Scott Carpenter writes about his Eclipse to NetBeans migration experience, including his prior motivation on using another Java IDE -- JBuilder -- and also his stint using yet another languge IDE: Visual Basic.

Eclipse is super. This entry isn’t meant at all to run it down. I intended to keep using it (and may continue using it for work, at least) because it is free and well-supported (and funded). Whenever possible, I like picking popular projects for the network effects and for the best chance at longevity. I had heard NetBeans was pretty good, and it is well supported with Sun and a community behind it, but basing my decision solely on size and reach of the respective projects, I think I’d have stayed with Eclipse. So what has tipped me over to NetBeans? It comes back to GUI programming and started this weekend when I went looking for a way to do this in Eclipse. I quickly found references to the Visual Editor plugin, and I found a lot of information about it, but I couldn’t get it working with my installation of Eclipse. With enough motivation I might have persevered, but I had the NetBeans alternative to look at. [On NetBeans] I’m sold on the GUI editor. If this thing can do all the other things an IDE should do, I’m pretty sure I’ll be a NetBeans convert. I don’t want to gush too much about the GUI designer, and this may not be a big selling point for VB-disparagers, but I can see this as a fully capable replacement for what I had in VB, GUI-wise. Except now I’m free and cross platform enabled. It’s way cool how they’ve made this thing.

Read the Scott's complete post: http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2007/08/28/moving-to-netbeans-for-java-from-eclipse/

Unless I need to design GUI, I will keep using Eclipse. ss http://www.jyog.com

For some reason I have to use netbeans at linux for a while, look like it is just don't working... I try to just search a keyword of my project, but it cannot find any result... (of course, the keyword is exist in the source codes, turn out I need to find the class using grep)

I can appreciate your enthusiasm for NetBeans GUI editor. However, I personally did not want to invest the time into learning NetBeans. I believe both IDEs are both equally fantastic for development. A solution I found for GUI development for Eclipse is to use Matisee4Eclipse, really can't fault it.

Eclipse is cool. It's beautiful .When I write code, the font is so clear and comfortable.I will always use eclipse

For my projects, I always like to use NetBeans IDE. I am fan of NetBeans and It is also providing AddOn s for providing more facilities. It's visual web developer is too good containing all the components one may need in developing his project.