Difference Between NetBeans vs Eclipse

The following article provides an outline for NetBeans vs Eclipse. Programs in the 1970s were written on the coding sheets using the flow charts; such codes were keyed in punched cards in offline mode and submitted for compilation. The productivity of the programmers was too low at that point in time. With the evolution of personal computers, software development activity got improved, and programs were keyed in through native editor. Notepad was the first program development tool. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) crystallized in the 1990s provided a user-friendly interface to develop any applications end to end in the shortest possible time. It facilitates developer editing, collating, structuring, debugging, packaging, implementing software, and minimising the configuration efforts in stitching multiple pieces into a cohesive product.

IDE enhances the productivity of developers and offers many features in software development such as graphical front end, syntax highlighting, version control, code completion, internal structure improvement, access to class/function libraries, visual tendering of steps, form-based widgets, language-based interfaces, visual programming to create interactive flow chart, multi-languages support, adaptability to different computing platforms. The top 10 popular IDE software are Netbeans, Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio, IntelliJ Idea, Code::Blocks, Aptana Studio 3, Komodo, RubyMine, Xcode and Pycharm.

Head to Head Comparison Between NetBeans vs Eclipse (Infographics)

Below are the top 10 differences between NetBeans and Eclipse:

Key Difference Between NetBeans vs Eclipse

Let us discuss some of the major key differences between NetBeans and Eclipse:

1. Background

Netbeans started as a student project in 1996 in Prague, and Sun Microsystems acquired its commercial arm in 1999. It was later open-sourced by Sun. When Oracle acquired Sun, Netbeans took JDeveloper, Oracle’s renowned IDE heads on, and Netbeans was handed over to Apache foundation.
In eclipse, the software platform was built on the inspiration of the Visual age family of IDE products, and through visual age is a successful product, it did not have a Modular structure like Netbeans, and everything was packed like a zip file. It was later developed as an open-sourced tool by IBM and 80 others in the consortium. The name Eclipse has no connection with Sun, but it was intended to Eclipse MS visual studio, its primary competition at that time and hence the name.

2. License

In Netbeans, IDE products are licensed in Apache 2.0 category now. Before this, they were part of Sun’s common development pool and General Public License version 2. Upon Oracle taking over Sun, Netbeans platform had become another open-source product.
In Eclipse, these products were initially licensed under common public license, and it was re-categorized as Eclipse public license, which is the basic license for any Eclipse projects. Few projects require additional licenses, viz., Eclipse distribution license, and it should be procured on a case-to-case basis.

3. OS

Netbeans runs on Windows, Solaris, Linux and Mac, and it is primarily intended for java; and with add on it supports C, C++, HTML5, PHP and JS. Netbeans framework simplifies the development of Windows-based applications. With an update center module, Users can download the updates alone and upgrade the applications. Customizations, easy manageability of plugins, access to libraries, superior support, and abundant knowledge in the community help developers improve their delivery quality and timeline.
Eclipse runs on multiple Operating systems and supports multiple languages like the other IDEs. But it prominently focuses on Java and C++.

4. Modularity

Netbeans offers modular software components for a developer to build their application dynamically. Various functionalities are available as modules, with a group of classes in them, to simplify developers’ efforts. Modules developed by users can be shared in this platform for others to get benefitted.
Eclipse does not offer component-based features that are extensively, and the codes are packages as a lump, and any classes in this package are not available to others.

5. Plugins

Netbeans supports plugin to support other languages and extra features.
Eclipse provides extensive support for plugins, and thousands of plugins are offered to developers for accelerating their activities. One can develop their set of plugins and share with others as well. Large varieties of plugins and configuration options make this IDE robust.

6. Modelling

Netbeans does not support modelling to a great level, and it needs several extensions to support modelling.
In Eclipse, IDE offers software modelling features to do virtual modelling, verification and validation in simulation mode and reduce the errors during the actual implementation. It provides a standard software development environment, upfront flaw detection and reusable codes for future use. It provides good modelling support for unified model language and system modelling language projects.

7. Others

Netbeans provides a plethora of services to simplify developer efforts and allow them to concentrate only on business logic. These services include managing interfaces, settings, storage, window, wizards, visual library and development tools.
In Eclipse, apart from modelling and plugin tools, this IDE provides rich front end features like standard framework, widget toolkits, viewer classes, views and perspectives etc.

NetBeans vs Eclipse Comparison Table

Let’s discuss the top comparison between NetBeans vs Eclipse:

NetBeans	Eclipse
User friendly, especially for beginners with a simpler interface, and they can work without any plugins initially.	Users will have to get accustomed to the plugin before plunging into it.
Performance is stable because there is no need to install plugins.	More plugins have an impact on performance.
More suited for Web development due to its support for HTML5 and PHP.	More suited for handling large projects.
It needs an extension to support modelling.	Inherently it supports modelling.
It takes less memory, and performance is steady.	Lack of memory slows down the performance.
Uses Java compiler.	It uses a compiler outside Eclipse, and hence incremental compilation is faster.
Licensed under general public license and it can be installed in any machine that runs Java virtual machine.	Licenses are released under the Eclipse public license project.
Limited plugins are there.	Varieties of plugins on a large scale are available to support developers in customizing software.
It is easy to learn.	A large community with abundant knowledge provides adequate backup support.
Has more modular components for easy development.	All the objects are dumped into the package.

Conclusion

Both these IDEs are open-sourced and provide a reasonably good software development environment. They have their own pros and cons, and selecting the right tools depends on the purpose. For a small beginner project, Netbeans is the right choice, and for a large project, Eclipse is the choice.