I do use at work and home, however): Only a few OSs are supported. For NetBeans you need a working SDK and are set. For Eclipse you additionally need a platform-Port of SWT.
For Windows and Linux Users that’s no Problem at all. And that for sure is the vast majority of users. However, I usually work with FreeBSD at home and also have a Box running OS/2 lying around here.
For FreeBSD one has to (might also say: can) go thru the pain of Eclipse’s practically not-present Build-Infrastructure, modify and run a dozen Shell Scripts and Makefiles and then might – or might not – have a running Eclipse for GTK or Motif (well, there still is a small Problem, as that Version still is “is bit” Linux, which causes Problems with the “Update” Functions of Eclipse which will Download and Install Linux-Versions of the IDE which definitely do not run on FBSD).
For OS/2 there might never be SWT, so no chance at all to ever run Eclipse.
On the other hand, with NetBeans, being 100% pure Java, there is no Problem in running it on OS/2 (isn’t it strange that Sun supports IBMs OS/2 better than IBMs spinoff Eclipse?), FreeBSD and such, without any work at all.
So, this “Platform dependency” is a point that should not be forgotten…
Eclipse is great as soon as You work with 2 display!
I am working in eclipse since 2 years now, and would never work anymore without 2 display. This let me work faster and better (instead of losing 15% of my time moving windows), and the difference is cost is RIDICULOUS (700euro for a 19” dell ultrasharp)
Yes eclipse interface if full of informations, windows, buttons…but all informattions are useful (If you think they are not relevant, Youre are free to switch some views off)
Among 20 java developers, I am nearly the only one which work in java browsing view (project – package – classes – method – code – + hierarchy (F4) + uml perspective on the second display sometimes) while my collegues work in java view (the same default view as jbuilder (work 2 years with it), netbean, intellij). Sorry but personaly I can’t and will never go back!
I am even thinking of a 3rd display 🙂 must only find a way to hook it under windows… (may switch to linux because of difference in IO speed soon)
regards
http://www.waltercedric.com
I forget if you want to speed up eclipse a LOOOT (major complains of people which are using it)
I am starting eclipse since 3 months with JROCKIT 1.4.2 (windows) what a BLAST!!!! -> no need to wait for the 3.1 release… Speed gain is around 30/40%
BUT Do not use it for debugging as the “drop to frame” is not supported ->use a regular JDK for starting your processes using run/debug launcher
regards
http://www.waltercedric.com
The only reason why Sun is now putting some effort into Netbeans is simply because IBM and others thought “Right, Sun isn’t going to give us the development tools or direction we need to use Java so we’re going to do our own thing.”
For years developers have begged Sun to come up with some sort of framework, or IDE, for Java development tools – especially as Sun has kept reasonably tight control over Java’s direction. They’ve refused. It’s now hypocritical in the extreme for them to start investing in Netbeans just because of Eclipse.
> For years developers have begged Sun to come up with some sort of framework, or IDE, for Java development tools – especially as Sun has kept reasonably tight control over Java’s direction. They’ve refused. It’s now hypocritical in the extreme for them to start investing in Netbeans just because of Eclipse.
Err, I think you’ve got this whole thing wrong — Eclipse was a knee-jerk reaction effort from IBM in response to Sun open-sourcing NetBeans (typical IBM). NetBeans was there before Eclipse and IBM is the truly hypocritical entity here. Starting some sort of a religious pissing fight over Java IDE’s is just stupid, use whatever fits you best plus healthy competition between Eclipse and NetBeans will make both of the product better. NetBeans is much better and more functional fit for me and many others and I’m going to stick with it, if you like Eclipse better, then knock yourself out.
Err, I think you’ve got this whole thing wrong — Eclipse was a knee-jerk reaction effort from IBM in response to Sun open-sourcing NetBeans (typical IBM).
No, Sun has consistently refused over the years to provide a clear direction over Java development tools (amongst other things) and Eclipse is the result. Does open sourcing Netbeans really matter, and more to the point, do many developers even know that Netbeans is open sourced?
