It has been a long time since I've touched Java but back then, Eclipse was my favorite. Netbeans was good too but but I liked that Eclipse supported all the various types of projects and had plugins for multiple languages, even Python (PyDEV) and PHP (PDT)!
But a lot has changed since 2012, I moved on to Python and simple code editors like Atom and Notepad++, and the IDE world also went in a totally different direction.
Another thing that happened was Google stopped supporting Eclipse in around 2016 and that shifted the focus from Eclipse to Android Studio, an IDE from Intellij company. I'm not much into android programming but AS is perhaps your only limited option if you choose to go into that direction.
But the most important question is what do developers prefer these days? Do you prefer Intellij over Eclipse or vice versa?
Top comments (9)
For me, I've always preferred Intellij to Eclipse. There is just something about the Eclipse UI that I never fully liked. The functionality of Eclipse is very good, but when you spend so much of your day looking at the same program, it has to be a nice place to be.
This is where IntelliJ comes in for me, with the vast array of themes and customization option for the UI, and also has a lot of nice functionality. As a side point, I love all the other apps from Jetbrains too (PyCharm, WebStorm, etc...) as the same applies to them.
While what you are saying is true and even I like Intellij interface a lot, I still think eclipse user adoption should increase today even if it is just to maintain the diversity in the IDE ecosystem. Intellij is slowly and steadily becoming the Google of the IDE world as other IDEs like eclipse and netbeans are being shunned aside one by one.
Eclipse is alright, never had an issue with it. Spring Tool Suite, which is a wrapper around Eclipse, is nice for back end development.
But I love IntelliJ. Though I don't love how it can take a while to load if it hasn't been used in a while.
Never used NetBeans.
I used to use Eclipse until I switched to Netbeans some 2 years ago (I think). I now use IntelliJ at work and I hate it. I really don't get why people like it. Recently I started using Visual Studio Code more and more. I think it might become my main development IDE very soon as it gains more and more features and becoming more stable.
Eclipse is very good for starting off in but it feels quite basic compared to IntelliJ. IntelliJ seems to have a much more modern UI and feel as well as being compatible with anything under the sun with certain plugins. One feature I do miss is the Workspace feature from Eclipse but other than that, I am a solid IntelliJ fan!
IntelliJ all the way, I used netbeans for about 5 years .. I was so blind
May I ask what exactly do you like in Intellij which isn't there in eclipse or netbeans?
I used eclipse for android development, so far I never had any problem I just feel the IDE too slow and the learning curve to do everything I used to do in netbeans was taking time.
For netbeans, my problem is the IDE depends a lot of it's configuration structure, every project is invaded with folders and files of configuration and if you remove/delete something you will be unable to load the project in netbeans.
why not try theia instead of any of these !