NetBeans vs. Eclipse - No Real Debate

NetBeans vs. Eclipse.  This used to be a flashy debate but is losing luster with the rapid adoption and growth Eclipse as a platform for developing rich client applications.  Perhaps this will explain why.

My IDE History
I've used almost every major Java IDE produced and, for four years, was lucky enough to be one of a few folks to write webMethods Developer, the webMethods IDE for integration development.  I started writing Java in 1999 using Metrowerks CodeWarrior, moved to Visual Cafe, then to JBuilder for awhile.  Before Eclipse, I was using IntelliJ IDEA.  With the exception of Emacs, I've used a myriad of raw text editors along the way as well (TextPad for Win and VI for Unix are still my favorites). 

To this day, IDEA 4.5 remains the best pure Java IDE made.  Even so, for the last year or so, I've been using Eclipse as my Java IDE, mainly because I've been developing plug-ins for it as a Rich Client Platform (RCP) app. 

We seriously evaluated NetBeans in 2003 before picking Eclipse.  The worst of it was in leaving IDEA, a more mature and easy-to-use Java IDE.  But it didn't make sense to use IDEA to develop and test Eclipse plug-ins.  This was our key use-case and the one area where, naturally, Eclipse had the edge.

The Extensible IDE
Both NetBeans and Eclipse broke new ground by assuming from the start that the platform would and should be heavily extended.  The very heart of their architectures affirms this.  NetBeans was the first to do it and this seemed to be their main selling point, initially.  Eclipse entered the extensible IDE scene not long afterwards, rocking everyone's world with SWT.

But, in 2003, as a Java IDE, NetBeans was sub par compared to IDEA or JBuilder.  NetBeans functionality was limited in comparison and their terminology ("mounting file systems," etc) was reminiscent of Unix.  At the time, my learning experience on NetBeans was less intuitive than any of my previous IDE conversions.  It didn't come close to the kind of refactoring support that IDEA or Ecplise had (still doesn't actually).  It put a bad taste in my mouth.

More recently, NetBeans 4.0 seems to have smoothed out many of these wrinkles.  It's tightly integrated and seems to startup and respond much faster than it used to.

Eclipse is More
As an Java IDE, Eclipse is good-enough.  However, the new dominance of Eclipse, I believe, is mostly due to its support and adopted vision for using it as an any-purpose rich client application.  Granted, I haven't analyzed NetBeans with this perspective for awhile now.  What I do know is that writing new rich client apps with Eclipse is remarkably easy with all the Eclipse framework code and wiring.  It's nice not to worry so much about improving framework and just focus on the important stuff.

We recognize that using Eclipse comes with the risk of having less control over the guts of thing but we anticipate minimizing this by staying actively involved in Eclipse.org.  Plus, so far, the Eclipse guts seem good enough to us.  SWT on Unix is a sore spot that should work its way out.  Swing with Java2D also had an early reputation as being slow (on all platforms).

Now, no one really considers NetBeans when discussing rich client applications.  NetBeans 4.0 and newer may change this but right now, Eclipse is where it's at.  Rarely do I see vendors claiming to have "NetBeans" plug-ins.

Summary
So, to summarize, there's no real debate here.  This isn't to say that NetBeans 4.0 isn't a decent or, even, really good Java IDE.  But that's not what keeps drawing more and more people to Eclipse; it's everything: the richness of the framework code, the massive and growing community, IBM's continued commitment, and continuous buzz that continues to surround it.

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Need More?

• Popularity Statistics: http://www.benjaminbooth.com/2005/03/eclipsenetbeans.html
• IBM's View : http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ecnbeans/?ca=dgr-lnxw41NetBeans
• Sun's Views:
  • Tim Bourdreaux, NetBeans' senior developer, product manager, and head of marketing on NetBeans and Eclipse: http://www.softwarereality.com/soapbox/boudreau_interview.jsp
  • Charles Ditzel suggesting we're moving to NetBeans: http://cld.blog-city.com/read/1126337.htm

• Eclipse User Views:
  
  • Ed Burnette
  • Patrick Shriner

Comments

[Dylan Greene]

Further examples of success with this model:

MS Windows... love it or hate it, there's simply more software and hardware available for it than competing products.

