[paullth]

Netbeans was better/easier to use than Eclipse for a long time in my opinion (100% accept that isn't worth a whole lot). I vaguely remember that in about 2010/2011 trying to use the maven and git plugins for eclipse together and hitting a lot of errors. Netbeans wasn't perfect but it worked AND used the system installations of git/mvn. Also, Ive never understood why Eclipse insists (at least last time I used it) on importing files/directories into some sort of workspace decoupling the files you see in the IDE from those on the disk.

Switched to jetbrains IDEs now though ha

[mmsimanga]

I studied Java then taught it for a couple of years about 2001/2. I even got the Sun Java Certification. As luck would have it, I never programmed professionally as Java developer. Last year I decided to contribute some patches to a Business Intelligence (BI) tool written in Java. I could only afford a few hours a week. I tried Eclipse, didn't get anything done for a month. Switch to Netbeans, and was able to contribute my first patch within a few hours. Most things just worked, I didn't have a good handle on the intricacies of Netbeans but I was productive. I know Oracle is "evil" but that didn't stop us using Java. Not sure why Netbeans usage is higher. It really is a good IDE.