5 ms·

My Eclipse experience with Java 8 was so bad, I switched to NetBeans

56 points by theotown 12y ago

programminggeek 12y ago
Why not just use IntelliJ?
- pron 12y ago
  IntelliJ is a great IDE, but personally I prefer NetBeans. The killer feature for me is the Gradle integration that is far superior in NetBeans, but I also find the GUI nicer and much more intuitive.
- skittles 12y ago
  I don't like IntelliJ, but I do like Netbeans for Java and PHP development. IntelliJ has a behavior that I can't stand (almost an OCD trigger for me). When I click on a page of code somewhere past the last character in a line, I expect the cursor to appear behind the last character. IntelliJ leaves it floating out in a very unsatisfying manner. I know that IntelliJ does auto formatting and that it doesn't really matter, but I feel real anxiety with this default behavior. And Netbeans is free for the full version. To me IntelliJ doesn't offer enough to pay for it.
  - bretthoerner 12y ago
    You know there are options and this can be easily disabled in seconds, right?
  - netcraft 12y ago
    You can turn this off easily, I believe it is called virtual space. I had the same reaction when I first started with intellij.
  - mushishi 12y ago
    You don't really know IntelliJ if you think that behaviour like that wasn't configurable. I can see why you wouldn't feel like paying. It might take a person who has put some real time into IntelliJ to see how much it offers. For future problems, the preferences view is searchable, as is many other view.
  - StevePerkins 12y ago
    File -> Settings -> Editor -> "Allow placement of caret after end of line". Uncheck. I'm not exactly a zealot for any particular tool, and I used Eclipse for almost a decade. However, after trying even the community edition of IntelliJ for a few weeks... I would feel like the guy in "Flowers for Algernon" if I ever had to go back. The community edition is actually open-source (Apache license). I ended up buying an ultimate edition license recently because of the Chronon debugger, but you don't NEED anything beyond the community edition unless you want deep IDE integration with Spring, JEE, or some other supported framework. Frankly, I'm not really using any paid features beyond Chronon...
    - latchkey 12y ago
      I'm in a similar boat. Used Eclipse forever. Even tried IntelliJ for a bit years ago and hated it. Tried it again recently after Eclipse crashed and trashed its workspace. Now I can't see ever going back to anything else. The killer feature for me oddly enough is: fuzzy search for a file
      - Meai 12y ago
        I can't stand the overcrowded popups in intellij (e.g: intellisense popups), there's just too much going on, all kinds of icons and extra info that is unnecessary. I have been able to customize away everything I dislike in intellij except for that.
        latchkey 12y ago
        Have you submitted an enhancement report asking for a design improvement? I've submitted several to them and gotten all sorts of great responses from them. If you don't give them feedback through the appropriate channels, then you aren't going to get improvement.
- depsypher 12y ago
  It may be well worth it, but shelling out $200 is not really a no-brainer when compared to free.
  - jasonlotito 12y ago
    If you are a hobbyist, sure. But if you are a programmer for a living, I see it as a no-brainer.
    - LeoNatan25 12y ago
      If you are a hobbyist, the community edition of IDEA is more than enough.
  - flavor8 12y ago
    IntelliJ community is free & open source. It's missing some of the enterprise features of the commercial version but it's still a fantastic IDE. There is a learning curve if you're used to eclipse, but it's worth it. Give it a week.
    - depsypher 12y ago
      A full throated defense of Eclipse is a difficult proposition, because there's so much very wrong with it. The article is right, getting Eclipse set up on Java 8 is a pain, and poorly documented. But it does work. And for free. With full "enterprise" features. Let's not lose sight of that. I would use the free community edition of IntelliJ, but I do java web development and need the full version to be on par with what Eclipse offers. The investment of time is as big a deal as the $200, so for now at least I stick with Eclipse.
      - TylerE 12y ago
        How much time does that take? If it's more than about half a day spending the money is a no-brainer if you're making anything like a living wage.
      - flavor8 12y ago
rch 12y ago
I was a little curious how this could be, so I checked around and came across this: "We can't legally include Java 8 tools in an Eclipse release before Java 8 itself is released. Based on the current java 8 release date estimate, we would be able to include support in the Luna (4.4.0) release."[0] And since the release date was 2014/3/18 [1] I really can't see why there would be much complaining, if any. [0] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=380190#c8 https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=380190#c8 [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=java+8+release+date https://www.google.com/search?q=java+8+release+date
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Because Netbeans and InteliJ were Java 8 ready on the release date?
  - rch 12y ago
    I've stuck with Eclipse (or have been stuck with it) because of the massive ecosystem of associated tools. It takes a lot of effort to predictably develop and release those tools without various projects stepping on one another. So, being a couple of months late just comes along naturally as a byproduct of that which is keeping me with it in the first place.
finalight 12y ago
intellij is good all in all, but then if you want to edit php, you have to use its sibling product; phpstorm furthermore, netbeans can recognize various amount of extension and can even format your codes nicely with alt + shift + f and i only use intellij when i want to deploy mobile application onto android...eclipse really dam buggy with the deployment
