Java IDE recommendations (GUI designer, ORM designer, etc...) for a VS user [closed]

Question

I work with Visual Studio in my day to day job and I love the productivity features that it has. The Visual designers it provides are wonderful, such as for Winforms, WPF, DataSets, LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, Class diagrams, etc...

I am after a similar development experience for developing in Java. It has been many years since I last did any professional Java development (2003 ish). I would hope that the tools have matured greatly since then.

I am looking for an IDE with a good GUI editor, and a good Data object editor. Other stuff would be a bonus (I've been intentionally vague with the Data point because it greatly depends upon the provider).

It would be lovely to have Visual Studio for Java, is there anything as good as Visual Studio (or better?).

Here is a short list of my requirements:

• The IDE does not have to be free
• The IDE does not need to have all features "out of the box" (plugins are ok)
• The IDE has to run under Windows
• The IDE must have a good GUI designer
• The IDE must have a good Data object designer (ORM, etc)

Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

Answer 1

IntelliJ is not free, but I think it's superior to anything out there, including Eclipse and Netbeans. Well worth the money.

UPDATE: There's a free community edition of IntelliJ now, so the price tag need not be a deterrent anymore.

Answer 2

Eclipse used to be the de facto standard, but nowadays NetBeans seems to beat it in every respect.

Answer 3

As a long time Java developer (12 years) who has suffered a number of IDEs over the years I have to say that Intellij is my IDE of choice. Last year I used both Netbeans and Eclipse on one of my personal projects but in the end I bought a personal copy of Intellij due to the extra productivity I get out of this powerfull IDE.

Answer 4

Intellij.

Easily the best IDE available today, among all languages.

U say Date, it auto completes to (based on the configuration)

Date date = new Date()

Intellij is what makes java bearable, in fact may be even acceptable.