NetBeans My IDE of Choice

Wed, 11 Aug 2010

I've gone through a few IDE's and I finally think I found my match -- NetBeans. I was a bit bothered getting used to an IDE because I am used to working with Explorer Open and Notepad++. I still use Notepad++ mainly for smaller applications or small changes because it is super fast. However, for larger applications, I find NetBeans takes care of everything I need and then some. Also, I find NetBeans quite a bit faster than Eclipse, and I prefer the GUI and Simplified Options on NetBeans as well.

At first, I was looking for an IDE to create PHP Projects. Now I am getting the hang of using it with Python and Java. I'm not sure what all the tools in NetBeans are called but a few I particularly like are the PHPDoc/JavaDoc reader when you are typing a code it pops up, very handy! The Navigator, It's hard for me to believe I've worked without one for methods/functions/vars display. The As-You-Type-Validation, this is ridiculously awesome, all the suggestions/improvements/code-cleanup, It's just lovely.

The Code Hinting helps me remember things I forget, and I really like that when I have an object instantiated that the IDE suggests all the methods inside the referenced object while I call methods. I don't think it's anything new, I've just never had this type of feature working with sub-files. This makes it incredibly easy to work from a framework. There are so many features, and I'm sure Eclipse has just as many as well, but after using both off and on until I got comfortable with one I prefer the simplicity of NetBeans.

I appreciate NetBeans and plan to use it for some time. Lastly, I don't think Eclipse is bad or anything, I just found it very confusing to customize (there are a ba-jillion options), speed, and a few other minor things, just think of it as preference.

Links to IDE's

• NetBeans.org
• Eclipse.org
• Notepad++
• gEdit (The Linux version of Notepad++)