Learning Java, 4th Edition

The IDE Wars

Comparing IDEs on features alone is futile because all modern IDEs are based on a plug-in architecture that allows new tools to be added by third parties. Saying that an IDE has feature X is just an invitation for someone to retort that her IDE has plug-ins for X and Y. Still, it is worth taking a moment to draw some comparisons here (if we dare). In this book, we have used both the NetBeans 7.2 and Eclipse 4.2 editors. How do they stack up? The short answer is that, at the time of this writing, Eclipse is more popular and a bit more polished at the expense of being platform-dependent, whereas the latest release of NetBeans offers a few more advanced features out of the box. NetBeans offers a visual application builder and a web application development environment. Of course, you can add those to Eclipse, but you must choose from (possibly pay-ware) alternatives. Another important feature of NetBeans 4.x is that it uses a fully externalized Ant build process. This means that you can build your application inside or outside of the IDE in exactly the same way. With that said, let’s move on to Eclipse.