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Is Eclipse the best IDE for Java?

If not, is there something better?

I want to know and possibly try it out. Thanks.

Tharif
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    The answer is YES. Enough said. – Aaron Sep 30 '08 at 13:08
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    I personally can't stand Eclipse. It's slow and really uncomfortable to debug with. – Trap Sep 30 '08 at 13:23
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    Eclipse is the best IDE for developing Eclipe RCP applications. But considering the number of plug-ins you need to get anything done, it's hardly the "best IDE" out-of-the-box. Maybe it's fair to say it's the most customizable IDE for Java. – James Schek Sep 30 '08 at 14:36
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    IMHO intelliJ is better. I've used them both and intelliJ's GUI is much more polished. – quant_dev May 31 '09 at 13:49
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    Eclipse is too buggy to recommend, stick with something proven. – cmcginty Nov 02 '10 at 23:42
  • People should probably go vote somewhere else. Like this: http://www.slant.co/topics/607/~best-java-ide – Warren P Apr 29 '13 at 01:01
  • @Trap You are 100% right about the debugger. – Josh Jan 01 '14 at 04:08
  • You should check jetbrains official student bundle offer. You can get online free student licence in 20 seconds for all these ides. [https://www.jetbrains.com/student](https://www.jetbrains.com/student/) – Mehmet Feb 28 '15 at 17:50
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    I started with [Eclipse](https://www.eclipse.org) because *everyone* at work was using it - buggy, bloated, infamous disappearing workspaces, unfriendly. [Netbeans](https://netbeans.org/) - simple, easy to use and just works, has everything a Java dev may need. [IntelliJ Idea](https://www.jetbrains.com) from Jetbrains - modern looking, Java EE and Spring in paid version only, [Android Studio](https://developer.android.com/studio) runs on it. Switching between IDEs isn't difficult, you can even select key mappings from other IDEs, don't commit to one, try each for a week and see for yourself. – Johnny Baloney Aug 21 '17 at 10:33

22 Answers22

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Let me just start out by saying that Eclipse is a fantastic IDE for Java and many other languages. Its plugin architecture and its extensibility are hard to rival and the fact that it's free is a huge plus for smaller teams or tight budgets.

A few things that I hate about Eclipse.

  • The documentation is really lacking. I don't know who writes the stuff, but if it's not just flatly missing, it's incomplete. If it's not incomplete, then it's just flat out wrong. I have wasted many precious hours trying to use a given feature in Eclipse by walking through its documentation only to discover that it was all trash to begin with.
  • Despite the size of the project, I have found the community to be very lacking and/or confusing enough to be hard to participate in. I have tried several times to get help on a particular subject or plugin only to be sent to 3 or 4 different newsgroups who all point to the other newsgroup or just plain don't respond. This can be very frustrating, as much smaller open source products that I use are really good about answering questions I have. Perhaps it's simply a function of the size of the community.
  • If you need functionality beyond the bundled functionality of one of their distros (for instance, the Eclipse for Java EE Developers distro which bundles things like the WTP), I have found the installation process for extra plugins excruciatingly painful. I don't know why they can't make that process simpler (or maybe I'm just spoiled on my Mac at home and don't know how bad it really is out in the 'real' world) but if I'm not just unsuccessful, oftentimes it's a process of multiple hours to get a new plugin installed. This was supposedly one of their goals in 3.4 (to make installation of new projects simpler); if they succeeded, I can't tell.
  • Documentation in the form of books and actual tutorials is sorely lacking. I want a master walkthrough for something as dense and feature-rich as Eclipse; something that says, 'hey, did you know about this feature and how it can really make you more productive?'. As far as I've found, nothing like that exists. If you want to figure out Eclipse, you've got one option, sit down and play with it (literally play with it, not just see a feature and go and read the documentation for it, because that probably doesn't exist or is wrong).

Despite these things, Eclipse really is a great IDE. Its refactoring tooling works tremendously well. The handling of Javadoc works perfectly. All of features we've come to expect of an IDE are their (code completion, templates, integration with various SCMSs, integration with build systems). Its code formatting and cleanup tools are very powerful. I find its build system to work well and intuitively. I think these are the things upon which its reputation is really built.

