NetBeans IDE vs PhpStorm

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NetBeans IDE

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PhpStorm

13.9K
10.7K
+ 1
1.6K
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NetBeans IDE vs PhpStorm: What are the differences?

Introduction

NetBeans IDE and PhpStorm are both popular integrated development environments (IDEs) for software development. While they have some similarities, there are key differences between the two that make them unique in their own ways.

  1. Features and Functionality: NetBeans IDE is known for its extensive support for multiple programming languages, including Java, PHP, and HTML. It offers a wide range of features, such as code editing, debugging, and version control. On the other hand, PhpStorm is specifically designed for PHP development and provides advanced features tailored for PHP programmers, including intelligent coding assistance, refactoring tools, and built-in testing frameworks.

  2. User Interface: NetBeans IDE has a more traditional and cluttered user interface that may feel overwhelming to new users. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and menus, which can be beneficial for experienced developers who prefer having everything at their fingertips. In contrast, PhpStorm has a more streamlined and intuitive user interface, with a clean layout and customizable shortcuts. It focuses on simplifying the coding experience and enhancing productivity.

  3. Plugins and Integrations: Both IDEs support plugins and integrations to extend their functionality. NetBeans IDE has a vast collection of plugins available through its plugin manager, offering additional features and tools for various programming languages. PhpStorm, being specifically designed for PHP development, has a strong focus on PHP-related plugins and seamlessly integrates with popular frameworks and technologies in the PHP ecosystem, such as Symfony, Laravel, and PHPUnit.

  4. Community and Support: NetBeans IDE benefits from a large and active community of developers, with extensive documentation, tutorials, and forums available for support. It has been around for a longer time and has established itself as a reliable IDE for multiple programming languages. PhpStorm, although relatively newer, has gained a significant following among PHP developers. Its community is growing rapidly, with dedicated forums and resources focused on PHP development.

  5. Performance and Resource Usage: NetBeans IDE can be resource-intensive and may consume higher memory compared to PhpStorm. This can be attributed to its broader support for multiple programming languages and extensive features. PhpStorm, being optimized specifically for PHP development, tends to be faster and more lightweight, providing smoother performance even on lower-end hardware.

  6. Pricing: NetBeans IDE is an open-source platform, available for free without any licensing costs. It is supported by the community and contributions from developers worldwide. PhpStorm, on the other hand, is a commercial product developed by JetBrains and requires a paid license for extended usage. It offers a free 30-day trial period but requires purchasing a license for ongoing use.

In summary, NetBeans IDE is a versatile IDE with support for various programming languages, while PhpStorm is focused specifically on PHP development, providing advanced features tailored for PHP programmers. They differ in terms of features, user interface, plugin ecosystems, community support, performance, and pricing.

Advice on NetBeans IDE and PhpStorm
Johnny Bell

When I switched to Visual Studio Code 12 months ago from PhpStorm I was in love, it was great. However after using VS Code for a year, I see myself switching back and forth between WebStorm and VS Code. The VS Code plugins are great however I notice Prettier, auto importing of components and linking to the definitions often break, and I have to restart VS Code multiple times a week and sometimes a day.

We use Ruby here so I do like that Visual Studio Code highlights that for me out of the box, with WebStorm I'd need to probably also install RubyMine and have 2 IDE's going at the same time.

Should I stick with Visual Studio Code, or switch to something else? #help

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Replies (15)
Erik Ostrom
Recommends
on
RubyMineRubyMine

If you're working with both Ruby and JavaScript, buy RubyMine and shut down the other two. It's much better for Ruby than Visual Studio Code is. It can also do everything WebStorm does, if you install the plugins you need from JetBrains, and they all work together nicely.

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Marc Swikull
Recommends
on
RubyMineRubyMine

If you install RubyMine, you shouldn't need WebStorm, as all the functionality of WebStorm appears to be included in RubyMine. (See here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/132950).

I've used PhpStorm for several years and have never needed to open (or even download) WebStorm for anything front-end or JavaScript related.

