10 Best Java IDEs of All Time

Apr. 17, 2015

Java is an extremely common programming language, used nearly everywhere – Android apps, game consoles, even supercomputers. It is known for its simplicity, and its amazing portability. In today’s article, we will be looking at the10 Best Java IDEs of All Time.An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is an all-in-one software which not only lets you edit and compile your code, but also  manages resources, provides deployment and version controlling options, and lets you use advanced debugging features for your entire project.

Best Java IDEs

Once owned by Sun Microsystems, and now by Oracle, NetBeans is one of the best IDEs from the past decade. NetBeans is completely modularized, and all the IDE functions come in packages called modules.  It offers easy integration with version control software. NetBeans was made open source by sun, so anyone can contribute to its development. It is free, and works on most operating systems and platforms.

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IntelliJ is a closed source Java IDE, and one of the ‘big three’ among Java IDEs (The other two being Eclipse and NetBeans). IntelliJ IDEA has a great, modern UI. It was chosen to be the base IDE for Android Studio, the new all-in-one software for developing Android apps, developed by Google.

There are two versions of IntelliJ, the Community Edition, which is free, and the Ultimate Edition which is fully featured and requires paid licenses to use.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/”]

Eclipse is one of the most popular IDEs out there, and not for just Java, but also for C++ and PHP. Eclipse is an open source tool and has a great community of developers. It also features a huge library of plugins, all made by users. Eclipse latest big release came last year with Eclipse Luna, which offered support for Java 8. Eclipse was also the base IDE for the old Android SDK (Software Development Kit).

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”https://eclipse.org/downloads/”]

JDeveloper is a fully free IDE released by Oracle. JDeveloper offers several features like, Refactoring, Version Control, Audit & Metrics,Debugging, Profiling. Ant Support and Maven Support. It comes in two editions, a Studio edition which has a fully loaded tool set for creating programs in Java, and a Java Edition, which lacks J2EE, ADF, UML and Database features, but is much smaller and faster. The Java Edition has all the core features needed for Java and should satisfy most beginner and intermediate Java coders.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/downloads/index.html”]

Dr. Java is a lightweight Java IDE which is maintained on Sourceforge. It is designed primarily for Students, and beginners, but also has advanced features for Java pros. It is free and open source. Dr. Java is maintained by the JavaPLT group at the Rice University. Its interface has been designed using the Swing toolkit developed by Sun Microsystems.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”http://www.drjava.org/”]

BlueJ is an open source Java IDE built for educational purposes. It is also suited for developing small software projects. BlueJ’s interface is quite basic, so that beginners can make good use of it. It shows classes and objects in a clean, visual manner. The main aim of BlueJ is to teach Object Oriented Programming, so it is an excellent tool for new learners, powerful, without the clustered nature of other, professional IDEs.

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jCreator is a fast and efficient Java IDE written in C++ (Which supposedly  makes it faster than other IDEs which have been written in Java). It has an interface similar to earlier versions of Visual Studio, and lets you customize it to your preference. jCreator is a paid IDE, but a free version without features like auto code completion, is also available. jCreator offers only Windows support, but it can be run on Linux using Vine.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”http://www.jcreator.org/download.htm”]

jGrasp is another super-lightweight Java IDE, which focuses on software visualizations. It has features like UML class diagrams which help in improving code readability. jGrasp generates visualizations automatically,  and also has data structure identification mechanisms, dynamic object viewers and several other features which present Java code in a nice, readable textbook-like view.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”http://spider.eng.auburn.edu/user-cgi/grasp/grasp.pl?;dl=download_jgrasp.html”]

Greenfoot is an educational Java IDE that is almost completely interaction based. It relies heavily on visualization of data structures and is optimized for creation of simple programs and 2D Java games. Greenfoot has a really great online sharing feature that is baked directly into the IDE. Users can share their programs online for others to view, and to receive help  and feedback. Shared projects can be directly edited online. Overall, Greenfoot is great for beginners.

[vc_button title=”Download” target=”_self” color=”default” size=”size_small” href=”http://www.greenfoot.org/download”]

Detailed Info:

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If you have any suggestion for our list of best Java IDEs, feel free to let us know in comments.

I am a student who loves programming, web design and reading fantasy novels, not necessarily in that order. I blog about technology and life at ‘The New Age Tech Connoisseur’