Best IDE

[peter brews]

which IDE is better for testing,optimizing and debugging Java applications.
Thanks,
smita

[nupur dhawan]

NetBeans is a good option......simple to understand.
Textpad is another good one, it is freely downloadable .

[Dave Vick]

smita
Have you tried to do a search for an answer? this question is asked on a regular basis and you'll probably get more info from a search than from asking it again.
At the botom of the page is a google search box, just type in your query and press search. You'll get plenty of answers.

[Mapraputa Is]

Moving to "IDE's and other tools"...

[Jamie Young]

JBbuilder and JDK1.4 is what I would recomend as the best tools to use.

[Eric Pressler]

If you ask 10 Java programmers which is best, you might get 10 different answers. Personal preferences play heavily here.

[Isaias C. Barroso]

Hi,
I my opinion.
Pay - JBuilder
Free - Netbeans, JEdit , both have any plugins (CVS, Visual Source Safe, Jakarta Ant, Tomcat )
by

[Luis Araujo]

This is usually a company option, not a developer option. Usually it is a strategic issue for the duo client/developer(as a company).
Luis.

[Nate Johnson]

I would agree with Luis... we use JB and have an educational discount for $100 a pop. Otherwise our strategic plan probably would have went in another direction

[john guthrie]

I am using eclipse these days. This after my experiences with other IDEs (note I am only dealing with free versions of these)...
Forte - occasionally kills my X server (ouch)
JDeveloper - needs more firepower than I have
JBuilder6 - the free version has all the fancy stuff disabled. I hate that, it's like continually being taunted about what I could be using.
So it was eclipse by default. Having said that, I am getting to really really like eclipse. It catches all my stupid typos as I type them in. I don't like the ant support, way too many mouse clicks required (it generates a popup, in which I then have to click the target, then "go").

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by john guthrie:
So it was eclipse by default. [...] I don't like the ant support, way too many mouse clicks required (it generates a popup, in which I then have to click the target, then "go").

When you activate the "external tools" action set for a perspective, you get a new toolbarbutton where you can create launch configurations for your favorite ant targets...