Real Stories From People Who Are Switching to NetBeans IDE

Many developers are migrating their applications to NetBeans from other IDEs. Here are some of their stories.

Marcelo Eduardo Moraes de Oliveira

As any mobile developer knows, supporting the wide array of devices available can be very challenging. We created a custom solution to address this with Eclipse, but had issues with the pre-processing abilities. When NetBeans 4.0 became available, we learned that we could use the platform configuration feature to solve the fragementation issue which made it significantly easier to support multiple devices. The excellent Ant support, CVS connectivity and appealing user interface were other key factors that prompted us to make the switch to NetBeans.

Dru Devore, Java Architect & Consultant

When I saw the final release announcement for NetBeans 4.0, I decided to give it a try. Unlike Eclipse, I didn't have to go off looking for plug-ins and I was particulary impressed with the ease of migration and development of web applications. I switched to NetBeans 4.0 and documented my experience so that other developers can easily do the same. See my easy-to-use instructions on Making the Switch from other IDEs.

John Zoetebier

After about 2 years using Eclipse I have switched back to NetBeans. NetBeans looks better, feels better and has almost the same feature set as Eclipse. Just a small thing like a proper popup dialog for code completion, which requires PF2 on Eclipse to read the JavaDoc. Or the amount of space for the Java editor. And the way the debugger works, no annoying switching to an other perspective. The integration with Ant is nice, and does not slow down performance. NetBeans offers an out of the box experience that is far better than that of Eclipse.

What really annoyed me during the time I was working with Eclipse is that Linux was largely ignored by the Eclipse developers.

With NetBeans you can develop on all platforms like J2SE desktop, J2ME (handheld devices) and J2EE (web applications) out of the box. NetBeans also allows me to use JSE 1.5.0 which has some really neat features. And NetBeans works the same on all platforms, which I feel is what Java is about anyway.

Pavel Dort, Nostromo

The #1 reason we've switched from Eclipse to NetBeans 4 is productivity and ease of use. It's just so much easier to create a new project and have it compiled and run. And since we're a mobile games developer, the quality of J2ME support is key for us. We found that it's very important that J2ME support comes from the IDE authors. This way the problems with constant J2ME plugin upgrades and resulting incompatibilities of project files and similar stuff from programmer hell is minimized. And the ANT integration is excellent and works great with our internal build process. The IDE is what it looks like when developers respect their users' wishes. What's better than hearing no more complaints from your programmers? :-)

Chris Johnston

Everything I see so far with NetBeans 4.1 I like and everything that I ask it to do, fully expecting it to be a painful experience, I find is actually quite reasonable and sometimes even delightful (as far as any Java IDE can be delightful) meaning that it is not a chore. Its JSP, HTML, and XML editors are excellent. This is something that is sorely lacking in Eclipse. And so far it is fast and it does not freeze like eclipse.

Bottom line: Eclipse is slow. At least in my experience. I am migrating more and more over to NetBeans 4.1. Why? It is faster and easier to use.

With Eclipse, I will try and open a class or expand the project tree and the IDE will occasionaly freeze; for sometimes up to what seems like a minute, enough time for me to switch to another program like a browser or email client. And this is on a very robust computer so it is not a problem with the hardware.

Another area where it is slow is in code completion. I have to wait so long for the little box to pop-up on its own that I usually either skip it or press ctrl-space to force it to open.

Another area where NetBeans wins hands down is in its server integration. Out of the box, NetBeans 4.1 comes with full integration with Tomcat 5 and Sun System Application Server PE 8.1. In order to get this functionality with Eclipse you need to download or purchase plugins. In NetBeans, in order to deploy/run my J2EE application in Sun's app server, all I need to do is to press the run button. NetBeans will compile and deploy my app and launch the app server for me, if it is not already running, and open my default browser to the right URL. This makes testing code very fast. I don't have to worry about bouncing the server, going out of the IDE to compile the source and then copy the WAR or EAR file to the deploy directory of the app server. I just press Run.

One more big advantage that NetBeans has over Eclipse is that it places all of the project metadata not into extra, IDE specific files, but into ant build scripts. This means that the way the code compiles in NetBeans is the way that it will compile outside of netbeans. This is just cool.

The only thing that NetBeans 4.x shares with NetBeans 3.6 and earlier is the name. This is a very different IDE from any previous version and even the look of the app has been improved.

Robert J. Laferriere, Echelon 4 Corporation

As a technology startup, we can not spend critical time on mundane development tasks. It is imperitive that our tools maximize our productivity. We recently switched our development environment from Eclipse 3.0 to NetBeans 4.0. The reason is very simple: NetBeans 4.0 enhances the way we work. Specifically, NetBeans 4 has a more intuitive interface, integrated Ant build environment, and productivity tools that support our agile development process.

To support our rapid code-build-test-deploy cycle in a traditional IDE is cumbersome. The build environment is "integrated" with the IDE, but it is not "intrinsic" to the IDE. With NetBeans 4, we are guaranteed that our developers are building, testing, and deploying with exactly the same rules and environment. As a plus, we don't have to wait for a nightly build to uncover potential dependency issues with the build. Yes, you can simulate this with other IDEs by running an external Ant script to build the project; But, doing this requires extra work that a tool should just do for us. NetBeans 4 crafts a completely working build environment with the necessary targets (build, clean, test, deploy) to support product development.

Some other reasons for others to consider switching to NetBeans 4:

1. NetBeans 4 integrates with the desktop environment graphic theme whether it be GTK, Windows, or Aqua. Eclipse always forces a single theme that, while good, does not look integrated.

2. 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.

3. It is faster to create a project from existing source with NetBeans 4 than Eclipse in our testing. Our metric was the ability to build-test-deploy in our environment.

4. Ant...Ant...Ant is the core of the IDE. The productivity win can not be overstated.

5. Personal IDE customization with NetBeans is faster, and more logically structured than Eclipse.

6. Productivity tools in the editor pane that puts common repetetive tasks during development (e.g. block comments) in view.

7. Superior CVS integration. Eclipse over generalizes SCM systems, and often requires doing certain SCM tasks outside of the tool.

8. NetBeans 4 has a sleek UI that does not get cluttered, is easy to configure, and has easy to remember icons.