Comparison between 2 IDE's - Netbeans and Eclipse

General Discussions
#1

Hello, everyone. This question is based on the fact, that I mostly only wrote a HelloWorld application in Java.

I am coming to Java from a .NET environment (VB, C#) and I have some C/C++ programming background. I have tried both Netbeans and Eclipse and they seem like very nice IDE’s, though I have not done anything serious with them yet.

I have been doing research and decided that I would like to use LWJGL for Java game development.

I was wondering if there are any pros/cons to using the 2 IDE’s with LWJGL.

Also, I know that it’s not the topic of this question, but I thought I would ask this - Do you have any recommendations on setting up a Development Environment to properly work with LWJGL? I am thinking, that the older version LWJGL2 would be easier to work with.

As I said, I am not a beginner in programming, but I have very little experience with games. My knowledge of graphics api is extremely limited. On Windows, I mostly used GDI and GDI+.

#2

I don’t think that you can form a judgement after a hello world app. I’ve used IntelliJ, Eclipse and Netbeans, and overall I prefer IntelliJ. IntelliJ’s code inspections help me to write better Java.

#3

IDE choice tends to be a pretty subjective thing. Personally I’m so used to Netbeans that I use it for everything whether the IDE is designed for it or not. Plenty of plugins and then you get things like Praxis LIVE built on it which are really impressive.

As for LWJGL 2 vs 3, I’d go for 3 if I were you. You’re probably thinking because there are tutorials for LWJGL 2 but frankly LWJGL3 is really simple. It even has a utility for loading natives which gets run automatically. So it’s super simple.

#4

From my experience, Netbeans vs Eclipse can be compared to hammer vs sledgehammer (I added a few points about IntelliJ Idea as well):

NetBeans

  • Is supported by Java creators, Oracle (former Sun)
  • Is very very stable
  • Handles very large projects well
  • Have very “slick” and “integrated” workflow (it is hard to get lost, integration of most tools with IDE is seamless)
  • Looks relatively good, especially when compared to Eclipse
  • Is very good for Java and HTML5, bad for anything else

Eclipse

  • Is de facto standard in most workplaces
  • Offers a lot of plugins
  • Have relatively quick release cycles
  • Is much more than just Java IDE

IntelliJ Idea

  • Appearance! (seriously, the best looking Java IDE)
  • Excellent code inspector
  • Many built-in useful small features useful from time to time, for example bytecode inspector
  • In form of Android Studio, it is best for mobile development
  • It is ONLY Java IDE (there are many other IDE’s from JetBrains for other languages, but most of them are paid)

This is mostly matter of preference, but I personally tend to use NetBeans for hobby/in-home projects, Eclipse for more professional stuff and IntelliJ Idea when I need to use one of its specific features (or in form of Android Studio).

#5

adding to what Mac70 said :

netbeans

eclipse

  • con : bloated by plugins, settings/options scattered all around the place

idea

  • pro : community version (free) is “good enough” for most people
  • con : ultimate version is waaaay better but costs.
  • pro : other intellij tools use the same “base IDE”, like Clion (c++/cmake) or PHPstorm (php). makes it easier to dig in.

+1 for picking the right tool for the task. it really depends. i used netbeans back when with java, now it’s idea. then i still manage all my c/c++/jni projects with netbeans.

#6

This probably doesn’t affect your choice, but I think netbeans has a graphical tool for use with JavaFX GUI building. I haven’t used it. Eclipse doesn’t offer this as far as I know, though there may be a plug-in. I’m in the minority here, but I do like JavaFX more than Swing and have not gotten very far with LWJGL despite a couple starts. (Am hoping the 3rd time is the charm.)

I’d consider asking this question over on the LWJGL board, too, and reporting back what you find out. Maybe Spasi will weigh in. He’s been very helpful for me over on that board and is a JGO member as well.

#7

Personally I like NetBeans due to its excellent GUI making capabilities - especially as most of my bigger applications so far are using desktop GUI’s features extensively. :slight_smile: If you will need to make desktop GUI-based application, then NetBeans is the best IDE for that.

And when it comes to JavaFX… It have its flaws and does some stuff in a way which tries to hide some syntatic sugar non-existing in Java, but property binding makes it very easy to integrate model and view almost seamlessly by simply writing properties/bindings transforming model state into view state. :slight_smile:

#8

Thanks! ;D Glad you like it.

