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Add to SafariWhen comparing NetBeans vs Qt Creator, the Slant community recommends Qt Creator for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs for C++ on UNIX-like systems?” Qt Creator is ranked 1st while NetBeans is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Qt Creator is:
Qt Creator has a code model which basically has the same information as the compiler. So it can do really nice syntax highlighting (e.g. of virtual methods or local variables) as well as provide great code completion.
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 Great syntax highlighting and auto-completion
Qt Creator has a code model which basically has the same information as the compiler. So it can do really nice syntax highlighting (e.g. of virtual methods or local variables) as well as provide great code completion.
Pro Integrates well with non-IDE workflows
Qt Creator uses normal .pro-files, CMakeLists.txt, Makefiles.am, etc. for its projects and rarely needs special configuration for projects.
Projects can be built on the command line as usual.
Pro Built-in Qt GUI editor
Allows for the creation of a window based UI in a graphical editor, no code required to build the UI.
Pro Fast and fully keyboard-navigatable
Responsive UI, no need to use the mouse for the power users.
Pro Supports CMake
Pro Very responsive when compared to similar software
Pro Much space dedicated to the code
Small and beautiful UI, almost all the space is dedicated to the text with hardly and toolbars. Can actually be used on a 1024x768 pixel screen.
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 Poor refactoring
QtCreator has lack of refactoring features. It's not even close to Resharper++ or CLion.
Con Poor multi-window mode support
While multiple windows are supported, many operations will activate in the primary window (debug, goto-line... etc).
Con Qt-focused
Qt Creator is focused on being an IDE for Qt, as a general purpose IDE it performs quite well, but there are areas which are lacking such as project file support (support for generic/CMake projects lags behind Qt projects).
