What's the preferred Java editor for OS X

Question

I currently use Textmate for most of my editing, but am taking a Java course and am wondering if there's a better editor out there, especially one that might have some form of intellisense or active debugging.

Answer 1

Go for eclipse. Faster than Netbeans and has lots of plugins.

Answer 2

I like NetBeans and Eclipse, but Xcode comes with Mac OS X and TextWrangler is a great stand-alone programming editor.

Answer 3

If you want code completion, you are not looking for an editor but an IDE.

Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ IDEA all work well on OS X. JDeveloper I have not tried but the generic version runs under OS X.

Choose the one your instructor recommends (because then he can help you getting started).

Answer 4

I use Eclipse quite heavily on OS X. Lots of plugins, artifact downloading/caching, building, etc. Just make sure you've got the latest Java installed on OS X, and maybe verify that your system will launch Eclipse using Java 6, 64-bit, and make sure you're running Eclipse 3.5, and you should be good to go.

I leave mine running for days at a time, but your mileage may vary depending upon plugins.

Answer 5

Eclipse works okay. It has awesome features, but is somewhat buggy / crashy. It has very good "look and feel" for a Java app on OSX. Feature parity (as best as I can tell) with Windows/Linux.

Answer 6

Most, if not all of the usual suspects when it comes to Java IDEs work on OS X. I've personally used Eclipse and NetBeans on OS X - in fact I still have NetBeans installed as it's also a good environment for writing Ruby code.

Of course if you're just looking for an editor and not an IDE, you might want to try out Aquamacs...