Good programmers invariably have a deep, intimate knowledge of their development environments -- be they full-blown IDEs, such as those reviewed here, or editors, such as emacs and vi/vim. This familiarity would suggest a high bar to switching IDEs, but in fact surveys show that many developers move to new IDEs every few years.
This migration can sometimes be the result of workplace mandates, or it can arise from a preference for a different way of working. This review can assist in this migration process by offering a comparative look at the differences among the leading Java IDEs: Eclipse, JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, and Oracle JDeveloper. It also touches briefly on some alternatives.
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