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jamespo 12y ago
  Can't you just download the php plugin for intellij ultimate?
  - cytzol 12y ago
    You can. The plugins for IntelliJ IDEA lag behind their separate-product counterparts, though: improvements to Python appear in PyCharm months before, same with PHP in WebStorm, etc.
    - dntrkv 12y ago
      WebStorm is a much better IDE for PHP, but if your primary language is Java, then the PHP plugin is more than sufficient.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- maaaats 12y ago
  Your comparison shows that you just don't know anything about IntelliJ, so why bother? CTRL+ALT+L to reformat code. Either a selection, a file, a directory, a scope, the whole project etc. You can use most PHP features in InstelliJ, just install the plugins. IntelliJ recognizes extensions and even notifies you that it has plugins that may be installed for the open extension.
bananas 12y ago
Same experience here. Couldn't get it working properly and ended up with netbeans after about an hour. Edit: for ref netbeans is pretty good. I hated it about 3-4 years ago and moved to eclipse but it's pretty amazing now.
gmb2k1 12y ago
The difference between Eclipse and Netbeans/IntelliJ is, that Eclipse is implementing its own Compiler while the other two are using Oracle's javac. That's why Eclipse didn't have Java8 support out of the box.
RyanZAG 12y ago
Is it just me who likes Eclipse? I originally used Netbeans, then swapped to Visual Studio for awhile while doing Windows dev, then moved to Eclipse. I tried using IntelliJ for awhile as well, but the javadoc popups are pretty awful and it's missing some of the nice plugins you can get for Eclipse. Eclipse has just always worked really well for me and I like it the most. Plus I really don't like the 'open core' method and Eclipse is just plain free software. EDIT: I'm running Java8 on my Eclipse right now including maven builds etc, and everything is working really well.
- lmm 12y ago
  I like eclipse, or at least need its features, but it always feels like a fragile program that needs lots of babysitting. In fact right now I'm on HN because I just cleaned a project to force eclipse to rebuild it because when I tried to run my program I got an AbstractMethodError (which should be impossible when running something you just built).
- kisstheblade 12y ago
  No, I also like eclipse the best. Maybe the most important thing is the SWT toolkit. Netbeans and intellij feel slow and clunky, and render fonts horribly (of course if you use linux or os x then the fonts are always a little too smoothed and blurry). Maybe 5-6 years ago eclipse crashed sometimes (or plugins made it crash), but now it hasn't crashed for at least two years. On mac again it seems to bring up the spinning beach ball or what do you call it sometimes. Also eclipse doesn't get in the way too much with too many autocompletes etc, it just does the things which are useful and does them fast and well. Intellij took forever to load all its unnecessary plugins and was constantly indexing something or other. Really horrible.
- y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
  I like eclipse too. It's the only editor that I know of that - I can configure to handle spaces/tabs/line endings the way I like (for example: I use tabs, but when I open a file that someone else made that uses spaces to indent code, the editor should understand this and use spaces instead) - works great with git - the package explorer is functional and gives a lot of info about the files I am working on - works great as js editor - works great as java editor (refactor/rename stuff, generate getters and setters/override methods, ...) - the outline view is really useful What makes me angry every time with eclipse tho, is that it is so awkwardly slow to startup, and the pauses it makes when building stuff in the background. If someone knows of a better editor that can do the things above, is quicker and mybe uses less memory too, I am sold.
mylons 12y ago
skip netbeans and move right on to intellij!
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
This just in: Eclipse is bad. This is shameless clickbait.
hugi 12y ago
Java 8 works fine for me in Eclipse? Took about 5 minutes to set up by following the instructions found on eclipse.org.
whatevsbro 12y ago
How about just switching to the best Java IDE on the market: IntelliJ IDEA? Sure, you'll have to pay for it, but you get what you pay for - both ways.
killertypo 12y ago
I dropped Eclipse a long time ago in favor of other IDEs. I like Eclipse a lot, it was my IDE of choice. I just got tired of all the plugins, the general sluggishness I felt using it, the oddities with it when it came to Maven support (sometimes having to completely close Eclipse / Relaunch for a maven build to work right). I had other oddities as well, such as totally biffing my SVN solution a time or two because of files getting locked that shouldn't have been locked. In the end I moved to IntelliJ and it's been wonderful. Been a bit different getting used to the keymapping, but overall it's been a good experience I have not looked back.
rbanffy 12y ago
It's just an IDE. Get over it.
- LeoNatan25 12y ago
  In the end of the day, developers spends most of their days in the IDE, so having a good environment is essential. If one is not satisfied with the working tools, it could lead to many frustrations and huge dissatisfaction. You need to "get over" yourself, and accept that people care what work tools they use.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    Exactly. That's why, if Eclipse is not making you happy, you should move to something that does. I've changed IDEs many, many times before and use different IDEs for different things: I prefer Eclipse for J2EE work and Android, but nothing used to beat NetBeans for J2ME. Many PHP'ers around me love NetBeans for PHP and I'm going to give it a try (we do a lot of PHP around here). I also used PyDev+Eclipse (after Eric) for Python stuff, but moved to Emacs a couple years ago and I like it a lot.

