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Add to SafariWhen comparing NetBeans vs Kate, the Slant community recommends Kate for most people. In the question“What are the best GUI Sublime Text alternatives?” Kate is ranked 7th while NetBeans is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Kate is:
Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free, open source, and cross-platform
NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. Being open source means that developers can contribute changes to the code to have the IDE better serve them.
Pro Multiple revision control system integration
Has built-in support for the most popular revision control systems
Pro FTP/SFTP synchronization
Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP.
Pro Linux terminal inside IDE
You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE.
Pro Best for PHP, HTML5 Apps Developemt
Pro Frameworks support
Supports Symfony1, Symfony2,Yii2 & Zend frameworks.
Pro You can access source code history
There's a built-in local history that lets you compare code changes and revert to a specific revision. Helpful when source code file accidentally overwritten.
Pro PHPUnit support
PHPUnit is a testing framework. You can create test classes, run and see the code coverage directly from IDE interface.
Pro Git commits/local diff comparison is best
Git commits/local diff comparison is best
Pro Supports community plugins
NetBeans can be extended beyond the basic tool that you get out of the box through community made custom plugins.
Pro Accelerated HTML5 development support
Pro Less and Sass Compiler support
Pro Composer commands inside IDE
The most used composer commands can be done directly from IDE.
Pro Bower support
Pro Powerful debugging and performance optimization
Netbeans not only debugs your code, and points out errors but also gives you hints on which sections of your code could be further optimized.
Pro Supports Smarty
Supports Smarty Template Engine right out of the box.
Pro Refactoring is easy and very productive
Pro JMeter benchmarking tool support
Pro Supports Twig templates
NetBeans provides code completion and documentation for all Twig elements.
Pro ApiGen and PHPDoc support
Supports documentation generation through ApiGen and PHPDoc.
Pro PHPstan support
Supports static code analysis with phpstan
Pro ApiGen support
ApiGen allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments. It's easy to use, supports traits, allows fuzzy searching for classes and highlighting docblocks using Markdown.
Pro Integrated terminal
Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor.
Pro Project mode
Kate allows you to make projects to simplify the organisation of your code. This brings in additional organization of an IDE without the overhead.
Pro Fast and minimaistic
Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed.
Pro Syntax highlighting
Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh.
Pro Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols
Kate uses KDE's input and output libraries to read and write files, allowing seamless integration with FTP, SMB, SFTP, and many other protocols.
Pro Thriving plugin ecosystem
Lots of plugins allow Kate to expand or shrink based on your needs. It includes GDB integration, XML completion, and symbol viewing to speed up programming.
Pro By far one of the best and lightest text editors.
Notepads alternative (for the Windows users).
Pro Vi entry mode
Kate has a vi entry mode.
Cons
Con Slows down occasionally
The Netbeans IDE is known to take a large memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available on the market. Slowdowns can decrease productivity and cause frustration.
Con Development has stalled dramatically
It went down from two releases a year with minor bug-fix releases to one release and no fixes. There seem to be fewer features added per release as well. There is no activity in the plugin community.
Con Default website code format is too strict
Sometimes you need to write allowed code that IDE hasn't spected, and it will annoy you filling all your code with suggestions.
Con Multilanguaje code completion fails
I example, sometimes code completion won't help you with html marks (or scripts) inside php echo (or print) sentences, and vice-versa.
Con Tries to do everything for you and gets it wrong too many times
Con Linux version lacks HDPI support
Con Hard to install on Windows or OS X
Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners.
On Linux or BSD, it can be easily installed from your distribution's repositories.
