Well, you may have seen the Java Industry Newsletter's hot story, "Eclipse versus NetBeans." As an editor of this fine publication, it's my privilege to see all of our feedback arriving at my inbox. My first reaction was, oh please, not another IDE war. But I dutifully suppressed the urge to delete the e-mails and started to read them.
Most of the posts tried to be helpful by offering advice like, "Eclipse rocks, its user interface feels more natural and is very snappy." There were other comments like "NetBeans rocks, its user interface feels more natural and snappy." Hum...people, I have news for you; it's unlikely that you're going to change my mind on which IDE I should be using just as I am not even going to try to suggest which IDE you should be using. Why, because it's a personal choice, a choice that is influenced by the problems that we are trying to solve and our various idiosyncrasies.
While developing each of these tools, the implementers had to make choices and trade-offs. Each of these decisions (necessarily) both enables and limits what the IDE can do. In addition, it affects the way in which you interact with the tool in order to get it to perform. If someone made the correct choice for you, you most likely wouldn't notice it because you would feel that the interaction is natural. If someone made the "wrong" choice, you'd certainly notice because you'd need to think (and consequently question) that particular interaction. In most cases, your choice will be that IDE in which the designers/developers have made the most (or most important set of) "correct" choices.
Beyond this, the impetus is not about which IDE is better. It's a tool, and a tool is just a device to help us construct our end product. As is the case with most professions, the tools need to vary to match the skills and abilities of the professional handling these tools. Sure, a Williams Formula 1 racing kart may look a lot like a Ferrari but, at close inspection, a professional will note all of the things that he likes and dislikes about each kart. Each will be set up differently as they try to solve the same problems but with slightly different techniques and configurations. Even identical karts will be configured slightly differently to take into account the differences in the drivers.
So, it was with great relief when I finally ran across a posting from Thomas Hallgren. His post did not resort to telling my why the IDE of his choice was better than all the others. Instead, he wrote:
We have at least two main contenders in both the open source IDE and the Java GUI market. This is extremely good news. Why? Simply because competition is what drives improvement.
So to all you NetBeans fans, rejoice over Eclipse! It forces NetBeans to improve. And vice versa. Same goes for Swing and SWT. And while all users should be happy about this, let the implementers sharpen their swords and keep on fighting.