56 points by theotown 12y ago

programminggeek 12y ago

Why not just use IntelliJ?

pron 12y ago
IntelliJ is a great IDE, but personally I prefer NetBeans. The killer feature for me is the Gradle integration that is far superior in NetBeans, but I also find the GUI nicer and much more intuitive.
skittles 12y ago
I don't like IntelliJ, but I do like Netbeans for Java and PHP development. IntelliJ has a behavior that I can't stand (almost an OCD trigger for me). When I click on a page of code somewhere past the last character in a line, I expect the cursor to appear behind the last character. IntelliJ leaves it floating out in a very unsatisfying manner. I know that IntelliJ does auto formatting and that it doesn't really matter, but I feel real anxiety with this default behavior. And Netbeans is free for the full version. To me IntelliJ doesn't offer enough to pay for it.
- bretthoerner 12y ago
  You know there are options and this can be easily disabled in seconds, right?
- netcraft 12y ago
  You can turn this off easily, I believe it is called virtual space. I had the same reaction when I first started with intellij.
- mushishi 12y ago
  You don't really know IntelliJ if you think that behaviour like that wasn't configurable. I can see why you wouldn't feel like paying. It might take a person who has put some real time into IntelliJ to see how much it offers. For future problems, the preferences view is searchable, as is many other view.
- StevePerkins 12y ago
  File -> Settings -> Editor -> "Allow placement of caret after end of line". Uncheck. I'm not exactly a zealot for any particular tool, and I used Eclipse for almost a decade. However, after trying even the community edition of IntelliJ for a few weeks... I would feel like the guy in "Flowers for Algernon" if I ever had to go back. The community edition is actually open-source (Apache license). I ended up buying an ultimate edition license recently because of the Chronon debugger, but you don't NEED anything beyond the community edition unless you want deep IDE integration with Spring, JEE, or some other supported framework. Frankly, I'm not really using any paid features beyond Chronon...
  - latchkey 12y ago
    I'm in a similar boat. Used Eclipse forever. Even tried IntelliJ for a bit years ago and hated it. Tried it again recently after Eclipse crashed and trashed its workspace. Now I can't see ever going back to anything else. The killer feature for me oddly enough is: fuzzy search for a file
    - Meai 12y ago
      I can't stand the overcrowded popups in intellij (e.g: intellisense popups), there's just too much going on, all kinds of icons and extra info that is unnecessary. I have been able to customize away everything I dislike in intellij except for that.
      - latchkey 12y ago
        Have you submitted an enhancement report asking for a design improvement? I've submitted several to them and gotten all sorts of great responses from them. If you don't give them feedback through the appropriate channels, then you aren't going to get improvement.
depsypher 12y ago
It may be well worth it, but shelling out $200 is not really a no-brainer when compared to free.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  If you are a hobbyist, sure. But if you are a programmer for a living, I see it as a no-brainer.
  - LeoNatan25 12y ago
    If you are a hobbyist, the community edition of IDEA is more than enough.
- flavor8 12y ago
  IntelliJ community is free & open source. It's missing some of the enterprise features of the commercial version but it's still a fantastic IDE. There is a learning curve if you're used to eclipse, but it's worth it. Give it a week.
  - depsypher 12y ago
    A full throated defense of Eclipse is a difficult proposition, because there's so much very wrong with it. The article is right, getting Eclipse set up on Java 8 is a pain, and poorly documented. But it does work. And for free. With full "enterprise" features. Let's not lose sight of that. I would use the free community edition of IntelliJ, but I do java web development and need the full version to be on par with what Eclipse offers. The investment of time is as big a deal as the $200, so for now at least I stick with Eclipse.
    - TylerE 12y ago
      How much time does that take? If it's more than about half a day spending the money is a no-brainer if you're making anything like a living wage.
    - flavor8 12y ago

