Best Java IDE?

[Alex Yip]

Hi Everyone!

I don't mean to start a war or anything, but I'd like to know which IDEs are good to use? Which ones has the most features? I'm primarily looking into developing web apps. Probably Struts.

Thanks.
[ June 21, 2006: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Chengwei Lee]

Originally posted by Alex Yip:
Hi Everyone!

I don't mean to start a war or anything, but I'd like to know which IDEs are good to use? Which ones has the most features? I'm primarily looking into developing web apps. Probably Struts.

Thanks.

Well, I think the war will start soon.

Anyway, I think it's a matter of preferences, how comfortable or how long you've been using 1 IDE over another. Even if the IDE is lousy but you've gotten the hang of it, you may find it "better" than another features-packed IDE.

In fact, you could even develop without IDE. vi, vim, textpad, etc are all equally capable for that. Now if we're talking about JSPs, I feel Dreamweaver is the best, but then again, you can't integrate it with your favorite IDE.

I've used JBuilder before, only complaint is it's too resource hungry and maybe I don't have a high-end PC, its rather slow to me.

Tried NetBeans now & then, but still don't really like it. Just a matter of personal disliking.

Now using Eclipse, although I wish it would have faster & more mature J2EE support than current.
[ June 20, 2006: Message edited by: Chengwei Lee ]

[Alex Yip]

Hi! Thanks for your reply. What do you think of Oracle JDeveloper? I work at an Oracle shop, so I'm beginning to use it. However, I tend to have a love/hate relationship with it. It's not as easily configurable.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

and here I am using JBuilder because (among other things) it's less of a resource hog than is Eclipse

Haven't used JDeveloper, it's getting some good reports though from people that have.

All IDEs take time to learn to use properly and set up to your liking, which is a big reason why I (and many others) always advise people learning Java to not use them.
Experience has shown time and again that beginners get lost in the specifics of their IDE and end up learning the tool instead of the language, then get seriously lost when (thinking they do know the language) they have to do some work somewhere where that IDE isn't available.

[Ken Blair]

IntelliJ, hands down. Better than anything. ANYTHING. There's no debate, no war, unless you have to use another IDE due to requirements (like WebSphere) IntelliJ is the best.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Ken, have you used ALL other IDEs out there, and long enough to get to know them well enough to make a value judgement about them?
If not you can't possibly make that statement.

[Rajah Nagur]

No doubt Eclipse rules.
It has got many editors choice awards. Check it out here.
And most important part is it is free. Even though IntelliJ IDEA is branded as the most intelligent IDE; it is very expensive. JBuilder is heavy, hungry and UI sucks; others no where close to the above three.

Eclipse gives a very tough competition to IDEA. There are lot of free and commrical plugins available and the growth rate of Eclipse users is vertical.

I love Eclipse; the latest release rocks.

Just my thoughts..

[Nigel Browne]

I used JDeveloper for a while and found it to be excellent once learnt. I now use Eclipse, which is also a great tool. With every IDE there will be a learning period, and the main question to ask is really; does this tool make me more or less productive?

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Your opinions about JBuilder don't match mine, despite you stating them as fact
Same with IDEA. I don't think it's expensive at all at something like $500.
If I'm 10% more productive with it than I am with Eclipse I'll have earned that back in about 2 days, not bad I'd say.

Personally I don't much like Eclipse. To me it's klunky and unintuitive, it slows me down where an IDE should speed you up.

[Ken Blair]

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
Ken, have you used ALL other IDEs out there, and long enough to get to know them well enough to make a value judgement about them?
If not you can't possibly make that statement.

I can and I did. Nobody claimed it was fact. I'll even take it a step further and say that IntelliJ beats anything that WILL ever be released.

No, I have not tried any of the IDEs that do not exist yet.

[Bruce Jin]

I have been using Eclipse since version 1.0. Very happay with it.
They just released Callisto which basically is 10 tools in 1 software.

[Hugo Pham]

I noticed that there is a certification for Websphere. Is it something widely used by employers ? To me, I think the best IDE to learn is one required most by employers. You can go wherever you want, almost, if you know it well.

[Rafa Moreno]

Hi,

I used Jdeveloper and found it a good IDE, long time ago tried eclipse and didn't like it maybe now ....

I also tried forte now netbeans and like it.

I think it's a mater of trying yourself.

[Rue Fi]

NetBeans

Eclipse

[Mr. C Lamont Gilbert]

Visual J++ hands down

I have used lots of IDEs some i cant even remember. I used JBuilder long ago but I switched away because the free version had restrictions on what you could do with the code it produced. I used Netbeans and as web development it was very good. But it was buggy and its underlying architecture was in disarray.

I recall trying eclipse and not liking it and going back to Netbeans for another year. But kept hearing good things so I forced myself to use it for a month, and have been hooked every sense. Eclipse forces more project structore on you whereas netbeans does not. But eclipse is very stable, the underlying architecture is so good I use EClipse RCP for my own application now. They respond to bugs quickly and are happy to discuss behaviors and potential fixes with you. Most of them at least.