I don't have enough experience with other IDEs or with other distros of Eclipse (I've seen RAD at work quite a few times; I can't believe anyone would pay what they're charging for that) to comment on them, but I've been quite happy with Eclipse for the most part. One tip I have heard from multiple places is that if you want Eclipse without a lot of the hassle that can come with its straight install, go with a for-pay distro of it. My Eclipse is a highly recommended version that I've seen all over the net that is really very affordable (last I heard, $50 for the distro plus a year of free upgrades). If you have the budget and need the added functionality, I'd go with something like that.

Anyway, I've tried to be as detailed as I can. I hope this helps and good luck on your search! :)

Arjan Tijms
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Tim Visher
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    Being free is a very important factor to many people. For example, Eclipse is perfect for students. – Liam Oct 23 '08 at 10:13
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    3.4 introduces a dropins folder, makes plugin installation without update sites a lot easier. – MetroidFan2002 Nov 11 '08 at 18:23
  • Agreed, the 3rd party plugin community is weak :( – worbel Aug 06 '09 at 01:28
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    I think you're a bit harsh on the documentation. Personally I found the documentation in the wiki and eclipse corner very useful, also http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp offers a lot of information and a tutorial. I have never encountered "wrong documentation" that wasn't actually outdated upon further inspection. – NomeN Aug 19 '09 at 12:59
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    Now intellij is also free, at least to some extent! – fastcodejava Apr 28 '10 at 23:29
  • The quality of documentation **varies** alot. In some areas it is excellent, and in many other areas it is just bad or missing. – JesperE May 14 '10 at 06:47
  • As multiple people have noted, the documentation does _vary_. Certain areas are great, others are worse than poor. To me, the gold standard of documentation is the Emacs help system. Eclipse is just no where close to that. – Tim Visher May 14 '10 at 14:04
  • It's true about painful plugin installation. Recently it took me for half-an-hour to install Glassfish plugin. I know, I can't blame Eclipse for that, but damn it's frustrating! Also, seeing some progress messages such as "Initializing Java Tooling (1%)" which could freeze you work up to 10 minutes could extremely annoy. In such minutes I recall that Java is about coffee, and go drink my cup. :) Apart from that, Eclipse is very nice IDE. – jFrenetic Oct 23 '11 at 19:06
  • @TimVisher, Free, yes, but there are tons of them available, not just Eclipse.... http://mobiledevices.about.com/od/additionalresources/tp/Best-5-Free-Java-IDEs.htm – Pacerier Nov 13 '14 at 19:59
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IntelliJ IDEA was awsome. Now it is just "better than Eclipse". You can code in IDEA several times faster than in Eclipse in my experience (I moved from being an Eclipse early-adopter to IDEA and haven't looked back) but IDEA has a number of flaws:

  • Full version is not free.
  • It hogs memory
  • Project management is not great
  • Jetbrains keep bringing out minor enhancements and calling them major releases. IDEA is now slower and buggier than it was a few years ago. And you get charged for the pleasure! (IDEA now has a free Community Edition)

I still wouldn't go back though; the code refactorings and intentions in IDEA are just too good.

A major version of Eclipse came out a while back and it took me about an hour of searching on the website to figure out what was actually contained in the release which might persuade me back into the fold. Visit JetBrains to see how to sell an IDE!

Bulwersator
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oxbow_lakes
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    My 2 cents about IDEA is that it's so slow. I've used Netbeans extensively, and found that IDEA is slower. I use Netbeans 6.7 and tried out the IDEA 9 beta. – sivabudh Dec 17 '09 at 00:27
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    "It's not free" is not a flaw - the price of software should not be used in describing its strengths and weaknesses. – Josh Brown Dec 27 '09 at 16:15
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    @Josh - why not? It not being free is a **showstopper** for plenty of individuals *and* companies. Of course, since I wrote this, IntelliJ have released the Community Edition, which is free – oxbow_lakes Dec 30 '09 at 10:58
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    Maybe you should update the answer now that IntelliJ has a free version? – configurator Aug 23 '10 at 15:31
  • Version 10 is faster than 9 which was faster than 8. Whether 10 is faster than 6 or 7 I don't know, but Version 10 is not slower than eclipse. – openCage Jan 27 '11 at 09:03
  • If you play around witht he memory settings for the IDE, IntelliJ can fly. See answer to a memory consumption question (about eclipse) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94331/eclipse-memory-use/101995#101995. Obviously, this applies to ALL IDEs, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and probably Netbeans. – GKelly Mar 08 '11 at 10:20
  • The community edition is free, and provides nearly all the functionality I need. All that I can't get for free are JavaScript editors. – Fred Haslam Apr 30 '11 at 22:09
  • Yeah, you're right, it's really hard to find any new features in another yearly Eclipse release. – jFrenetic Oct 23 '11 at 19:10
  • IDEA had severe performance problems in 7 and 8 version, and they gave performance issues high priority. Now it becomes faster version after version. As for Eclipse its search facilities (especially full text) are *much* slower than IDEA's. instaSearch plugin fixes performance of full text search somewhat. Still, search & navigation in Eclipse remain clumsy even when driven up by instaSearch. – Rorick May 23 '12 at 15:09
  • hello from the future, it is now much easier to install eclipse plugins (I think, didn't use eclipse back then) – Krusty the Clown Feb 10 '22 at 20:32
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There is no best IDE. You make it as good as you get used using it.