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Russel Werner
Lead Engineer at StackShare · | 6 upvotes · 259.7K views
Recommends
on
WebStormWebStorm
at

I work at the same company as you and I use WebStorm for 99% of my tasks. I also have RubyMine installed and use that when I have to tweak some backend code. I tried using RubyMine for JavaScript but was unhappy with how it felt and I believe that WebStorm is faster because it has less plugins and language extensions running. Summary: Buy and use WebStorm for primary development and keep VS Code around for when you have to touch Ruby.

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Danny Battison
Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

JetBrains all the way - my entire team uses PhpStorm and none of us would even consider switching.

The availability of IDEs for other languages along with consistency in environment and keyboard shortcuts is also a godsend, which is the reason I'd also choose Rider over Visual Studio (but also VS for Mac is trash, but I digress...)

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I've never had much issue running multiple IDEs and generally pick them based on the languages they best support. For front end work where I mainly use TypeScript, I stick heavily with Visual Studio Code. However, for backend work which we do primarily in Python, PyCharm is my go-to editor. The one thing that I do however is I do remap keyboard shortcuts so I get consistent keyboard ability even when I switch IDEs.

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Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

So here is the deal man, bottom line you want to write code. All of these tools are built in a mouse-driven world, they are designed not for engineers, but office monkeys. If you want a real workflow that gives you ultimate performance, customization and speed you need to use a modal editor, I suggest NeoVim. Start using it 20% of the time on single file edits, watch youtube videos about it and teach yourself vim gestures. It will infuriate you for 6 weeks, make you cry for another 2 months. But as you use it more, as long as your usage goes over 40% of the time, in 6 months you will understand why most of the world's too engineers use it. Settling on lesser editors out of laziness is exactly the attitude that results in shitty the engineering. Yeah it's hard. You're smart. You do hard things. Once it isn't hard anymore you will blow yourself away at how much more efficiently you edit files.

Also vim keybindings in a mouse driven editor does not cut it. Managing files, buffers and workflow is half of the value of vim/neovim. It is OK if you have to use an IDE (currently I only use an IDE for java development, so I have little choice)

So use VSCode while you teach yourself vim.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

If I have to choose one I would go with VS Code; it’s become pretty mature and keeps getting better. If those plugins are creating problems for you then just uninstall them, find an alternative, or make a PR to fix. But at the end of the day these are IDE’s and they are meant to save you time. I would go with whatever helps you develop code faster. If restarting VS code slows you down then make a switch, that personally would annoying the crap out of me. Else maybe it’s a quick restart, not the end of the word, hopefully someone will fix at some point.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a text editor. And this is best option in my opinion. For Ruby, I cannot say how VS Code is good. If you wanna choose IDE, RubyMine should fit your needs. Because IDEs are more compatible with major needs. But text editors are just text editor. You can do same things with also text editors. I recommend to try both VS Code and RubyMine. And you will be able to find which fits better for your needs

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Recommends
at

Visiual Studio is the best

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

If you find something that works and are comfortable with it, stay with it. Changing IDE's and learning their idiosyncrasies takes valuable time away from programming while learning setups and keyboard short cuts. I personally use VS Code for cost and decent multiple language support. I've had issues occasionally with it locking up, but it is under heavy development and continually improving. I have also found it more intuitive for new programmers. ** Having profiles for different languages can reduce the amount of plugins running and issues they can cause.

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Kyle Schoonover
Senior Software Engineer at Nordstrom · | 2 upvotes · 222.4K views
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I'm personally a Visual Studio Code fan. I've used it for both Go and Java. It really depends on the quality and support of the plugins. Typically VS Code doesn't crash as much as a bad plugin causes an unforeseen error. Make sure you stay up to date and look at alternative plugins.

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Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

I usually have both running but do the bulk of my language work in the appropriate JetBrains flavor. One thing to watch out for in VS is that under the hood it is running the tools needed for whatever language you are working with. This is where tools like JetBrains shine. While I am sure you can tune the heck out of what you use in VS, the provides context and clarity...