Starting some sort of a religious pissing fight over Java IDE’s is just stupid
Don’t do it then. Let’s just admit that Sun has royally screwed up over just about every aspect of Java, and stuff like Eclipse is the direct result.
Netbeans supports code completion, error highlighting, and pretty much every Eclipse feature. Competition is good. Eclipse kicked Netbeans in the behind and got it to start improving. Look at the 4.x release of Netbeans.They’re far better than before and I actually like Netbeans over Eclipse now.
I used to hat netbeans.
The latest version is IMHO better than eclipse. It is faster, lighter, it does not need that you have 780mb of ram to run decently, and it comes batteries included. It is also refreshing seeing sun supporting other languages in netbeans with an explicit project.
Given this, I still don’t understand how the hell this Java IDEs can use all of that resources (even if netbeans is becoming better at it)
>>Eclipse looks exactly the same in windows and my gentoo installation, did not notice any speed difference
If I want to compare distributions, I use eclipse for this. With windows, ubuntu, or any other distribution, it takes like ~= 10+ seconds to load. In the same box, but with gentoo installed, it cuts the time by half.
>> If I want to compare distributions, I use eclipse for this. With windows, ubuntu, or any other distribution, it takes like ~= 10+ seconds to load. In the same box, but with gentoo installed, it cuts the time by half.
How often do you really START it
I don’t see how getoo could optimize the java to 150%, my brain?
The Netbeans interface and plugin integration are sooooo much more intuitive. I’ve constantly been amazed at how little traction Netbean’s gotten. I’m thinking it’s all market – not that Eclipse is somehow better, just that Sun dropped the ball somehow.
I’ve used mainly Eclipse for a long time now. Inspired by this discussion I decided to give NetBeans (4.1 this time) a short try and I must say it looks really decently. I don’t have time (and will) to switch my projects to it now but i guess I’ll try using it in near future. It’s much more convenient than it was in 3.x.
I use Debian Sarge to run Eclipse 3.0 now and I think it runs fairly fast and looks very well (don’t see any big difference in speed compared to Windows but I haven’t used MS for a year now and I can’t give detailed comparison).
Finally a note about SWT and a problem I ran into lately. I had to modify the sourcecode of JBoss IDE as some lists were not properly displayed on the linux version.
Both sides will do better being pushed by each other and MS. It was good that sun continued on with netbeans because they turned it into something good that people can use and has everyone else looking over their shoulder a bit.
Too bad Eclipse doesn’t have a useful GUI designer. I tried the VEP project but it was _so_ _incredibly_ _slow_ on linux that I gave up after half an hour.
I just saw this neat screenshot for Netbeans where you can even create your GUI for J2ME apps. That is very cool stuff.
Unfortunately, Netbeans feels wierd. Last time I used it, I had to ‘mount’ stuff in Netbeans. Wierd stuff; it scared me away
Agreed. VEP is also nearly useless on the Mac. It’s so slow! I find it amazing that the same people who coded a fairly responsive IDE can’t get a decent GUI designer that runs at acceptable speed. Perhaps it runs alright only on Windows?
I have used all the IDEs out there.. IDEAJ, Eclipse, JDeveloper, JBuilder, Netbeans, and even yes Visual J++. But out of whats available, Netbeans is the best for real world development. I have deveopers running Mac, Linux, Solaris, and Windows. We write web, gui desktop, and embedded applications along with server daemons. Right out of the box, Netbeans has evering thing included, no need for plugins. It is tiring hunting down plugins for Eclipse, making sure its the right version. And it also runs the same and feels the same on everyone of these OSes. With the release of 4.1 it just keeps getting better.
if it’s J2ME and GUI design, I go for NetBeans for sure.
but for the rest, it depends. (but I personally prefer NetBeans)
anyway, I still like the way Eclipse split “Error” (System.err…) window from “Output” (System.out…), that makes debugging console app a lot easier (if you using old-style print to standard error for logging).