[Lewin Chan]

Seeing a thread like this means everyone gets a chance to stick their oar in.

The best IDE by far is a text-editor (naturally vi) and the commandline version of ant , though I have been known to use eclipse.

It's horses for courses, and the usual "my ide is better than yours war" is sure to flare up from time to time, much like java style wars

I think regardless of which IDE you choose, the most important thing is to standardise the build process so you can reproduce any build on any given machine.

[Arafat Nalkhande]

Well guys, for the past 3+ yrs I was using PLAIN OLD VANILLA EDITOR, TextPad to be specific, because my previous company didnt had high end machines and all the IDEs would suck on those PCs.
Just off late I started off with Eclipse and it Rocks. No idea whatsoever about other IDEs since I havent used them... but my opinion is that the IDEs have to be used as they speeden up the development. And I also agree with one of the earlier posts that the newbies should start work without the IDE so that they learn teh language first and the IDE later

[Edwin Dalorzo]

I am relatively new to the Java community, however I have experimented with many of the IDEs so far.

It all may depend on exactly what kind of project you are working on and the financial resources your or your company may have.

For instance, I really like Eclipse, it is one of the best IDEs I have ever used, and it is totaly free. But IMB Websphere is based on it and will probably offer you a few nice tools that could make your life simpler while working on complex projects.

I do like Netbeans, I think it is a good IDE, nevertheless I never feel comfortable working with it. Now, Sun One Java Studio is based on it, and since it used to be commertial tool it offers a few nice features that you will probably will not get with the default bundle of Netbeans.

I have user Oracle JDeveloper. An excellent tool, likewise. But it really pisses me some of its code formatting inefficiencies. It is nothing at the end, compared with all the nice features of the tool, but you know how we, developers, are.

Now I am using IntelliJ 5.1. I indeed love it. More than any other IDE I have used before so far. It feels, somehow, like Eclipse, but with a few nicer features that improve productivity. And you can get a Personal Licence for a very affordable price.

I indeed recommend IntelliJ, without implying with this that it is the best IDE in the world. As I said, at the end, personal preferences and company resources will dictate what you will use.

[Arafat Nalkhande]

You can get some more infor on Eclipese against Netbeans

Eclipse Vs Netbeans

[Jesper de Jong]

Eclipse is ofcourse the best IDE, that's clear. Don't believe what all the others are saying!

Get Eclipse 3.2 and update it with all the ten Callisto projects and you'll never need anything else.

Originally posted by Arafat Nalkhande:
Eclipse Vs Netbeans

That's a nice link Arafat, written by IBM, where Eclipse originated - so it's not an unbiased comparison. But that doesn't matter, because Eclipse is ofcourse better anyway.
[ July 28, 2006: Message edited by: Jesper Young ]

[Ben Souther]

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:

All IDEs take time to learn to use properly and set up to your liking, which is a big reason why I (and many others) always advise people learning Java to not use them.
Experience has shown time and again that beginners get lost in the specifics of their IDE and end up learning the tool instead of the language, then get seriously lost when (thinking they do know the language) they have to do some work somewhere where that IDE isn't available.

Agreed.
Personally, I've never been able to shake VI and javac.
If I'm doing swing development, I'll use Netbeans or Eclipse with jIgloo to rough out the screens but for servlet, JSP, or POJO development I can move much faster with VI and a handful of shell scripts.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Originally posted by Jesper Young:

Get Eclipse 3.2 and update it with all the ten Callisto projects and you'll never need anything else.

hmm, spent most of yesterday afternoon getting that combo downloaded and installed and working with my codebase at work.
Then found out it won't work with WebLogic 6.1 (only 8.1 and 9), JBoss 3.2.7 (only 3.2.3 and 4.0.something), and Resin which are the servers we use...

Looks nice, but it'll take quite some time to get it working like JBuilder 2005 with all the correct keyboard shortcuts, macros, remote debuggers, etc. etc.

[Tyler Jordan]

I didn't see JCreator in that list anywhere, so I'll add it.
JCreator is has a small footprint, its free, not a resource hog, and has better output support than NetBeans. Since I'm relatively new to Java, I had difficulty figuring out the popular NetBeans and Eclipse. JCreator has everything I need in a simple format, nothing extravagant and it doesn't default to showing all those annoying syntax windows. I also love the fact that it opens a command prompt window when running an application to show all the output.

[Richard Green]

Its really a competition between Eclipse and IntelliJ. Eclipse is open source (whereas IntelliJ is not).

I have been using Eclipse for the past 2.5 years and I have nothing to complain. My vote goes to Eclipse.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

one of my main current gripes with Eclipse is the primitive search system.
Why does it insist in clearing the results of my previous search before displaying the results of a new one?
In JBuilder I can browse back through search results, which is very handy when you need to go down several routes in the result of your search getting a treelike structure.