rch 12y ago

I was a little curious how this could be, so I checked around and came across this: "We can't legally include Java 8 tools in an Eclipse release before Java 8 itself is released. Based on the current java 8 release date estimate, we would be able to include support in the Luna (4.4.0) release."[0] And since the release date was 2014/3/18 [1] I really can't see why there would be much complaining, if any. [0] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=380190#c8 https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=380190#c8 [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=java+8+release+date https://www.google.com/search?q=java+8+release+date

pjmlp 12y ago
Because Netbeans and InteliJ were Java 8 ready on the release date?
- rch 12y ago
  I've stuck with Eclipse (or have been stuck with it) because of the massive ecosystem of associated tools. It takes a lot of effort to predictably develop and release those tools without various projects stepping on one another. So, being a couple of months late just comes along naturally as a byproduct of that which is keeping me with it in the first place.

finalight 12y ago

intellij is good all in all, but then if you want to edit php, you have to use its sibling product; phpstorm furthermore, netbeans can recognize various amount of extension and can even format your codes nicely with alt + shift + f and i only use intellij when i want to deploy mobile application onto android...eclipse really dam buggy with the deployment

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jamespo 12y ago
Can't you just download the php plugin for intellij ultimate?
- cytzol 12y ago
  You can. The plugins for IntelliJ IDEA lag behind their separate-product counterparts, though: improvements to Python appear in PyCharm months before, same with PHP in WebStorm, etc.
  - dntrkv 12y ago
    WebStorm is a much better IDE for PHP, but if your primary language is Java, then the PHP plugin is more than sufficient.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
maaaats 12y ago
Your comparison shows that you just don't know anything about IntelliJ, so why bother? CTRL+ALT+L to reformat code. Either a selection, a file, a directory, a scope, the whole project etc. You can use most PHP features in InstelliJ, just install the plugins. IntelliJ recognizes extensions and even notifies you that it has plugins that may be installed for the open extension.

bananas 12y ago

Same experience here. Couldn't get it working properly and ended up with netbeans after about an hour. Edit: for ref netbeans is pretty good. I hated it about 3-4 years ago and moved to eclipse but it's pretty amazing now.

gmb2k1 12y ago

The difference between Eclipse and Netbeans/IntelliJ is, that Eclipse is implementing its own Compiler while the other two are using Oracle's javac. That's why Eclipse didn't have Java8 support out of the box.