NetBeans mixed both “err” and “out” in a same window (“err” in red text, “out” in black), I just don’t like it.
another one is this bug
Build/run configurations for j2seproject’s
http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=49636
Eclipse is more convineint in that point, can has multiple “Run/Debug” profiles.
from that two annoyances,
when I was doing my informatics (computer science) assignments/projects .. I prefer to use Eclipse,
since:
1) all of them are command-line/text-based
2) it already installed in every linux machine in my school (Eclipse 2.x — that’s enough for command-line app, and it’s faster than 3.0, I think)
(after I graduated, I gradually move to NetBeans)
Weird article – seems to be whining that we’re not all goose-stepping in unison – that some people dare to have a different opinion and won’t join the herd.
I for one say thanks to Sun for my favorite IDE.
I’ve tried Eclipse and was initially impressed. It’s total lack of BUILT IN support for J2EE is unforgivable, however. If there are plug-ins out there that enable J2EE (and I’m talking ANY J2EE — EJB, JSF, web services, etc), great! Don’t make me go hunting for it though! If it doesn’t work out of the box, you can forget it, pure and simple. So Netbeans, based entirely on real-world J2EE development (haven’t made a desktop app in *years*) wins my vote.
JBuilder 2005 is still the BEST IDE on the Planet.
Easier to use, does more error, syntax checking and warnings then any other product. Fastest development platform out there.
Eclipse people need to learn to let go of a Buck once in a while and buy something. Time is MONEY.
I’ve been programming in VisualStudio using C# for the last three years and just started a job at a Java shop. Due to this career move, I started evaluating a bunch of different Java IDEs. I ended up choosing Netbeans.
I know Eclipse gets a lot of face time in the news so I guess a lot of people like it. However, I thought it was flakey and unfinished. Netbeans does what I want it to and seems quite polished.
The only other Java IDE that I even liked was IntelliJ, but I didn’t really see anything in it that justified a $400.00 price tag so unless my employer wants to buy it, I probably won’t ever use IntelliJ.
You should speak only of things you know about. You clearly don’t know anything about this, so why did you open your mouth? Think.
I thought he/she made it perfectly clear that he/she was speculating on Netbeans ability to handle Actionscript. No need to get upset.
I think your points on middletier programming are quite insightful, but your comment above kind of neuters any good points you may have raised previously.
NOBODY can deny that Eclipse has been amazingly good for the Java community.
Netbeans sucked so bad for so long that it made an opening for Eclipse – and IBM hit it out of the park. People like using it, they did all the right things in reaching out to the enterprise development tool vendors. As a result, Eclipse is an independent platform with a standards process that is starting to look like a competitor to JCP, and Netbeans is a sun-only IDE.
I’ve tried the new Netbeans, and it’s good – caught up to Eclipse in ways I didn’t think it could. Unfortunately, Netbeans still has that “not quite right” swing feel – fonts *STILL* look like crap, etc. But the next version of Eclipse fixes many of the things people don’t like about Eclipse, and Eclipse has a lot more mindshare.
Why they won’t collaborate against the Microsoft environment is beyond me. I think it’s because IBM and other open-source vendors insist on support for java toolchains that completely leave Sun out of the picture and that’s a show stopper for the anti-open-source faction of Sun executives.
Anyone know how to change the L&F of NB4.1. I can do that in NB4 by giving using the flag mentioned in netbeans homepage and put the themes jar in the classpath.
The same thing does not work in NB4.1.
And also I find both of the tools useful. Eclipse is pretty fast and slick. SWT has got performance boost in its latest releases. And also you can not beat the way eclipse melts into the environment. Unlike Netbeans wierd look, and menus.
A plus thing with netbeans is that it has an alreday built in visual editor which is superior to eclipse when making Swing apps.
But then again working with SWT in Eclipse is much more easier than working with Swing in netbeans.
choice us always good, so go for the IDE you like!
