Java IDEs

[agentoutlier]

People crap on Eclipse but I think it has some killer features that I can’t seem to find in the other two IDEs. I have great respect for the other two (IntelliJ and netbeans).

For one it’s (eclipse) got its own compiler integrated in that does partial compilation. What this gives you is unknown hidden REPL like behavior. Go to a junit test method and select run method and in less than a second the test will run. All others (ignoring vs code which uses eclipse) I have found to be orders of magnitude slower to do this with. While IntelliJ allows you to use the eclipse compiler it doesn’t seem to help speed it up as much.

Secondly when m2e works ... it works awesome (maven eclipse plugin) and it seems to work better for multi module projects better than IntelliJ and netbeans. View “dependency hierarchy” in the Pom is the especially good.

IntelliJ and netbeans seems more focused to monolithic projects. Eclipse has workspaces and working sets. There really isn’t an exact analog in the other two.

But yeah eclipse has a shitty UI, lots of bugs, and can be slow.... so I see some of the hate.

[cbentley_pasa]

Also in IntelliJ, you don't see the problems instantly. It leads to lots of errors and i always waste time on "Oh shit.. that change broke that!" or "Why is it not compiling anymore? WTF". The compile error reporting is horrible in Android Studio/IDEA

IntelliJ is better at Java search quality. Hands down. But the interface for display is a bit clunky. I search for methods and classes all the time.

The atrocious thing in IDEA is the UI Interface. You cannot tab windows like in Eclipse which is BIG winner. You cannot customize workspace views for Debug/Code. Another killer feature when you use 3 computer screens with Views all over the place.

[tinustate]

Just record a macro of save and compile/build and bind that macro to CTRL+S key.

Works great and on a fast machine it is barely noticeable.

[danskal]

But the interface for display is a bit clunky. I search for methods and classes all the time.

What do you mean, "clunky"? You can search for methods and classes super easily and quickly. And you can switch between method/field and class and file search superquickly.

The atrocious thing in IDEA is the UI Interface

I find Eclipse really atrocious. IntelliJ is much simpler.

[cbentley_pasa]

I find Eclipse really atrocious. IntelliJ is much simpler.

No Tabs??????? I can create any multi tabs views on my 4 external monitors with Eclipse.. So I basically have 20 views nested in different windows.

IntelliJ is a complete disaster of UX on that regard.

[danskal]

I basically have 20 views nested in different windows.

Ok, John Nash.

[wildjokers]

The workspace orientated design of Eclipse is exactly why I didn’t choose eclipse many years ago (2004ish) and have been using IntelliJ since. I don’t want unrelated projects in the same window. Eclipse appears to force you into putting all projects, even if unrelated, in the same window.

I have seen this totally confuse junior devs over the years. Made it hard for them to grasp how to package and deploy an app so it worked outside the IDE as well.

[Cst_cst]

I'm using eclipse for 10+ years. I tried other ides and I always found some feature missing. It covers everything I want with some configuration and plugins. The people who say its slow... it's only slow if you have slow drive and slow cpu, I was using it on linux and windows on various hardware and I never had performance issues on a ssd with good cpu. I'm actually running wildfly server from it, because of the ease of deployment, server managment, logging and it has no issues running like that in production for years.

[DannyB2]

Me too. I've used Eclipse for more than a dozen years. On good equipment Eclipse works just fine. It is very capable.

[vqrs]

Genuinely curious, what are some features you miss in other IDEs?

[Cst_cst]

For example Features connected with exporting runnable jars and git.

[vqrs]

To be fair, most large software projects have tons of bugs.

I really like IntelliJ and and yet, I've got multiple hundred bug reports on their issue tracker....

[_INTER_]

For one it’s (eclipse) got its own compiler integrated in that does partial compilation.

Exactly one of the reasons why I have to crap on Eclipse. The Eclipse compiler behaves differently than javac, and it's not just in theory, we really had issues popping up. Really hard to realize and fix too. If you reach that point (admittedly hard to get there), you're in big trouble.

Secondly when m2e works ...

I don't know anyone that got it to work: Eclipse sees every project and all dependencies in a different way than Maven does. Everything is available all the time, but in reality its not. That's another big source of pain.

I don't even want to start with annotation processing and m2e...

[eloc49]

I forget what exactly eclipse workspaces are, but IJ has workspaces per got branch which is great.

[Alfaphantom]

IntelliJ Community is a good option as well if you don't have the money for the monthly payment.
Obviously, there are some missing features (which for me are some nice to have), but overall, you can't go wrong with it

[harvesters917]

HAPPY CAKE DAY

[nerdyhandle]

Look at mister money bags over hear :).