Like what out of interest? I find the PHP support great for work I’m doing at the moment. Other than that, it’s Java or HTML 5 stack (HTML, SASS, JS) for me, which are fantastic.

There’s a Darcula look and feel plugin for NetBeans now, should you want to make NetBeans look like IntelliJ. I’m “nicking” it for the upcoming Praxis LIVE v3 too. :slight_smile:

Seen as most of my Java work builds on top of the NetBeans Platform, it’s not entirely a surprise it’s my first choice IDE.

#9

At work I used to use IntelliJ Ultimate, but I gave up the license because for me the community version offers identical functionality and I could move to the latest IntelliJ builds without depending on purchasing orders or whatever. Unless you are doing enterprisy web development stuff, IntelliJ Community seems indistinguishable from Ultimate. My use case is POJO development, XML and XSLT.

Infuriatingly, I have to do work on my private websites using Eclipse because of IntelliJ Community being crippled in that regard.

If I make any money from my personal projects I will buy Ultimate, IntelliJ is that good I want to support them.

#10

For some reason I never got on with IntelliJ. Always been a big, big fan of Eclipse, here. Tried NetBeans once too, couldn’t stand it.

Cas :slight_smile:

#11

I could never get into intelliJ IDEA because I only tried for an hour and…
well Eclipse works, for me and I know it… so I have little incentive to switch and am lazy

but I’m sure its better

For Android development I might actually go Android Studio at this point.

#12

That’s kind of ironic! ;D

#13

I am totally Netbeans addicted… I tried once intellij, the graphic is really awesome but I find working on only one project at time such a huge limitation…

#14

Hi

I have used Eclipse and Netbeans on projects composed of between 1 and 3 millions lines of code for more than ten years, I find Eclipse more scalable but when things go wrong, Netbeans seems to behave more smartly, it tells me “lengthy operation in progress…” instead of freezing and crashing. I find Netbeans generally more stable even though it’s not my favourite IDE whereas I think that Eclipse has become less and less stable under GNU Linux since its fourth version, I have some nasty drawing problems sometimes, the error lines are reported on the wrong tab, the same for the todo and fixme notices, some parts of the code become invisible whereas the most important and basic features in Netbeans just go on working. I prefer Eclipse project layout because it’s simpler, the files “.project” and “.classpath” are often enough for my needs. WindowBuilder (Eclipse) and Matisse (Netbeans) are both good.

I will never use IntelliJ IDEA because it’s not open source. It’s not a matter of price as I consider that work must pay and I have done some donations the last ten years.

#15

To be honest, on newest Ubuntu (16.04) Eclipse is so unstable that it is almost impossible to use it, and not possible at all without switching back to old GTK 2… While NetBeans and IntelliJ are still working perfectly good. :slight_smile:

Biggest project I took part in so far was +/- 7m LOC split into 16 projects - both Eclipse and NetBeans are able to handle that, but Eclipse seems to often have problems with layout and stability (especially when navigating to new class), while NetBeans takes considerable amount of time to start (2-3 minutes on PC with HDD only and 32 gb RAM) and still processes things in a background for few more minutes.

#16

I had good luck working with Android Studio on Ubuntu. It was hell to get it all installed, but once running, including the Emulators, it worked well. The Emulators worked so well, code ran faster on it than a device I was using for testing. I thought it was a big improvement over the time I tried Eclipse + Android plugins (really slow performance). But it’s been about 3/4 year since I used it.

I assume using Android Studio would not be the best way to organize a project meant to run on both desktop and Android systems, something I haven’t attempted yet. True/false?

#17

I fail to see how it (community edition) is any less open source than the other two.

#18

It’s only the community edition.

#19

I said that! :wink: All three have a liberal open-source license that allows for commercial extension. There are commercial products built on top of all three. It doesn’t make the community edition any less open-source! It does make it a little less well featured. ;D

#20

I’m under Mageia Linux 5 and I use KDE. I hope that I’ll get rid of those problems.

Both are able to handle that but I find Eclipse more responsive than Netbeans on my least capable machines (bought between 2004 and 2008).

Sorry, maybe I misunderstood your comment. I have the impression that the community edition of IntelliJ IDEA has less features than the free of charge versions of Netbeans and Eclipse according to some comments above and actually, I’m happy enough with Eclipse despite its flaws.

I would accept to pay for a commercial edition if it gave access to its full source code.