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Hello everyone. First post to this community.
I haven't done much programming for several years, but I'm going to start doing some Java programming at home on my MacOS X box. During most of my career I've used text editors and command line tools to develop. I feel it's time to jump into the world of GUI tools, but not having much experience with them, I'm not sure which to pick, or even what features I should be looking for. I'm fairly new to Java, too, and this is part of the reason for looking at IDEs - to get all the assistance I can from the tool I end up using. Java is too big and complex to get by with just syntax highlighting.
The only (free) ones I know about (that will work on a Mac) are Xcode (well it's free as long as you bought OS X), Eclipse, and NetBeans. Are there more? Which would you choose? Why? I've heard the version of Xcode on 10.3 is weak for Java - is that true? What features should I be looking for in an IDE? I know that integration with Ant and with existing codebases will be important to me. It would be nice if the tool doesn't force me to its way of working, but also doesn't make me configure a zillion things just to get started on a simple project.
I hope I'm not starting a flamefest with this question. Thanks in advance for your comments.
Oh, and FYI, I mostly develop web apps. Servlets and JSPs is what I expect to be working with, mostly.
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