Peter
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    I agree to a certain extent... you can get used to vi and claim it's the best. – Charbel Sep 04 '12 at 09:06
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    That's because vi is the best. – lmat - Reinstate Monica Oct 16 '12 at 21:13
  • @LimitedAtonement Depends for what. I used it for assembly and it was okay (I still don't know what people find in it), but if I'd need to program .NET applications in it, I'd go insane. – MasterMastic Dec 30 '12 at 02:27
  • @Ken I use it for .NET and Java. I don't use `ctags`, though, so it's not my only stop for large projects that I didn't write. I am still an intellisense kid at heart! But when I write a small project, vim all the way. – lmat - Reinstate Monica Dec 31 '12 at 15:43
  • @LimitedAtonement Hmm.. why? In VS you're writing with your arrow buttons rather than letters. That's pretty epic.. why would you give that up even for something small? – MasterMastic Dec 31 '12 at 15:53
  • @Ken Are you talking about one-character navigation? `jkhl` ? If you are, using the dvorak layout makes that even more cumbersome! However, I use the arrow keys on the Kinesis Advantage keyboard just fine :) If that's not what you mean, what do you mean by "writing with your arrow buttons"? – lmat - Reinstate Monica Dec 31 '12 at 17:18
  • @LimitedAtonement Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant that in VS you're most likely to press 1 letter, but it's only arrow keys from there (unless it's a string). So I'm asking why would anyone give that up? It's easy and so damn fast! – MasterMastic Jan 01 '13 at 08:18
  • @Ken Intellisense is nice, but there's much more to editing. A really quick example, yesterday, I had a file with the text "`Glyph 8`" 256 times interspersed here and there. I wanted to change it to "`Glyph 9`", "`Glyph 10`", etc. ... on up to 256! It took about 2 minutes to lookup the right command and get that done. What would you do in VS? – lmat - Reinstate Monica Jan 02 '13 at 12:39
  • @LimitedAtonement Ctrl + H (find and replace). Or do you mean that you had to keep them counting? – MasterMastic Jan 04 '13 at 13:10
  • @Ken They had to keep counting up! `CTRL+A` in vim http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Increasing_or_decreasing_numbers – lmat - Reinstate Monica Jan 04 '13 at 20:02
  • @LimitedAtonement Well, in VS I'd either create a program that does it or shoot myself ._. So that's why people like Vim so much? because of those functions or is there more? – MasterMastic Jan 04 '13 at 22:14
  • @Ken That's the one I used yesterday! (as of the earlier writing) They come up all the time! It's like using `bash` when all you've used is `cmd`, sure, you're "just copying, moving, reading, and writing files", but the added power of bash or powershell becomes indispensable after a while. If you want to know more, go ask `osse` in #vim on freenode :) (I'm lmat). – lmat - Reinstate Monica Jan 04 '13 at 22:33
  • @LimitedAtonement Thank you! that was very informative! – MasterMastic Jan 05 '13 at 08:19
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Eclipse can't remotely be called an IDE to my opinion. Okay that's exaggerated, I know. It merely reflects my intense agony thanks to eclipse! Whatever you do, it just doesn't work! You always need to fight with it to make it do things the right way. During that time, you're not developing code which is what you're supposed to do, right? eclipse and maven integration: unreliable! Eclipse and ivy integration: unreliable. WTP: buggy buggy buggy! Eclipse and wstl validation: buggy! It complains about not finding URL's out of the blue even though they do exist, and a few days later, without having changed them, it suddenly does find them etc etc. I Could write a frakking book about it. To answer your question: NO ECLIPSE IS NOT EVEN CLOSE THE BEST IDE!!! IntelliJ is supposed to be MUCH better!