Netbeans and Eclipse are both great products. I tried both but Netbeans somehow was veyr very intuitive to use. And fast! The loading time takes aroun 12-15 seconds on my XP laptop but after it starts running with all the modules loaded and so on its really really fast. There could be slight and I mean a very slight lag in the UI but I have stoppped noticing it most likely. It has great tools like the Visual Garbage Collection plugin along with the Profiler project based on the JFluid technology. It looks very very nice. I think the plugins would work with JDK 6 and JDK 1.5 Update 4 out this summer. I cant wait to learn to use that tool.
Eclipse is great and has a lot of market support because I think Sun did drop the ball when it came to providing a tool…and Eclipse picked up on the slack. Moreove the 3.x series of the Netbeans IDE was dismal at best. Eclipse is very very important in terms of how it shaped the Java IDEs we know of today.
For Netbeans 4.2 I would like editors for virtually any programming language, more speed, some updated plugins, better code completion. And apparently, an awesome new code completion feature, better more controllable GUI development tools, and supposedly a visual editor (??) for html and jsp…I cant wait for 4.2!!
I was talking about actionscript too, in my reply. Eclipse has plugins available for actionscript that make it infinitely better than netbeans, *for actionscript*.<P>
Why do people get so religious about products, that they have to make ill-informed comments showing they *obviously* know nothing at all about the specific domain they are talking about, just to defend the product they like?<P>
That is why I got annoyed at the end of my comment. The original poster should not have strong opinions in an area he clearly knows nothing about. It is akin to saying that notepad is more featurefull than emacs for developing lisp. I mean, it is just silly and obviously wrong – to anybody with even some slight amount of knowledge in the domain. So if someone is ranting on about how “notepad is just the same as emacs for developing lisp applciations” and sayign somebody who has said the opposite is wrong, that person deserves to be slapped down.
In fact I think I will stop coming here, it annoys me too much. It is like slashdot now, full of idiots, it is intensely annoying this “I don’t know anything about the subject at hand, but I am going to make forcefull opinionated comments about it anyway” tendency.
In fact, I made up my mind. Bye!
Sorry for going a tad off topic. I use VS for my C++ development and would like to use a nice IDE under unix as well.
I tried Eclipse, some months ago, when I played a bit with Java, but I found it to be unintuitive (when it finally started to work (Windows)).
On my amd64/Linux FC3 I spent a while trying to get it (Eclipse) to work, but it didn’t. Did I have bad luck or is it instable on that platform?
Is there other C++ programmer using Eclipse here who’d share his view of it? Or a recommendation of another (!= emacs) ide?
Thanks!
Sorry probably not the exact response you were looking for, but have you tried KDevelop. If you are doing C++ on Linux I can’t think of a better IDE.
http://www.kdevelop.org
Its really a general purpose IDE not just for KDE or QT and C++ is first class citizen on it, unlike C++ on eclipse.
Being one who constantly interviews lots of Java developers I’d say netbeans is by far more popular among them. They ALL seem to have given eclipse a try (sometimes many tries) and never sticked to it.
I would hope that Eclipse 3.x or 4.x would address the deficencies of the interface. I guess that’s the Websphere “way” or something. They need to look at Netbeans or IDEA for the “right” way to do it.
Netbeans big problem is that its based on Swing and doesn’t have the raw code editing power of IDEA, which is almost telepathic in its intellisense and refactoring ability. Of course Netbeans is free, so that’s a big plus. And I don’t believe that Netbeans compiles on the fly like Eclipse, but I could be wrong about that.
Yes, check out the CDT plugin for eclipse. It has been worked on quite a bit over the last couple years. My only problem with it is that it doesn’t import autotools projects – ala Kdevelop or Anjuta 2.0. But the CDT parser seems to be pretty nice last time I checked it out. Of course, it’s no VS, but it’ll do.
I prefer Intellij IDEA over both Eclipse and Netbeans.. Yes it’s not free, but with the student discount it’s not to pay for a more productive IDE for _my_ work.
on the free side the best ide (imho) is netbeans. full of tools and plugins, j2me support, built in web server (out of the box servlet and jsp development)
on the paid side, the best the best is jbuilder 2005, i think the editor is even better than vs
JBuilder 2005 is still the BEST IDE on the Planet.
