1>Both have a wide range of programming language support, which includes C/C++, Java, JavaScript and PHP. But how do you get this support is an interesting part. Eclipse is a plugin based IDE. Large part of its functionality comes from plugins. Features like Mobile application SDK’s, Rich Internet applications, and Architectural driven apps can be developed using plugins mostly. On the other hand NetBeans has many projects and is a tool based IDE. It incorporates many platforms using tooling support. Thus making it less scattered.
2>NetBeans has a strong support when you are developing MVC based application in Java. Servlet/JSP development is fairly very simple compared to Eclipse, especially in the field of deployment and debugging.
3>NetBeans comes with in-built support for and SQL, MySQL and Oracle drivers plus it includes some others too. So this definitely makes things easy for beginners. However Eclipse has JDBC driver support – but it takes some serious time to configure the connection.
4>I personally think Eclipse is the Best IDE. I’ve used them both. I started my java programming with Netbeans, I love Netbeans but when I was using Eclipse I felt comfortable in Eclipse than Netbeans. Eclipse don’t take much time to start, but Netbeans take some long time to start. Normally Netbenas Java bundle uses about 260 MB on my hard disk but Eclipse uses only 178 MB. It is the main reason that make me moved to Eclipse from Netbeans....