Lawrence
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    This one is a gem : "Eclipse is not an IDE" – Arjun J Rao Jan 30 '11 at 16:35
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    Eclipse is complex, but I personally never had a problem developing Java with it. – Roman Plášil Jan 19 '12 at 10:28
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    Eclipse keeps track of its own workspace but doesn't account for all possible circumstances that could cause that workspace to change. If you're using source control and the workspace changes under Eclipse's feet, it has a very, very difficult time recovering, and I've noticed that the issue is compounded with Mavenized projects. It's like Eclipse thinks that everything needs to directly integrate with itself in order to work. – Kenogu Labz Aug 08 '13 at 16:01
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Eclipse was the first IDE to move me off of XEmacs. However, when my employer offered to buy me a Intellij IDEA license if I wanted one it only took 3 days with an evaluation copy to convince me to go for it.

It seems like so many small things are just nicer.

Darron
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IntelliJ is good one but its not free!!Then NetBeans is also a good option.Also if you are IBM suite WSAD is good

GustyWind
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    Sorry but WSAD and RAD from IBM are evil, they take something good (Eclipse) and make it bad (slow, bloated, chrashy, fragile) – David Waters Sep 30 '08 at 12:36
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    WSAD and WS is the perfect combintion if one loves self torture, things that shold take seconds becomes minutes and more. – mP. Dec 03 '09 at 02:19
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    Probably common knowledge, but in case not, there is now a community (free, open source) version of IntelliJ: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/free_java_ide.html – GreenMatt May 18 '10 at 19:46
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I'd have to vote for Netbeans as the best one currently. Eclipse is decent, but right now Netbeans is better.

Brian Knoblauch
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I used IntelliJ for almost 5+ years (from v1.5 to v7) and around 8 months ago I migrated to IBM RAD (which is built on top of old eclipse platform) and around 3 months ago I settled down with Eclipse (Ganymede).

I used IntelliJ on a mid size projects (with 10k classes) and I'm using Eclipse on one with just few hundreds of classes.

I found both of these IDEs (IntelliJ and Eclipse) to be good. IBM RAD is just a waste of money (ofcourse one could be stuck in an IBM shop without choice).

IntelliJ has far superior refactoring capabilities and keyboard shortcuts for most of the features compared to Eclipse. It supports importing projects from Eclipse. It has better built in xml handling capabilities (with refactorings applicable almost like for the java code). Built in Intelli Sense is also very good.

Eclipse is a great tool and its free. It took me around 1-2 months to get used to Eclipse from IntelliJ (lot of unlearning of shortcuts), but I got hang of Eclipse, it has been pretty smooth. I havent used Eclipse on mid size project.

Both IntelliJ and Eclipse have active plugin communities and both integrate well with version control systems, unit test frameworks, application servers and profilers.

IntelliJ started becoming slow and bloated starting from v4.0. It was slow with mid size projects. I would not use IntelliJ unless its performance can be improved.

I havent used these two IDEs for anything other than java development.

If you are a java developer and your company pays for IntelliJ and if your project is not too big, go for it. Otherwise, dont despair: Eclipse is always there.

mayya
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I gave Eclipse a 3 months ride at my new work, but after that I found out that normal Maven project can be run in IntelliJ IDEA too (unless it's Eclipse plugin/EMF/something of course ;-)). 3 months are not enough to compare it with 8+ years with IDEA, but it's enough to claim I gave it a fair try. I decided to live with its perspectives (other IDEs don't need them), with its poor debugger (doesn't show date values unless you click on them! etc.), with its comparatively worse completion than IDEA has.

Now after all those years IDEA is also free (community edition) and I use it without much trouble. Of course I miss some of those "Ultimate" features of paid version, but it's far better than Eclipse. Biggest difference is the whole mindset needed for both of these IDEs. But after you master the mindset of either I can't understand what can anyone hold to Eclipse - unless you need its plugin ecosystem or you have some serious investments there.

