First and foremost .
There’s no point in learning an IDE ( or anything ) that’s not opensource ! .
( Java is soon going to be open sourced ).
why ?
As IDE’s aren’t just IDE’s but also have RCP. Wherein you could use
lot of IDE’s features ( File->open; etc ) in your own apps and sell it too,
and make money.
I’m working in Fujitsu Consultancy.
I in the course of 1 year tried three IDE’s and their numerous avatars.
1. Eclipse.
2. Netbeans.
3. Intellij.
4.JBuilder. ( haven’t used much ).
4.JDeveloper.
My Impression :
1. Eclipse :
1.1 . strong industry support. ( SAP , Oracle etc )
1.2 . callisto project looks promising.1.3. Great RCP support.
1.4. Numerous plugin’s and extension. ( EXADEL ) for frameworks.
1.5. Good for platform specific app scenario.
2: NetBeans
2.1. Extreme productivity. ( Desktop app, mobile app, web app ).
2.2. Top technology features( SOA, UML, BPEL ).
2.3. Robust RCP , Pure java advantage.
2.4. Things run out of box .
2.5 Extremely good flash tutorials and demo.
2.6. Great Mobility pack and enterprise pack .
2.7 Good support for frameworks.
3 Intellij
3.1. Brilliant piece of work but closed source.
3.2. Great general purpose editing features and code assistance
but no big thing ( no struts support ( only in 6.0 ).
3.3. No new technology integration like BPEL, SOA etc.
I think NetBeans is best.
But Eclipse is catching up in terms of Integration productivity( linking a web , desktop ,
mobile app to SOA kind of thing with click of a mouse– netbeans has it ).