Apple iPod... Many stores seem to carry more 3rd party accessories for the ipod than all of it's competitors combined.

Honda Civic... Those that like to customize their car love the Civic. Why Civic? Because it has the most 3rd party accessory choices than other cars.

Mozilla... Lots of free plug-ins.

I think the basic point is that when making something, make sure your users can make it better - to their own taste.

[Luis]

I think you are dead wrong, and the source of the mistake is exacly your experience. I can not argue that eclipse has more coding features and plugins, but Netbeans is way easier. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the rule and netbeans is the best thing yet.
As far as rich client goes, swing is comming back. And easy to use swing plataforms are also appearing (most open-source) Wait, you will see.

[Philippe Ombredanne]

Competition is good!
Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ and JDeveloper are probably here to stay for a while, and they force Visual Studio -as well as each other- to become better tools, to the benefits of every user...

[InesK]

Thanks for commenting on my blog :-P

[Charles Ditzel]

From the blog entry :
Granted, I haven't analyzed NetBeans with this perspective for awhile now. What I do know is that writing new rich client apps with Eclipse is remarkably easy with all the Eclipse framework code and wiring. It's nice not to worry so much about improving framework and just focus on the important stuff.

Since you are willing to make assumptions with little knowledge of what NetBeans is - it is fair to correct you on this. You are making some wide-sweeping assumptions without knowing what NetBeans strengths are, or what it is. For example are you aware that NetBeans has two facets : IDE and platform ? You can go to NetBeans.org platform area and check that out. Let me show you what some Eclipse developers have said on this topic :

"If for nothing else besides the GUI builder, NetBeans is a
great addition to my working environment. When version 4.1
is released (non Beta) I will try to get some time to 'kick
the tires' of the web app support also."
from an Eclipse developer blog entry.

"The GUI Editor for NetBeans 4 is rock solid. The generated
code is very readable, and more importantly, protected from
developer hacking. How many times have you struggled with UI
issues due to call order, or incorrect method parameters."
from an Eclipse developer that switched.

Cheers
charles

[Charles Ditzel]

One last point on this - a new study on GUI building by an Eclipse developer flat out says that NetBeans is "superior" in this area to Eclipse. I encourage you to read the following study :

Java GUI Builders

Cheers.
Charles

[Ben]

My response

[Alexis MP]

Benjamin,

Swing is indeed coming back (performance and look-n-feel are no more issues). See Romain Guy's blog (http://www.jroller.com/page/gfx).

Having plugins to extend the Eclipse IDE is different from building apps (maybe non IDE-related) using RCP. A few examples of apps built on the Netbeans Platform: http://blogs.sun.com/alexismp/Weblog/netbeans_best_kept_secret

I know you're focusing on RCP, but the NetBeans _IDE_ approach is to have things work out-of-the-box with no Easter egg (plugin) hunting. NetBeans has profiling, EJB, Web Services, J2ME, GUI Builder, and more all built-in. I see many customer actually _buying_ an Eclipse Distro (and thus relying on small ISVs when they initially wanted to do Open Source) or build, maintain, support their own distro (pretty much like maintaining your own linux distro). That's a major difference between the Eclipse and the NetBeans approaches.

cheers,
-Alexis

[byzante]

There is no debate, Eclipse wins hands down. It is the best IDE around!

[Patrick Schriner]

As an IDE user i don´t do much J2EE programming or GUI programming.

I love Eclipse, have been using it from Version 1 onward. I gave Netbeans a try (in regular intervals), but I don´t like it for it´s lack of source code editing features.

@Charles Ditzel:
That whole campaign about developers switching from Eclipse to Netbeans is (mostly) FUD. Some people are switching, but that´s both ways. I´m happy that no Eclipse evangelist has started a similar campaign. Look at the Java IDE market shares in
http://68.236.189.240/download/images/SDTimes117.pdf

[magomarcelo]

maybe these campaign is really FUD, but at least it has the merit of putting in the spotlight the great work that has done on NetBeans from versions 3.* to 4.* The NetBeans community has been smart enough to rethink the whole product, even if pressed by the Eclipse adoption
At this time it's the turn of the Eclipse community to rethink the product and don't let the plugin flooding transform it into a usability nightmare...

