When comparing Greenfoot vs DrJava, the Slant community recommends DrJava for most people. In the question“What are the best Java IDEs or editors?” DrJava is ranked 8th while Greenfoot is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose DrJava is:
Because DrJava is designed for beginners/students, it's set up so that users can run code without having to worry about set up.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free
Greenfoot is free to use.
Pro Great for beginners
Greenfoot was developed as a way to teach Java to first time programmers.
Greenfoot provides for variety of additional resources such as tutorials and community support.
Pro No need to set up a project
Because DrJava is designed for beginners/students, it's set up so that users can run code without having to worry about set up.
Pro Lightweight
DrJava is a lightweight IDE, at only 13MB. It starts up quickly and doesn't lag.
Cons
Con Not ideal for professional programmers
Greenfoot is developed to teach programming through creating basic graphical applications (such as simple games).
Though it features an IDE, the interface is quite simple and isn't likely to meet the needs of most experienced developers.
Con Light on features
DrJava is primarily for students, so is kept fairly basic. For example, auto-completion is limited to class names.
