When comparing Groovy/Grails Tool Suite vs NetBeans IDE, the Slant community recommends NetBeans IDE for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs for Grails/Groovy?” NetBeans IDE is ranked 1st while Groovy/Grails Tool Suite is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose NetBeans IDE 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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Freely available
GGTS is freely available for use in development and/or internal business operations without any limitations whatsoever.
Pro Supports development in the cloud through Cloud Foundry
Being able to develop in the cloud means that developers can be distributed and data can be stored in the cloud. With a variety of databases available for use in the cloud, programmers will surely find a suitable solution.
Pro 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.
Pro Good refactoring
Pro Easy to learn
Very easy to learn, unlike e.g. Eclipse (which is probably the most flexible).
Pro Good support for integrated Database e Servers (E.g. Tomcat)
Pro Multiple revision control system integration
Pro Customizable theme
Pro Take less memory
Cons
Con Dismissed by Pivotal
Pivotal announced that it will fund the next two major releases of the Groovy and Grails through March 31st, 2015, after which it will no longer directly fund development on these open source projects.
Con Can be extremely resource intensive
High usage of resources lead to screen freezes and program crashes. The worst case is losing hours of work due to the program failure.
Con Little support for UML
Unless you load extensions.
Con Slow
The Netbeans IDE is known to take a large memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available on the market. The slowdown can decrease productivity and frustrate programmers.