Not really, netbean sucks all around. I hate those auto generated GUIs. It's wonderful when the first batch of developers touch them, creating a pile of auto generated java files and a nice gui. Then 5 years later, after this codebase gets passed down various teams, noone has a fucking clue what all those thousands of auto generated java files mean, and their newer version of netbean cant even load it anymore. With the exception of .net and adobe flex (which has the best gui editor), i prefer to code all GUI using the regular java editor only none of that drag&drop auto generation bullshit, be it swing or gwt. IB's swing gui is a work of art, the amount of panels and logic embedded in them is staggering. I would really like to know from their dev how they maintain this gui to stay in sync, imagine there is a whole release team who's sole job is to do code reviews and sync the source control. ps: oh yeah use eclipse definitely, intellij might be better i see a few oldschool russians still use them here, but when the whole industry uses eclipse you are better off getting yourself familiar with eclipse than other ides.