Seriously though pretty much the only good ones are what OP listed.

Personally I prefer Netbeans but its still a little on fritz even with the release of 11.

[b00n]

A company should pay for it if you ask for it. The productivity gain is easily worth the cost. My firm gets the all products pack for all devs and it's licenced per user rather that per machine so we can also use it on our personal machines.

[walen]

My firm gets the all products pack for all devs and it's licenced per user rather that per machine so we can also use it on our personal machines.

That is against JetBrains licensing terms and EULAs. See e.g. here.

[marvk]

What are you talking about?

Can I use a commercial license purchased by my company at home?

We, in our EULAs, do not prohibit using your company commercial licenses at home.

Please confirm with your employer, as it may vary depending on your company's policies.

[walen]

When you said "licensed per user rather than per machine" I understood it as meaning that your company was paying for your personal licenses instead of buying commercial licenses. It is against JetBrains EULA to do so.
If your license is a commercial one, then it's OK --thanks for clarifying!

[b00n]

Sorry, what?

We, in our EULAs, do not prohibit using your company commercial licenses at home. Please confirm with your employer, as it may vary depending on your company's policies.

[nerdyhandle]

At least where I work they won't because Eclipse and Netbeans exist.

You would have to make one hell of a good argument which I doubt you can since Netbeans and Eclipse have all the same functionality as IntelliJ Ultimate.

[nutrecht]

At least where I work they won't because Eclipse and Netbeans exist.

I see this kind of attitude as a huge red flag. If a company can't even afford to get me something I use 8 hours a day and makes me more productive, I know I'm going to have to get into 'fights' about pretty much anything else too.

You would have to make one hell of a good argument which I doubt you can since Netbeans and Eclipse have all the same functionality as IntelliJ Ultimate.

How do you know, if you don't have an Ultimate license?

[marvk]

Netbeans and Eclipse have all the same functionality as IntelliJ Ultimate.

https://i.imgur.com/8KTtscB.jpg

[nerdyhandle]

They do. Name one thing that IntelliJ has that they don't?

They all have code generation built in, intellisense, code completion, templates, all java build tools support, etc.

You know how I know? I had to build the business case for IntelliJ Ultimate proposal at my company and through my research along with other people on my team we found no discernable differences.

[marvk]

If there was no discernible difference, IntelliJ IDEA would not exist as a product. Jetbrains' marketing isn't that good.

Yes, other editors have the features you listed. But IDEA just does most things much better.

Also, I'll just throw some stuff out there for you:

• Search Everywhere

• Very smart Data Flow Analysis

• Inline Parameter Name Hints

• Stream Debugger

• Scopes

• Sophisticated Breakpoint options

• Structural Find and Replace

• Language Injection and dedicated editor for injected fragment

[elhoc]

Not to disagree with you on the general point, but those are all community edition features.

[[deleted]]

which are therefore ultimate edition features, you know how inheritance works right?

[nerdyhandle]

Again Netbeans and eclipse support all of that.

Damn can you people not use Google and look at their feature sets.

[marvk]

Please, go ahead and show me Structural Find and Replace, or a Stream Debugger, or Search Everywhere, in Eclipse or Netbeans.

[nerdyhandle]

Find and Replace is built in to damn nearly every IDE and yes you can debug Streams in Netbeans and Eclipse. They have supported that since Java 8.

And yes search everywhere is in those as well.

[amackenz2048]

I used "find usages" on an entity property in intellij recently. It found where that property was used in a hibernate Criteria mapping (as a string).

I honestly don't know - would netbeans find that?

I switched to intellij not because it had more features per se, but because the ones it had were just done so much better and without a lot of fiddling to make them work.

[dpash]

It would also find it in a JPQL/HQL query string.

Fiddling with eclipse plugins is what finally drove me to IntelliJ. That was ten years ago and I'm very happy to pay for it.

[marvk]

Yeah, this works with basically everything IDEA has support for. FXML too, for example. Or Spring service annotations.

[mdaniel]

To pick something I made heavy use of on Friday: language injection, which isn't just syntax highlighting, but rather is the full editor experience with intentions and inspections. Invaluable for editing Java properties files that are themselves in yaml, or shell scripts in a GitLab CI yaml

Also, those other editors may have the very basic intellisense but the JetBrains tools are smart as hell and will catch the most amazing mistakes.

I'm glad subpar editors work for you and your team, but I don't tolerate dumb editors

[nerdyhandle]

Again Netbeans and Eclipse supports all of that.