Easier to use, does more error, syntax checking and warnings then any other product. Fastest development platform out there.
Eclipse people need to learn to let go of a Buck once in a while and buy something. Time is MONEY.
Ha! Ha! Ha! The problem is that it’s way more than a buck (15 hundreds give or take for just one licence) and you have to pay constantly because the new versions come out very fast. And the improvement over the Eclipse is minimal. Really, I’ve used both for many years.
Think of it this way too. Even if the company buys JBuilder it might not shell out the mony for the upgrades or new versions when the devels want it but when the company can afford. With free IDEs you just down load and never think about it.
Is true that NetBeans is slick and 4.1 is fast, but over all i prefer eclipse because the support for multiple languages, C/C++ plugin comes really handy.
When writing Java, I always prefer Intellij IDEA to either. It has modest resource requirements, excellent refactoring, a simple UI, excellent tools integration, a powerful and intelligent editor, and numerous third-party plugins that are most helpful. The cost of a license is trivial for professional development.
For writing anything unrelated to Java, I wouldn’t use any of the three. Eclipse plugins for other languages are typically incomplete, half-assed junk; often not offering much more than syntax highlighting. SWT/Gtk is also fairly unimpressive in terms of performance and layout intelligence. Until Sun decides that sub-pixel anti-aliased fonts are important for Swing programs, I have little interest in tolerating atrociously-rendered text when there are tools available for developing with other platforms that don’t suffer from this problem.
I have been switching between Netbeans and Eclipse in the past, now I have been on Eclipse the last two years.
It is true, you get some J2EE functionality for free very well bundled with Netbeans. Netbeans is nice, if you wanna get an easy headstart on JSP. Eclipse is rather barebones, you got ant support, you have java support, you have refactoring, thats it.
But eclipse only is a base, J2EE on a budget is excellently covered nowadays with MyEclipse and the Exadel plugins. If you want to go on the free side, you have to go for plugin hunting.
Things become rather expensive if you want to do everything visually however, the Netbeans codebasie is better in this regard, with the Studio Creator being in the 100$ price range.
My current working environment is plain eclipse-myeclipse for J2EE with some xdoclet and some ant supporting that foundation and I am rather happy.
before Netbeans beats Eclipse. The fonts are ugly, It crashes when you start a new project (Fedora FC3), No built in support for CVS over ssh, No quick fixes, Slow code completion. JUnit integration much better in Eclipse.
I’m using Eclipse for C++ development at work. It interfaces with our Clearcase CM system… I must say, I HATE ECLIPSE… It’s slow… Painfully slow. It does weird things to the project, and the interfaces doesn’t seem to be very well threaded. Many times a multiple process box comes up while Eclipse does… well, something. I can’t stand Eclipse, I wish I were working with something like Visual Slick Edit.
“I’m using Eclipse for C++ development at work. It interfaces with our Clearcase CM system… I must say, I HATE ECLIPSE… It’s slow… Painfully slow. It does weird things to the project, and the interfaces doesn’t seem to be very well threaded. Many times a multiple process box comes up while Eclipse does… well, something. I can’t stand Eclipse, I wish I were working with something like Visual Slick Edit.”
Let me guess, you are either using WSAD 5.2.1 or Eclipse 2.2. Yes, those two do suck…especially compared to Eclipse 3 and 3.1 (which have been out for over a year). You can get CC version control in 3.2 (or upgrade to RAD 6 from IBM instead of WSAD 5.2.1).
Eclipse 3 is a huge improvement over 2 and 3.1M7 is a HUGE boost over 3.0!
That being said…I use both Netbeans and Eclipse because both do things the other doesn’t. I use eclipse for every day programming and i use Netbeans for webservices and the builtin J2EE support. Though, wich Exadel studio and MyEclipse, there is little reason for me to jump to Netbeans these days.
> “Eclipse Casts Shadow on Sun”
Actually, the correct pun here is: Eclipse eclipses Sun!
No partial credit!
