When comparing NetBeans vs Gitpod, the Slant community recommends NetBeans for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs for Node.js?” NetBeans is ranked 7th while Gitpod is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose NetBeans is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Customizable Workspaces
Gitpod workspaces are very customizable. You can define a workspace with .gitpod.yml
and define your own Dockerfile if you need tools that needs preinstalled automatically.
Pro Open Source to the core
Gitpod is a Web IDE product by TypeFox, which created Theia, a open source IDE framework. They rely on Kubernetes, Docker, Theia, and Let's Encrypt to provide this service - providing a 100% OSS-based SaaS.
Pro Workspaces are created from GitHub URLs
Any GitHub repository can be prepended with https://gitpod.io#
to define a Gitpod workspace. Here's an example of it.
Pro VNC Support
Gitpod has VNC support out of the box, which allows you to test Desktop apps within the cloud.
Pro Pre-authorized Git Client
This is the only GitHub-based Web IDE that pre-authorizes the git client, saving you time to do setup.
Pro GitHub Pull Request Issues Comments are viewable on the IDE
No need to jump tabs when making needed changes for your GitHub Pull Request. Gitpod supports viewing the comments and resolving those through the IDE - so you can resolve comments without ever needing to mark it resolved manually on GitHub.
Pro Automatic Configuration
If your GitHub repositories does not have a manifest to make a stack, Gitpod will attempt to make a stack based on what it understood about your codebase. However, for popular projects, a central repository on GitHub exists to configure a workspace automatically for them without the manifest file to be present.
Pro Language Server Protocol support
LSP is a standard made by Microsoft to create a single common core that can be consumed by a development tool. Theia is based on Visual Studio Code and supports LSP natively.
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 Does not create forks automatically for you
If you make a Gitpod workspace based on a GitHub repository you do not own, git push
will fail and you need to query the Git client to make the fork for you.
Con Can be slow on 3G Networks
The crux of this is because of the large bundle.js
that is needed to be transferred, this is a problem within Theia.
Con Packages can't be installed through the CLI
Gitpod doesn't support apt install
s yet due to the container mounting through an NFS. To alleviate this, you need to define a custom stack for your project if you need it.