What is the difference between Coke and Pepsi?
Ok, it’s not really that similar, but a lot of the differences are in qualitative ways. Speaking of Netbeans 6.1 and 6.5:
-
Netbeans has a very different UI and
workflow. There are no perspectives,
but toolbars and such will auto
appear/hide as needed (i.e.
debugging). Build process is
different. Managing projects is
different. -
Netbeans focuses on a smooth,
integrated experience sometimes at
the expense of features. The
Profiler is fully integrated into
the editor (context menu’s let you
quickly manipulate the profiler),
but is lacking some featuers of
Eclipse profilers. -
Netbeans has a tightly integrated
JSP/Servlet/JSF development
environment. The whole workflow
connects together from development,
debugging, deployment. This is more
of a “feel” than anything else. -
Netbeans editor is missing several
Eclipse features. Spell check being
one prominent one. Quick complete
(Ctrl-K, Ctrl-J) is an underused
Netbeans feature. Snippets being
another (though they have an
auto-complete template which fills a
different, but similar niche). -
Less choice. If you don’t like one
of the included tools, it’s unlikely
you will find a good alternative
plug-in. -
Matisse. Eclipse GUI editors have
started to catch up, but they are
simply no comparison to Matisse.
Superficially, they seem
equivalent… -
<sarcasm>Your friends will make
fun of you.</sarcasm>