[Roman]

All NB vs Eclipse (in favour of NB) talks are certainly FUD.
I have Eclipse 3.1M6 & NB 4.1 on gentoo-2004.3 with NPTL-ed rebuild glibc-2.3.5, jdk1.5.0_03. On my configurtion Eclipse eats less memory, SWT works without any slowness. Whereas NB 4.1 hangs occasionaly due to perhaps GC working actively on leaked memory. Somebody complained about slow SWT, slow GTK2 and so on on X.Y Ghz PCs, I don't have any slowness mentioned on my PIII 667 Mhz with 320mb of pc133. Second, I have tuned fontconfig to smooth only <8 , >16 , and italic fonts; I have tuned colors with 'Metal' GTK engine to my taste, can I use these all in NB? NO!
That's the reason for me to infer that all 'NB_is_much_better_than_eclipse...' is FUD.
Probably I'll like NB when JDK-6 'Mustang' with support for native widgets is ready.

[Z]

On the long run Eclipse is dead ... (at least for java developement)

Netbeans just works a lot better and even faster ...

Has the best maven integration available, j2ee, j2me, profiler, jmx, .....

I am not t GUI dev, but the GUI people say that the matise designer in netbeans rocks !!!

Eclipse might have been better 2-3 years ago, but today it's a different story ...

[gokudomatic]

Roman said:
>>All NB vs Eclipse (in favour of NB) talks are certainly FUD.
And all NB vs Eclipse (in favour of Eclipse) talks are maybe not FUD, are they?
If you want to be objective, say that all NB vs Eclipse talks, without any favour at all, are FUD.

I like NB for it all-in-one ready-to-go style, and I haven't seen Eclipse eating less memory or being faster when I've tried it.
Try NB 5, or better, try NB 5.5 preview release with newly integrated UML and table<->EJB conversion features and then we can continue to talk about footprints and speed(maybe not for the preview release, but this is only for features show).

[Eclipse Swing UI Designer]

FYI for everyone, my company has developed a great product that is bridging the gap between these two great platforms - Matisse4MyEclipse, the first Swing UI to combine features of NetBeans and Eclipse for the Eclipse platform. This will be part of the MyEclipse 5.0 release, but is currently available for download. There's a free trial available and satisfaction is guaranteed! Licenses are only $29.95/yr! www.myeclipseide.com

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

-Jens

[Matt Trousdale]

I've bean using both one is full of bugs one isn't Netbeans is the best. Eclipse is full of bugs.

[h]

I have to work with legacy code in ABAP and SNOBOL and it's a godsend to be able to use the same IDE for all three - Eclipse. Netbeans is only for Java, if you work purely with Java then consider yourself lucky, but that's rare.

[Mark Holzinger]

Just for those people surfing by here in late 2007. Today Netbeans 6.0 vs Eclipse 3.3 is absolutely another story. Netbeans has improved so much in every aspect, that at the moment I would recommend Netbeans as IDE and Rich Client Platform. I also think, that it will get very hard for Eclipse in the future, as in my opinion it is evolving in a wrong direction. But we'll see.

[Marbs]

Thanks for that Netbeans 6.0 comment. I'm downloading now.

Re: if (Table||Booth) pick_booth(); - So if Booth is false - you'd still pick_booth()? :P

[Mohamed Faramawi]

well my comment is coming from another point of view, a MS developer who wanted to work back in Java.
I tried both Eclips and NetBeans, with Eclips i felt lost, but wiht NetBeans i felt like im still at home (refereing to how Vsiual Studio works)
so im voting for NetBeans if you are a microsoft developer jumping to Java world, it will be very easy for you to get started without wasting a really big big time in understanding how Eclips works.

[Steve Sweeney]

This article seems very foolish in 2008, the author is probably embarrassed that he wrote it. I know I am am embarrassed for him, Eclips is such a joke compared to NetBeans 6.0.