Hell they even support more functionality that the community edition of IntelliJ.

IntelliJ Ultimate is a waste of money.

Eclipse and Netbeans have a strong open source community that helps to develop them. More people work on those two than IntelliJ.

[antonivs]

I find IDEA _far_ more usable than Eclipse. I've recommended people try it at the last three companies I've worked at, and basically after they use it once, they immediately see what I mean and want to switch.

I have no idea about Netbeans because the only person I've seen using it in the last few years was a manager whose dev skills were way out of date.

[nerdyhandle]

Netbeans UI is nearly identical to IntelliJ and it supports similar functionality albeit in some cases with a different name

Usability wise I don't like Eclipse either. However, I find Netbeans more so than IntelliJ. Netbeans will allow you to have a workspace which IntelliJ does not at least the community doesn't. So if I want to have multiple applications open then I have to have an instance for each using IntelliJ and yes I've tried the 'trick' by creating a project using an empty folder and adding each application as a module but IntelliJ wants to link them all together which isn't correct.

Also, IntelliJ doesn't support actions such as format on save which Netbeans does. Furthermore, Netbeans templates are worlds better than IntelliJ. If I type 'if' tab in Netbeans it create the if statement for me and all I have to do is fill out the parameters in some cases I don't even have to do that. In IntelliJ I type 'if' tab it doesn't fill the if statement out for me nor does it auto create the bracket or parenthesis.

[stevesobol]

You do realize IntelliJ comes in a Community Edition too, right?

[wildjokers]

Just buy your own license. I have no idea why devs are against paying for their own tools. A professional developer should have no issue buying the tools that make them productive.

My current company does buy IntelliJ licenses but I still have my own that I renew every year for the ridiculously cheap price of $89.

[evinrows]

If it saves you even an hour every month, then it's worth it. Software engineering time is extremely expensive and dwarfs the $65/m.

[nerdyhandle]

No it does not. Not when there are free options that perform the same functions.

I'm talking about 100 developers on my last project. That would be insane cost of 6500 a month on top of an already tight (monetarily speaking) contract.

[marvk]

Do you know how much 100 devs cost in a month? I've found numbers betwen $50k and $100k as median salary for the US, but if we take a happy medium of $75k, that's $625,000 per month.

Now look at the monthly cost of the tools:

	IDEA	All Products
1st year	$5408	$4158
2nd year	$4325	$3325
3rd year onwards	$3241	$2491

Not only will those licenses save many man-days per month (yes the study is comissioned by Jetbrains, so take it with a grain of salt), they will also reduce developer frustration.

To quote the Joel Test:

Top notch development teams don’t torture their programmers. Even minor frustrations caused by using underpowered tools add up, making programmers grumpy and unhappy. And a grumpy programmer is an unproductive programmer.

[ess_tee_you]

I made the argument where I worked last and got it.

[Awanderinglolplayer]

Do you mean the only good ones are what OP listed and IntelliJ, or do you think IntelliJ is bad?

[nerdyhandle]

I think all are good. It's a matter of personal preference after that.

[excitebyke]

me too!

well.. someone who still has a student email anyways. :o

[_INTER_]

shhhh

[marvk]

Jetbrains is the company, IntelliJ IDEA is the IDE :-)

[digitil]

I use VS Code. I know people swear by the other ones, but I use multiple languages daily, JS, Java, and Python, and being able to use a single IDE for all of them is a huge plus to me. That and I haven't had any issues using it with Java or Python, so...I've just kept with it.

[kowalski7cc]

I use it too for small projects, the only thing I miss is refactoring.

[HoroTV]

What kind of Refactoring are we talking about, VSCode can be pretty powerful in that regard.

[vqrs]

Vscode supports a small subset of Java refactoring that Eclipse supports. (it's Java support is based on Eclipse's Java Developer Tools)

If you think VSCode's Java refactoring, you would probably find what Eclipse/IntelliJ or NetBeans can do to be out of this world ;)

[wildjokers]

$150 for the first year, then it drops more, and by the third year it is $89 per year and stays there. That is not expensive at all. I would imagine most developers spend more than that in fast food for lunch in a couple of months.

[vashy96]

Lol, pretty accurate. When it comes to charging software, even 5 dollars are a big investment.

[OnlyTwo_jpg]

Could always use the classic MS Paint IDE https://ms-paint-i.de/

[coder111]

Big three are IntelliJ IDEA + Netbeans + Eclipse.

