When my employer switched IDE’s to Eclipse I was way ahead.I’m not going to bang on about its merits as an IDE, but here are some unexpected advantages I found: I would advocate Eclipse on the Mac for Java, mosly because I had a very good experience. Edit: There’s a free Community Edition which is a superb way to get started with Java, Scala or Kotlin. If you can afford to buy a personal license, go for it. With NetBeans the setup time is less and I can get down to programming quicker… Solution no. It seems like I spend more time configuring eclipse to get a decent java programming environment. Please don’t include my current usage of Xcode in your analysis. I’m wondering what are practical considerations, opinions of Xcode, Eclipse or NetBeans usage on a Mac for Java development? I’ve been using Xcode for the usual C/C++/ObjC development.