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Lungu Alexandru-Mihai
Recommends
on
VimVim

Well you can try for a while MacVim because it is already configured with tons of plugins. My favourite text editors are Sublime Text and TextMate which are lightweight and speedy. My feeling is that JetBrains IDEs are making you brainless.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Are you using the prettier-vscode VSCode extension or prettier via prettier-eslint? The prettier-vscode extension recommends you...

Use prettier-eslint instead of prettier. Other settings will only be fallbacks in case they could not be inferred from ESLint rules.

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Recommends

An integrated development environment software with huge potential in the future is VS Code. So I would personally say you can use VS code.

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Pros of NetBeans IDE
Pros of PhpStorm
  • 76
    Rich features
  • 69
    Crossplatform
  • 49
    Plugins(Git, SVN)
  • 38
    Easy to use
  • 38
    Extensible
  • 35
    PHP Support
  • 34
    Java support
  • 28
    File History
  • 21
    Code analysis
  • 18
    MySQL support
  • 14
    Free
  • 14
    Open source
  • 10
    Code completion
  • 9
    Strong Maven Support
  • 8
    NodeJs support
  • 6
    Webdev king
  • 6
    Easy maven project start
  • 6
    Best
  • 4
    Jira Plugin
  • 4
    Foss
  • 3
    Out of the box integration with maven, git, svn
  • 3
    History of changes, friendly tabs
  • 3
    Mandatory
  • 2
    Intuitive ui
  • 2
    Chrome plugin to live update javascript from browser
  • 2
    Groovy support
  • 2
    Native Nette support
  • 2
    I don't like NetBeans
  • 2
    Smarty support
  • 2
    Visual GUI Builder for Swing / AWT
  • 2
    Custom html tags support
  • 1
    Powerful refactoring
  • 1
    Composer commands inside IDE
  • 287
    Best ide for php
  • 232
    Easy to use
  • 218
    Functionality
  • 166
    Plugins
  • 160
    Code analysis
  • 87
    Integrated version control
  • 76
    Great php ide for mac
  • 73
    All-round php ide
  • 62
    Local history
  • 53
    Themes
  • 18
    Best PHP IDE
  • 11
    Database control
  • 10
    Easy to find anything and everything in your code
  • 9
    Best bebugging
  • 9
    Best inspection variable
  • 7
    Command line integration
  • 7
    Great frameworks integration
  • 7
    PHPUnit integration
  • 7
    Getting Better
  • 7
    UX
  • 6
    Composer integration
  • 6
    Performance
  • 6
    Coolest IDE
  • 5
    Real time code validation
  • 5
    Easy to use and github interaction
  • 5
    Neat does the job and easy
  • 5
    Best ide for advanced php and symfony
  • 4
    Best ide for php
  • 4
    TypeScript support
  • 4
    Code indexing
  • 4
    It has no match. it filled one of the biggest void
  • 4
    Fast and relevant auto-complete
  • 4
    Great refactoring support
  • 4
    Cross platform
  • 3
    Integration with Vagrant and Docker
  • 3
    Debugger for Javascript
  • 3
    Good
  • 3
    Very good
  • 2
    Debugging in the Just-In-Time Mode
  • 2
    Perfect locahost / host sync
  • 2
    Awesome debugging features

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Cons of NetBeans IDE
Cons of PhpStorm
  • 2
    PHP debug doesn't support conditional breakpoints
  • 14
    Uses a lot of memory
  • 10
    Does not open large files
  • 9
    Slow
  • 8
    Uses Java machine
  • 3
    No way to change syntax highlight for files without ext
  • 2
    No save prompt or asterisk on file change

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What is NetBeans IDE?

NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.

What is PhpStorm?

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

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What companies use NetBeans IDE?
What companies use PhpStorm?
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What tools integrate with NetBeans IDE?
What tools integrate with PhpStorm?

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What are some alternatives to NetBeans IDE and PhpStorm?
Eclipse
Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
IntelliJ IDEA
Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.
PyCharm
PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!
Android Studio
Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. It provides new features and improvements over Eclipse ADT and will be the official Android IDE once it's ready.
See all alternatives