NetBeans vs WebStorm

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.

Has built-in support for the most popular revision control systems

Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP.

You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE.

Supports Symfony1, Symfony2,Yii2 & Zend frameworks.

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.

PHPUnit is a testing framework. You can create test classes, run and see the code coverage directly from IDE interface.

Git commits/local diff comparison is best

NetBeans can be extended beyond the basic tool that you get out of the box through community made custom plugins.

The most used composer commands can be done directly from IDE.

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.

Supports Smarty Template Engine right out of the box.

NetBeans provides code completion and documentation for all Twig elements.

Supports documentation generation through ApiGen and PHPDoc.

Supports static code analysis with phpstan

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.

WebStorm integrates with Node.js to allow for running, debugging, and unit testing of Node.js apps.

To make sure your code can be easily maintained, you must first be sure to make it clean and tidy. This is the part where WebStorm really helps you. It automatically refactors your code by performing functions on it, such as extraction of variables, moving files, inline variable extraction, etc.

WebStorm comes bundled with JSHint and JSLint. JSCS, ESLint, and Closure Linter can be installed via npm. They register as inspections and are customizable through IDE settings. They run automatically and will highlight potential issues. Pressing alt+enter on an issue will allow the user to view suggested fixes.

WebStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion.

Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of JavaScript objects, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion.

Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go.

The local history feature in Webstorm tracks all your local changes in the source code that you are making. You can use it to view changes that you've made to your code and roll back whenever necessary.

WebStorm offers typescript support for building typed JavaScript applications which improves refactoring and code completion, as well as helping to find bugs.

WebStorm includes support for Meteor, Angular, and React.

WebStorm includes a feature called Live Templates. Live Templates are predefined code snippets that can include variables. They're intended to increase productivity by reducing the amount of repetitive code that has to be written.

When you install WebStorm, it allows you to choose from other IDE's for it to base it's hot keys on. So if you are switching from another IDE, it makes it a very easy transition and productivity is not adversely affected by having to learn new hot keys.

WebStorm has a powerful visual git tool, allowing for easy commits, visual diffing, merging, push/pull, rebasing, and inspecting the VCS history of a project. GitHub is supported natively - you can check out a project directly from GitHub.

WebStorm has support for Grunt and Gulp task runners.

WebStorm (and really all of the IntelliJ IDEs) support the plugins throughout their plugin ecosystem which leaves you with 100s of tools to handle your automation tasks. There is a wide range of build-related plugins that help you by having pre-defined commands to execute with the click of a button. Out of any other IDE, WebStorm has by far the most coverage when it comes to tools for your development workflow.

The theme is very easy to customize to your liking. You can change font-size, colors, highlighting colors, and more.

Webstorm supports not just Git and Mercurial, but Subversion, CVS, and Perforce as well.

This integrates with other community tools like ESLint and editorconfig.

Code Templates are powered by Apache VTL (Velocity Template Language) and allow for includes, custom variables, conditional blocks, iterators, and live templates.

Webstorm comes with icons for many filetypes which makes it easier to find what you're looking for in the project list.

WebStorm has a built-in webserver that allows you to run projects from http://localhost:63342/ProjectName.

The IDE comes with a built-in terminal, a feature lacking in some lighter editors.

WebStorm has built-in support for CoffeeScript and Dart.

Karma allows you to execute unit tests and monitor code coverage. You can read more about using Karma with WebStorm here.

WebStorm has built-in support for Sass which is one of the most stable and powerful CSS extension languages.

WebStorm has a powerful debugger, with support for conditional breakpoints.

With the settings repository, you can easily enforce your development standards.

Non-commercial open source projects, and students and teachers (including classroom licenses) may qualify for a free license. There is a 50% off license for startups (under 3 years old). You can read more about it here.

It is able to specify for example node versions, which will be used to run task for current project.

Assists with configuration and understands module resolution.

Cordova allows for building native mobile applications via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting, refactoring, and pub integration for Dart are supported in WebStorm.

Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting.

It may seem like a complex IDE and it does have a lot of functionality, yet it uses way less RAM than barebones-looking, Electron-based IDEs.

Makes adjusting an existing or creating new themes a breeze. Especially due to things like inheritance, as well as easily exporting/distributing/importing the color settings which really only store where on deviates from the defaults (thus the resulting files are very small and relatively human-readable).