Originally, NetBeans was very Batteries Included. It even bundled an app server (Glassfish, I think it still might). While it has its bevy of modules and addons, there's not a lot of overlap. My biggest problem with Eclipse at the time (and, granted this was a long time ago) was that, at least for Enterprise Java, you got the raw IDE and it was a smorgasbord of plugins and what not to get it "enterprise ready".
That's just a whole lot of "mess with it" that I'm not a big fan of, so the NB out of the box experience was very good.
While NB supports Ant, for many years Maven has been the de facto project artifact. It's a first class Maven IDE. You don't import Maven, you just use Maven pom files. And that works for me. I can grab any Maven based project off the internet and readily load it into the IDE. More "less messing with it" that suits me.
It also supports Gradle directly, but I don't do much with that either, so can't comment.
My few forays into IntelliJ didn't present to me anything compelling, to be honest. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to this stuff. The free version didn't really do much with Enterprise Java. It's FX support isn't anything amazing. It has a boat load of options and features, which just, honestly, intimidate me. A friend initially tried IntelliJ and when I asked him about, he sent me a picture of a 747 cockpit control panel.
He has since converted from NB to IntelliJ, and he has been doing a lot of front end development (JS, React, et al), something I can not speak to myself. I can't rave or condemn NB in that space. He certainly likes IntelliJ for it.
I love Java. I think it's just an extraordinary eco-system, has been for a long time. NB is one of the reasons I enjoy it.
I’ve mostly come around on Java, and I like the JVM, but it’s not my favorite language, and I don’t really use it for anything that I am not being paid for. I very much dislike JavaEE and will never do it again if I am not being paid obscene money.
I should certainly give NetBeans a try. Having first-class Gradle support could be useful.
As someone that is also a Netbeans fan, using Ant/Maven files as the project file, automatically mapping default actions to the IDE standard build workflows.
Having the profiler in the box, GUI designer, support for C and C++ development with mixed language debugging[0], two way editing between beans and the Web templating files, and just like with Eclipse, brain muscle of using both of them since 2005.
[0] - Something that Eclipse also does, and JetBrains will sell you a CLion license instead of supporting it on InteliJ.
What do you like about it? Do you think it's better than Eclipse or IntelliJ, or are you just used to it?