RyanZAG 12y ago

Is it just me who likes Eclipse? I originally used Netbeans, then swapped to Visual Studio for awhile while doing Windows dev, then moved to Eclipse. I tried using IntelliJ for awhile as well, but the javadoc popups are pretty awful and it's missing some of the nice plugins you can get for Eclipse. Eclipse has just always worked really well for me and I like it the most. Plus I really don't like the 'open core' method and Eclipse is just plain free software. EDIT: I'm running Java8 on my Eclipse right now including maven builds etc, and everything is working really well.

lmm 12y ago
I like eclipse, or at least need its features, but it always feels like a fragile program that needs lots of babysitting. In fact right now I'm on HN because I just cleaned a project to force eclipse to rebuild it because when I tried to run my program I got an AbstractMethodError (which should be impossible when running something you just built).
kisstheblade 12y ago
No, I also like eclipse the best. Maybe the most important thing is the SWT toolkit. Netbeans and intellij feel slow and clunky, and render fonts horribly (of course if you use linux or os x then the fonts are always a little too smoothed and blurry). Maybe 5-6 years ago eclipse crashed sometimes (or plugins made it crash), but now it hasn't crashed for at least two years. On mac again it seems to bring up the spinning beach ball or what do you call it sometimes. Also eclipse doesn't get in the way too much with too many autocompletes etc, it just does the things which are useful and does them fast and well. Intellij took forever to load all its unnecessary plugins and was constantly indexing something or other. Really horrible.
y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
I like eclipse too. It's the only editor that I know of that - I can configure to handle spaces/tabs/line endings the way I like (for example: I use tabs, but when I open a file that someone else made that uses spaces to indent code, the editor should understand this and use spaces instead) - works great with git - the package explorer is functional and gives a lot of info about the files I am working on - works great as js editor - works great as java editor (refactor/rename stuff, generate getters and setters/override methods, ...) - the outline view is really useful What makes me angry every time with eclipse tho, is that it is so awkwardly slow to startup, and the pauses it makes when building stuff in the background. If someone knows of a better editor that can do the things above, is quicker and mybe uses less memory too, I am sold.

mylons 12y ago

skip netbeans and move right on to intellij!

Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago

This just in: Eclipse is bad. This is shameless clickbait.

hugi 12y ago

Java 8 works fine for me in Eclipse? Took about 5 minutes to set up by following the instructions found on eclipse.org.

whatevsbro 12y ago

How about just switching to the best Java IDE on the market: IntelliJ IDEA? Sure, you'll have to pay for it, but you get what you pay for - both ways.

killertypo 12y ago

I dropped Eclipse a long time ago in favor of other IDEs. I like Eclipse a lot, it was my IDE of choice. I just got tired of all the plugins, the general sluggishness I felt using it, the oddities with it when it came to Maven support (sometimes having to completely close Eclipse / Relaunch for a maven build to work right). I had other oddities as well, such as totally biffing my SVN solution a time or two because of files getting locked that shouldn't have been locked. In the end I moved to IntelliJ and it's been wonderful. Been a bit different getting used to the keymapping, but overall it's been a good experience I have not looked back.

rbanffy 12y ago

It's just an IDE. Get over it.

LeoNatan25 12y ago
In the end of the day, developers spends most of their days in the IDE, so having a good environment is essential. If one is not satisfied with the working tools, it could lead to many frustrations and huge dissatisfaction. You need to "get over" yourself, and accept that people care what work tools they use.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  Exactly. That's why, if Eclipse is not making you happy, you should move to something that does. I've changed IDEs many, many times before and use different IDEs for different things: I prefer Eclipse for J2EE work and Android, but nothing used to beat NetBeans for J2ME. Many PHP'ers around me love NetBeans for PHP and I'm going to give it a try (we do a lot of PHP around here). I also used PyDev+Eclipse (after Eric) for Python stuff, but moved to Emacs a couple years ago and I like it a lot.