Example of "mindset" differences: You have to save in Eclipse, not in IDEA, and I don't care what is better or worse - but you have to save in Eclipse to let him clean up underlined errors that are not errors anymore, etc. ;-) You have to save there in order to get rid of errors in other files too, because other file doesn't see the changes otherwise.

I blogged much more about this topic - and yes, I'm biased, though I tried to be as little as possible. But after some time it wasn't simply possible: :-)

And no, not even IDEA is perfect, I know it. Because I use it a lot. But it is the best Java IDE if you ask me. Even the Community edition.

virgo47
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[This is not really an answer, just an anecdote. I worked with guys who used emacs heavily loaded with macros and color coded. Crazy! Why do that when there are so many good IDEs out there?]

if you know you way around emacs you can code 100x faster then an IDE. And it can handle bunch of diffrent languages so you do not need to change your coding enviroment if you need to code in another language. Works on all operating systems, you can custimize/add anything you want. Even edit files half way across the world over ssh.(no downloading or uploading). Before calling them crazy you gotto use it first. i am sure they are calling you crazy for using an IDE :).

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    I think there's a pretty strong case to say that Emacs is effectively an IDE. – nevster Feb 15 '09 at 09:48
  • As a converter from Eclipse to Emacs... Emacs is a lot more powerful than most people think. IDEs give you a lot of awesome features, but there's a lot of things that Emacs can do that no IDE can... using it over ssh is probably my favorite benefit though. – Mike Stone Apr 13 '09 at 18:34
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    100x faster than an IDE? Have you even used Eclipse? – wsorenson Aug 01 '09 at 16:26
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    @wsorenson: I've completed some projects in the time it takes eclipse to *load* – Draemon Feb 23 '10 at 13:16
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    @Draemon I guess those projects aren't very profitable or else you'd have a computer capable of launching Eclipse. Seriously, though, there's no argument that it's an enormous resource glutton (I even hand-delete some of the plugins I don't want), but once you're inside the application and familiar with it, then enormous productivity gains are possible. – wsorenson Feb 23 '10 at 14:58
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It is often said that there are better IDE's for various languages (eg Java) than Eclipse.

The power of Eclipse is that it's basically the same IDE for many languages, meaning that if you know you'll have to code in several programming languages (Java, C++, Python) it's a huge advantage that you only have to learn one IDE: Eclipse.

Martin Bøgelund
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Eclipse! It can be slow at times and uses a lot of memory but it works well.

Ken
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    You can say the same about NetBeans. – Mark Baker Sep 30 '08 at 14:14
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    Is there an IDE you couldn't say that about? – James Schek Sep 30 '08 at 14:38
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    Well, in the .Net world, VS2005 doesn't use much memory. You pay for it with ultra-slow features, though. In the Java world, there are some that are fast and low-memory, but with few features. – jsight Sep 30 '08 at 15:22
  • IntellJ IDEA. I use to have this project with some 2,000 classes and tons of libraries. I swapped from Eclipse to IntellJ, bacause I hated so much the project and I though it was Eclipse fault. The result was Idea was very slow. Workaround? I create a module and use IDEA anyway. :) Idea is awsome!! – OscarRyz Oct 01 '08 at 02:08
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I don't know if Eclipse is THE BEST Java IDE, but it is definitely very decent and my favorite IDE. I tried IntelliJ briefly before, and found that it's pretty similar to Eclipse (IntelliJ might offer some nicer features, but Eclipse is free and open source). I never really tried NetBean because I know Eclipse before I know NetBean.

Eclipse is my favorite because:

  • Free
  • Extensible (to a point that you can turn it in to C++ IDE or DB Development IDE)
  • Open source
  • I know how to write Eclipse plugin
  • You can develop a product easily with Eclipse (exp. Lime Wire is Eclipse under the hood)

If you are used to using conventional Java IDE like JCreator you might need some time to get used to Eclipse. I remember when I first learned Eclipse, I didn't know how to compile Java source...

I would suggest that in order to find the best IDE FOR YOU, try what people recommended (NetBean, Eclipse, and IntelliJ), and see which one you like the most, then stick with it and become an expert of it. Having the right IDE will boost up your productivity a lot in my opinion.