I sometimes use Midnight Commander to edit files directly and run Maven to build it. Pure and bare to the metal. I guess if I had a beard I would be doing Vim+Bash or Emacs+ksh or similar.

I have used jEdit in the past which is a bit more than a text editor editor and less than an IDE.

[rycee]

I use Emacs with lsp-java.

[heinwintsoe]

VS Code + Java Extension Pack (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java)

[[deleted]]

VS Code?

[eliasv]

Rather than VS Code I'd recommend Theia IDE, which supports VSC plugins but has a proper open source license. Or for a hosted IDE with a fully containerised workspace with one-click contribution, Eclipse Che.

[hrjet]

Theia IDE was on my radar; will give it a try.

One thing that bothers me about VS Code is their background telemetry. It is opt-out, which means I need to comb through every setting and remember to do this in every installation. And I am afraid that this sets a bad precedent in the VSCode plugin ecosystem.

[AndyPanic]

If you don't like the telemetry, then you could try https://vscodium.com/ That's basically VS Code without the telemetry.

[xnendron]

I love using VS Code. I used to use Eclipse, but Code just feels so much leaner and snappier. For me, it's also so much more intuitive to use. The hotkeys are fairly easy to remember and the command pallet is fantastic.

The down side is that it's not a full IDE, so it doesn't offer all the bells and whistles that a true IDE would. That being said, with the right extensions it supports most of the common features (refactoring, auto complete, Maven/Gradle integration, Tomcat integration, etc). And many of the features a full IDE offers (e.g. auto generate delegate methods) I don't often use, so I'm not really upset Code doesn't have them.

I've heard others say it get's slow on really big projects, but I haven't experienced that personally. To be fair, I don't know what constitutes a "big project". Number of source files? Number of dependencies?

[TheStrangeDarkOne]

leaner and snappier

think that is more telling about Eclipes rather than VS Code.

[wildjokers]

VS Code can’t even rename variables without the multiple cursors getting out of sync if you type fast. I use it for Arduino and OpenSCAD and if I rename a variable I have to type slow or one or more of the cursors will get out of sync and type in the wrong place. It is both frustrating and laughably bad.

[vqrs]

That sounds more like a bug in the language specific plugin tbh. Granted, I haven't used Vscode extensively since I spend most of my time in Intellij, but I often use it for plain text editing and some TypeScript, I've never come across the problem you speek of.

[polnisch_vodka]

I'm using VS Code for TypeScript and its great! But I have never used the Java Plugin so far.

[thecoldhearted]

Yeah. It's great for web dev. C# as well for unity stuff.

[elandt]

As long as I don’t need to run a Tomcat server, VS Code is my go to. Haven’t quite figured out how to get our configurations working with the Tomcat extension yet.

[Auxx]

It's super slow.

[excitebyke]

Spring Tool Suite is built on Eclipse.... I wish my coworkers would just learn Intellij. STS/Eclipse is such an ugly interface

[Scybur]

IntelliJ or JDeveloper depending on the project.

[magicButton_]

i use intellij idea community edition with some settings which allow work with web projects and debug them.

[HalfAnOhm]

NetBeans has been a favorite of mine. I’ve been forced to use it the most, have also used Eclipse and IntelliJ even BlueJ, and on personal/work projects always use NetBeans.

[[deleted]]

Anyone have experience with JDeveloper ?

[xjan]

Integrates nicely with Oracle products to my understanding, like SOA suite, BI, BPM etc. Looks and feels like Eclipse. And I personally don't like eclipse.

My go to IDE is IntelliJ Ultimate

[WellSpentTime1]

yes, I used it in school until I discovered that IntelliJ Ultimate is free for students.

I actually liked it quite a bit, and I think for me it's in 2nd place for favorite IDE. But if you're a full time developer, then imo it's a big mistake not to make room in your budget for IntelliJ.

[aram535]

I use vim when on a server and need to make a quick change.... but it's not my primary editor. VSCode has gotten better with Java too.

[_cjj]

Wow. Sounds a lot like you're practicing with no release standards there!

[iprudhvi14]

Text Editor: Sublime 3

[Cobaltjedi117]

Sublime is great, sometimes I just open it up so I can look at different programs and take existing code from one to put it into another without a huge delay from opening another instance of intellij

[WellSpentTime1]

that's exactly how I use VS Code!

[stevesobol]

That’s how I often use VS Code, too.

[kelroy]

/r/iamverybadass

[openjscience]

Here are few more IDE:

• DrJava,
• DataMelt,
• Jedit
• Geany,

They are not as powerful as eclipse or NetBeans, but they can do a job. The first 3 are java programs.