How does one get the form creation tool working in Eclipse? every release its like going to hell and back; Netbeans on the other hand, although not über sexy, it does the job quiet nicely, and without the heart ache associated with trying to understand swt.
Hi. I just wanted to give my perspective on this story. I have been developing in Java for around 3 years. I have done this in JBuilder than later on turned to Eclipse when it reached 2.0. I really like Eclipse for how they work with perspectives and views (highly customizable). Then tried NetBeans. NetBeans has more tool support for a developer: Servlets, JSPs, Application Server, etc. I started using them together because I needed the tools in NetBeans but perferred Eclipse because the way it works and feels. I also worked with IntelliJ this is more or less NetBeans when you compare features. Also a very good IDE.
Then: I switched to C# because of a project I was working for. I cry. I cry very loudly. MS does not really know what a developer needs… I have no refactoring support at all. I am currently looking into Resharper (Plugin by JetBrains; the IntelliJ guys). It’s a real pain…
You do have refactoring support, you just have to *gasp* buy it. for VS2003. VS2005 does have refactoring and also has improved intellisense. My problem is that writing addins(plugins) or VSIP (Visual Studio Integration Packages) is a major bitch.
At least you get to write code in C# instead of Java these days.
> Agreed. VEP is also nearly useless on the Mac. It’s so slow! I find it amazing that the same people who coded a fairly responsive IDE can’t get a decent GUI designer that runs at acceptable speed. Perhaps it runs alright only on Windows?
No it doesn’t. VEP is totally unusable, even on Windows.
You should try Jigloo. I’ve been using the plugin on OSX and Windows for over a year (version 2.7.2 – because I don’t think the 3.x line of the GUI builder is as stable as I would like) and it’s not bad at all – especially for the money. I think it has a better model than the Instantiations producst too. Now, if a small company can come up with Jigloo, why does the VEP project suck so much? 🙂
” Netbeans big problem is that its based on Swing and doesn’t have the raw code editing power of IDEA, which is almost telepathic in its intellisense and refactoring ability. ”
jbuilder, netbeans, intellij use swing… why is a problem?
Netbeans 4.1 is da bomb… bcoz it rocks 😉
To be honest yes Netbeans 4.1 is really great & 4.2 should be out soon… so that will be better in some ways.
Besides with developers using Ant or Maven what’s the big deal in which IDE you use!!!
Eclipse suits some dev’s and Netbeans 4.1 appeals to the Hardcore Java dev’s 😉
All IMHO…
It will put Netbeans ahead of any java IDE concerning this topic (visual GUI desing) for long. I used both NetBeans and Eclipse and finally went for the former. It is clean, fast, responsive and nice. A pleasure to work with. And with every version it just keeps getting better and better. Great IDE.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Swing is really slow these days and I’m not a big stickler for L&F, but what really drives me crazy are the fonts. They just look like crap on LCDs. Even Mono’s managed winforms have better looking fonts than Swings.
The whole point of comparing Intellij to Netbeans is that Netbeans doesn’t have the raw code editing power that Intellij does.
But check out this interesting link. It looks like a JSE6 snapshot might have some goodies in the near future.
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t18756.html
Scroll down near the bottom. One of the Java2d guys commened on a snapshot of Netbeans 4.2 he is running and an internal JSE6 internal build with “lcd” support.
Actually Netbeans 4.1 is a good proof that Swing is pretty fast nowadays, although I use Eclipse mainly, Netbeans is the only good Java IDE usable on a Mac, because Swing is twice as fast as the SWT.
As for the fonts, I only can comment on Windows, but the font problem is gone, with the alpha 6.0 builds, subpixel AA seems to work at least in Windows, under Swing.
There is currently major work underway in JDK 6.0 to improve the user experience of Swing.
Some people commented, that Eclipse wont run under Fedora whatever version.
Guess Fedora is more to blame than Eclipse.
Eclipse needs a pretty new GTK2, but I had been using it for years in Linux under Debian, and it was stable, not rock solid, but stable, and it was fast…
It was not as fast as other GTK2 apps (and definitely not as fast as Swing based apps, which outrun in newer JDKs GKT2) but fast enough, the difference between a native GTK2 app and Eclipse was barely visible.