Alvin
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I am going to have to recommend Oracle JDeveloper. I personally thought that Eclipse was the best Java IDE too at one point. Then I was introduced to Oracle JDeveloper by my job. I find the UI design much better than Eclipse. Also it comes with an incredible amount of features built in including great support for EJB3, JSF, WebServices, etc. It is essentially an IDE for the entire JavaEE stack (and the Oracle ADF framework as well). - All of the tools you will (probably) need for JavaEE development come with this IDE right out of the box, no plugins required (unless you download the minimalist version).

Matthew Ruston
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Talking about java Ide it is better to go for NetBeans.In My opinion it is better and provide great advantage over other ide but it has disadvantage over Eclipse that it grabs more more while working but do to its features and support i suggest Netbeans than any ide

Ravi
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Agreeing with the others. Netbeans is a pretty good IDE which also caters for other languages (PHP, Ruby, C/C++) if you're prone to using any of those. Then you get the added benefit of knowing your way around the IDE when deciding to pick up a new language.

To be fair however, I haven't had much time with the eclipse IDE.

Josh Smeaton
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This is subjective... I find it to be a good tool.

It depends what kind of development you're doing - for EJB stuff, many folk would favour Netbeans. It also depends how much you want to spend - I assume you're talking about free IDEs?

Flint
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In my opinion if you got the resources to use, then go with eclipse. NetBeans which is awesome like eclipse is another best option, these are the only 2 I've ever used (loved, needed, wanted)

Eclipse is hands down the most popular, and for good reason!

Hope this helps.

Rayne
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I'd agree with some of the others out there saying that NetBeans and IntelliJ are both good IDEs. And I'd say that in using all three (Eclipse + other two), that Eclipse is by far my favorite. I found some of the documentation out-dated, but also found the support community very helpful. I started using Eclipse by jumping into the deep end of the pool: writing an RCP before ever learning the IDE. The IDE was intuitive to use, and when I found the right news groups to post to - most of my questions were already answered. The hardest thing for me (and frustrating, admittedly) was knowing how to phrase my search terms in order to get to the answer that was already posted.

Remember that Eclipse is still "relatively new" as an IDE player, though given that - it's pretty darn robust.

My only complaint about Eclipse is that with each new release, it seems to hog up more resources. With a mid-sized project/workspace, it takes seemingly forever to build (or rebuild) the project. Compared to IntelliJ, it's faster and more intuitive to use.

twokats
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Don't forget that Eclipse Platform was started by IBM. There are few platforms out there.

  • IBM Websphere Application Developer (WSAD) and/or Rational Application Developer (RAD) which is a Eclipse-type IDE from IBM (actually, that's Eclipse with IBM specialized libraries/plugins).
  • MyEclipse (never used it but it's another Eclipse-type IDE)
  • Sun Microsystem's NetBeans. It's too Java-centric as it's designed to create applications purely in java (NetBeans runs in Java).
  • IntelliJ (to name but a few)
  • Oracle JDeveloper (I never really liked the directory structure layout JDeveloper creates).

The advantage with Eclipse is that it can be customized to your development pleasure, plugins can be written for Eclipse to conform to your needs (e.g. The Eclipse "Easy Explorer" plugin for browsing the directory of your source in Windows Explorer). Eclipse allows you to also incorporate other languages/SDK's, such as C++, Silverlight projects, Android Projects for development. You can also easily manage resources in Eclipse.

In my experience NetBeans are resource intensive. Oracle JDeveloper and IntelliJ aren't free though. Oh yes, If you have issues or bugs with Eclipse, Eclipse has the ability to restart and submit the crash to Eclipse servers.

Buhake Sindi
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This is not really an answer, just an anecdote. I worked with guys who used emacs heavily loaded with macros and color coded. Crazy! Why do that when there are so many good IDEs out there?

warsze
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  • B/C it's all about choice, if you are faster w/ your current tools, why switch to something else? Just b/c all the cool kids use it? – André Oct 01 '08 at 16:30
  • As a converter from Eclipse to Emacs... Emacs is a lot more powerful than you think. I'm not saying Eclipse is bad, or IDEs are bad, but once you get familiar with Emacs, it's hard to go back (and this coming from someone who knows all the Eclipse advantages over a "simple" editor) – Mike Stone Apr 13 '09 at 18:32
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    This is not really an answer : you are right. Anecdotes = comment. -1. – Philippe Carriere Sep 02 '09 at 18:31
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I have experience with using JCreator LE. I like it because it is easy to use and it is free. Give it a try if it interests you.

Zee JollyRoger
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