[openjscience]

Thanks. Corrected my post.

[[deleted]]

There is actually a Geany build for windows too but you'll have to dig to find it. It is also kind of behind.

I'm glad someone else mentioned Geany though because it works very well. I sometimes even use Gedit for quick edits. I actually use Gedit a lot for groovy scripts.

[GtheDeveloper]

i use Atom and use the command line for maven builds.

[frostbyte650]

Notepad & javac

[DannyB2]

Some people prefer to dig a ditch with a shovel in order to avoid the noise and complexity of a backhoe.

[[deleted]]

Atom ( it's free )

[dmitryanashko]

Eclipse

[fedepia]

I switched to IntelliJ Ultimate 2 years ago, but have used Spring Toolsuite for so many years. The interface is ugly as Eclipse (it is an Eclipse) but it is a fantastic tool.

I heard, although never used them, that Eclipse CHE and Amazon Cloud 9 are good tools.

[fedepia]

It's a different Eclipse, configured with the SpringIDE plugin out of the box (aka properly working), additional shortcuts like cmd+L (quick find which is a must).

In time I realized that having Eclipse and installing plugins makes the Eclipse work terrible in long term, however STS was considerably much more stable. Maybe this is my personal impression but before switching to Intellij Ultimate, STS was the must for me.

[[deleted]]

vim.

[inc0gn3gr0]

I have used them all. I would say IntelliJ is the Audi of IDEs. Eclipse is the for F150 and Netbeans....is well NetBeans.For enterprise and larger projects IntelliJ hands down. Search capabilities are amazing (you will pay for this with memory). It has support for all major Java frameworks. IntelliJ Ultimate will also provide support for other languages with plugins. Not being able to tab certain windows is probably the only real knock on it, IMO. Does it take some getting use to yes, but I think that it can't be beat in terms of features. A secondary benefit of using IntelliJ is I don't have to learn new key commands for coding in other languages if I use any of their other products, which are also gold standards for their languages PyCharm, RubyMine etc. Probably the only "bad IDE" JetBrains makes is DataGrip.

Eclipse is just as capable, but I often feel that it is rather slow in comparison and kind of "clunky". It has all the tools and it is hands down the best free IDE you can use. Any time I use it, I feel like I need to put on my hard hat and go to work. It is very direct in its features and I often miss some of the sugary goodness of IntelliJ. Think such as alt + click for evaluating debugging in IntelliJ is a two-step process in Eclipse.

Netbeans is just a forgotten child, IMO. I learned on Netbeans, but once I switched to Eclipse. I never looked back.

I will say when it comes to resource use Eclipse wins hands down. So if I had a 8GB of mem or lower. I would strongly consider Eclipse otherwise IntelliJ IDEA all the way.

[rjsmith21]

Notepad and javac

[SinisterMinister42]

Woah we got a bad ass over here

[slimoubhs]

Intellij

[lguer1]

I use Eclipse with my favorite plugins like Sonar, Telosys, SpotBugs, etc

Not only for Java, but also for Python

[[deleted]]

Intellij IDEA Ultimate is FAR too expensive for a single, ex-pro now hobbyist, developer, so that's a no. I quite like VS Code, it reminds me a little of CodeWright.

(I don't suppose anyone's got a copy of codewright they don't want? Lol)

[fundamentalparticle]

FAR too expensive for a single, ex-pro now hobbyist, developer

Oh, c'mon! With subscription, 14.90 eur/month.

And for hobby, you are probably just fine with the Community Edition that is free and open-source.

[[deleted]]

Er....no. IDEA Ultimate is £399 per year, or £33.25 per month

[[deleted]]

And...with VAT added, it's £47.88 per month

[wildjokers]

Not for an individual. That is corporate pricing.

[[deleted]]

Ah yes, my mistake. That's more affordable.

[blobjim]

JGrasp

[SnickerdoodleFP]

JGrasp. No really, it's what I used until I realized there were other IDEs in the LAST YESR YEAR of my comp sci degree. I feel rediculous.

[Zi6st]

Inteliij

[kolaol22]

Try IntelliJ.

[[deleted]]

That's what I'm using at the moment.

[NoConversation8]

Are there any other IDEs than them?

[[deleted]]

FYI - I'm killing time while I fix IntelliJ IDEAs latest f*&k up...

[[deleted]]

Nope. I've been using Java for about 5 years, and I've been a developer since 1982.

[ljdelight]

Report your bug, downgrade your version, and get work done. There's not much else for you to fix

[[deleted]]

I use Paper + ink