If things are slower then something is obviously wrong.
The main problem of eclipse currently seems to be Apple, Swing based apps outrun Eclipse significantly there, with a speed factor of two. Another problem is that you floating panes do not work on the mac, and the experience is generally very painful.
Given the state of affairs, that XCode still lacks refactoring for Java and Eclipse is a pain to use, I only can recommend Netbeans on the Mac.
As for the fonts, I only can comment on Windows, but the font problem is gone, with the alpha 6.0 builds, subpixel AA seems to work at least in Windows, under Swing.
Are you serious? I thought the subpixel rendering for Mustang had not been released in a snapshot yet.
I just downloaded a Netbeans 4.2 nightly build and it’s plenty fast, but the funny thing is that the non-editor fonts don’t look bad, but the editor fonts still look like ass no matter what i choose. Hell, I can’t even figure out where to turn on AA for the editor – not that it would do much good without some Mustang snapshot.
I had a small project to make in Java so: I have tried Eclipse under UNIX. Looks very bad I don’t like at all the SWT toolkit. I have tried NetBeans 4.0 and 4.1 looks very slick and nice on every platform I have tried: Windows, Solaris !
Use NetBeans and stop using Eclipse !
stefan
Depends on what you use, you either use the Motif version, which looks like… Motif… brown ugly, but it is fast as hell.
Or you go for the GTK2 version which looks just like whatever GTK2 skin you are using currently, it is slower, but it has become faster over time and is perfectly usable.
As for subpixel rendering in Mustang, maybe I was wrong, I did not check it explicetly, because I downloaded Mustang just to see how the performance was now that they work on Swing, and was pleasantly surprised that the fonts were suddenly correct and antialiased, if they were subpixel, cannot remember really.
yeah, GTK2. I like however Netbeans more. The interface is simple and does look the same everywhere.
If I’m not wrong SWT has been developed with Windows in mind and is based on native code.
My view,
stefan
Thanks for the response. Were you comparing Swing (netbeans) in Java5 to whatever Mustang snapshot you downloaded and saw the big improvement on windows?
“What’s new in NetBeans 4.1 ?” (Flash live presentation)
http://www.javalobby.org/eps/netbeans41/
I work at a java development company…
At first we tried ecplise, but found it way to general and confusing! Ecplise is not only a java IDE, but a complete development platform. We found netbeans much more intuitive, appealing, and speficic for the job!
I love NB 4.1!
@Lumberg, yes I did check Mustang in windows, because I wanted to see how much subjective impact the removal of the grey area problem had.
It makes a small difference.
There are however still inconsistencies in the current Mustang builds regarding the Windows L&F, the file dialog still does not look correctly and the menu, behaves differently (pops up instead of fades in)
The funny thing is, that the menu pop ups twice as fast in Mustangs Swing as in Windows, but subjectively it has a much slower feel to it, because the fade in starts instantly while the popup has some latency time, but by the time the popup is finished windows still fades the menus in.
Speaking of psychological effects, I found it interesting.
I am currently working on a huge Enterprise wide application using IBM Websphere Studio (Eclipse) and it is downright horrible. We have constant problems with stability and the performance has been so bad that we had to dedicate a team of people working with IBM to work on optimization strategies. Performance improved somewhat but still came nowhere near Netbeans. I have also been using Netbeans for the past three years for Swing and JSP/Servlet development so I use both environments almost daily. I can say without any hesitation that Netbeans is superior in every way to Eclipse. The other major gripe I have with Eclipse is its lack of integrated GUI development tools. Netbeans comes standard out of the box with an excellent GUI development environment while with Eclipse you have to buy 3rd party SWT add-on’s to get this capability. I could go on and on with the differences, but suffice it to say Sun should keep up the good work on Netbeans and if you are a developer using Eclipse download Netbeans 4.1 and give it a try. I promise you will begin to see the advantages after a couple days of using it.