5 Things I Like Better about Visual Studio then NetBeans
I have been using Visual Studio since it first came out and have been big fan of it for quite a few years. Until just recently it had no real competition but with the NetBeans (and Eclipse) getting better every release I cannot say definitively that Visual Studio is the best editor anymore. Having said that there are still many features that Visual Studio has that I miss every time I use NetBeans.
- When doing a search I do not have to copy and paste the search term into the search box: When working with legacy code I often find myself looking for code using text searches. Often I will follow the uses of a variable with a search only to find the variable assigned to or from another variable. I then want to follow that variable. It is real nice not to have to do a copy, go to the search text box, then paste it to now search for the new text. In Visual Studio I just have to highlight the text and bring up the find, or find and replace. I find NetBeans very irritating every time I need to do a text search.
- Right click drag and drop: I find this one of the more useful features in Visual Studio. In fact I now expect the right click drag and drop functionality to work on every application I use. This is very useful when I am modifying some code and place a copied piece of code with in it. I also do not need to think about weather I need to move or copy the selection until I am ready to drop it. For some reason it does not occur to me what my intent is until I am ready to drop.
- using the ctrl } or { to go to the matching curly braces: When working with legacy code, especial bad legacy code, I often need to find where an if or loop statement ends. this can be a pain if the code within the block is large. I know this is bad coding practice but when fixing a defect I do not always have the time to refactor the code. When tracing though a long code statement I often want to skip past an if statement or loop if I know the defect I am hunting is not in that block of code.
- Auto-complete works for just typing any word: Auto-complete is one of the best IDE features every invented. NetBeans Does this very well when accessing a property or method of an object, but does not do it when typing a class or variable name. Visual Studio does this well and has become a time saver, especially for some with a bad short term memory like me.
- Naming book marks: This may seem like a small thing but I used it all the time and really miss it in NetBeans. I often use it to mark definitions or code I want to come back to and look at or code I intent to revisit after I finish my current task. The trouble I run into then is I also book mark things as a temporary step while coding and I end up with too many book marks to be useful. In Visual Studio I can name the book marks I want to keep around and quickly go to the correct one and remove the extra book marks easily.
These are just some simple things I notice every day while coding. There are many other useful features that I use less often in both IDEs. I just wanted to point out some of the little thing I notice every day that make a big difference. I feel these improvements in the IDE make me more productive. I now find myself wondering what little features I can add to my applications to help my users be more productive.
Filed under: Esoterica
You do realize you are going to get shit for this post ??
Ha I do agree with most of the stuff .. its like a bad habit hard to stop
Use IntelliJ. Do you use Resharper w/ Visual Studio? IntelliJ is much better than netbeans and eclipse.
You should really compare apples w/ apples….and since you have to pay for a good version of Visual Studio, a commercial version(IntelliJ) shouldn’t be beyond your comparison as well.
About point 1: Yes, I have the same complaint. In addition, the “Find In Projects” menu item in NetBeans is not the same as Visual Studio’s “Find In Files”; you can’t search a directory outside the project structure.
About point 4: Auto-complete does work for any word in NetBeans, but you have to press Ctrl-Space if it doesn’t appear automatically (when entering a class or variable name). In fact, press Ctrl-Space again and NetBeans can even find matches that don’t yet have an import statement.
Posts like this are critical to open-source software development. If someone working on NetBeans reads this, all these features could be pretty easily implemented in the next version. On the other hand, I don’t expect any response from Microsoft about Jim’s post from a couple weeks ago about NetBeans’ advantages. Besides, those features are more fundamental, and it would be a lot harder for Visual Studio to catch up.
Ha ha, the only thing shows in this post is that you don’t know other IDEs even Visual Studio.