Most common Java IDE in industry?

1Wolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
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I was just wondering what you feel the most common IDE for Java used out in industry is?

Which Java IDE do you think has the best features?

Thanks!
 
The major ones are Netbeans and Eclipse. I think Eclipse is the most common, but they are both widely used and generally solid and full featured. The common complaints these days are actually more of bloat than of lacking features. FWIW, (which may not be much as I'm a year or two out of date on the Java side of things) I always liked working with Netbeans marginally better, but had significantly better luck with plugin support from 3rd parties with Eclipse (notably Android tools).
 
I would think Eclipse still gets lots of use, but most of the Java devs I've met at conferences are all in love with IntelliJ. I used it for some Flex and Java stuff and liked it. It has some very nice git integration. The autocomplete used to be a little slow, but I've heard from others that it has improved quite a bit recently. I thought project setup had a bit of a learning curve, but after a few times, you get used to it. It's a bit of culture shock if you come from an eclipse based editor background.

Last time I used it, which was the v 11 EAP, Android debugging was really slow. It may have improved. If I did more Java, I'd probably pick IntelliJ as my primary.
 
those are the main three. You should try them all to see which has the best support for what you need to do.
 
I use Eclipse, I've used NetBeans before, but to me they are about equal. I'm used to using Eclipse and it doesn't seem worth relearning another IDE just to do the same thing.

I've heard IntelliJ has some really nice features. They have a free and and paid version. I can't remember the specific differences, but I do alot of Java now, and I have considered purchasing it. In the end, if adds 15 minutes of productivity a day, it quickly pays for itself. However, I have my Eclipse environment configured exactly how I want it for the project I'm on, so I won't switch until I'm done with this.

Also, if you are on a team, using the same IDE as others on the team is valuable because you can bounce questions about configuration off each other. We have all sorts of documents in Confluence that detail how to setup Eclipse for our environment.
 
Thanks everyone!

I'm recently in the job market. I haven't used Java in years so I'm somewhere between beginner and intermediate. I'm brushing up on my skills and wanted to find out what IDE might be most commonly used out there.

Thanks!
 
eclipse also has a ton of plugins for it. I use it for a lot of other things besides java. Pydev for python, theres xml editors, c/c++ (cdt), etc.

although they are of varying quality, and not as good as the java plugin.
 
Eclipse, there is also Flash Builder which is flash support built on top of regular eclipse developed custom by Adobe.

Eclipse is really all you need, with the provided plugins of course.
 
We use intellij, though we have a few (of our best) devs using eclipse. The main problem with having several different IDE's is managing dependencies in version control, and if those guys where not among the most talented devs they would probably be forced to switch to intellij.

The main difference between free and paid intellij is support of languages, if you are just working with Java the free one is fine, but actionscript requires the paid version. If you go with intellij definately look at the free one and only pay if there is really some feature you need.

I have not looked at eclipse a lot, but it does seem there is a more lively plugin infrastructure. It has a great memory dump analyzer which I use as standalone, and possibly better frameworks for desktop (awt?) development.
 
Last few places I've been at have all used eclipse, although at one of them people also used intellij and emacs...
 
eclipse and netbeans are the major ones.

i went from netbeans to eclipse because eclipse was more popular.
 
We use intellij, though we have a few (of our best) devs using eclipse. The main problem with having several different IDE's is managing dependencies in version control, and if those guys where not among the most talented devs they would probably be forced to switch to intellij.

The main difference between free and paid intellij is support of languages, if you are just working with Java the free one is fine, but actionscript requires the paid version. If you go with intellij definately look at the free one and only pay if there is really some feature you need.

I have not looked at eclipse a lot, but it does seem there is a more lively plugin infrastructure. It has a great memory dump analyzer which I use as standalone, and possibly better frameworks for desktop (awt?) development.

Have you heard of maven before?

maven.apache.org


check it out, it makes dependency management a breeze.
 
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+1 for eclipse, seems like it has a harder learning curve than the others though.
 
Have you heard of maven before?

maven.apache.org


check it out, it makes dependency management a breeze.

It's an old very large project, but there has been talk about moving to maven. At the time it was made maven was not where it's at today.

And the main problem currently is not so much dependencies on the libraries themselves, rather between modules... But yeah, maven is probably in our future.
 
^ Eclipse as well. Solid IDE, and pretty much a standard with the companies I work with.
 
Jgrasp!

I love netbeans over Eclipse, but sometimes things compile in Eclipse that don't in netbeans. My school used Jgrasp and it vastly helped me in the learning process of form and style because its like a text editor but has some great debug and step through features.

However, Eclipse is probably on top.
 
We use intellij. I used to be a big eclipse fan, but the biggest points for intellij is the fact that everything just "works" right out of the box. Subversion, Maven, ANT, everything is autodetected and configured. Eclipse always required 30-60 minutes of "setup" for a fresh install because both subversion and maven require 3rd party plugin support. Plus I've had issues with some of the plugins crapping out.
 
IntelliJ here. When you work with a HUGE codebase, Eclipse tends to shit itself while IntelliJ may run a bit slow at start when it indexes and scans but it works like a charm later on. Definitely worth the price i paid for it and I highly recommend it to all Java developers. Combine it with a text too like Sublime Text and you're golden.

Also if you code in Java, definitely check out the FindBugs plugin.
 
I use Netbeans for legacy work, Eclipse for Android development.

I personally prefer Netbeans.
 
Thanks again everyone....maybe I'll just grab both Eclipse and Netbeans and take a tour/familiarize myself with both (Unless there is some harm in having them both installed).

Thanks!
 
should not be any issues. you can also install intellij if you want, they coexist.
 
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