Top 5 Free Integrated Development Environment (IDE) For JAVA Programming

What is an IDE?
An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) provides benefits to developers/programmers/students to write there source code in a well defined and arranged manner, which plain text editors fail to do. IDE's arrangement of source code and the representation giving it a syntactic understanding of the code. IDE's provides advanced features like code generators, auto-completion, refactoring, and debuggers.

Best IDE's For JAVA Programming:

1. Eclipse :

        Price: Free

        License: Open Source

        OS Supports: Windows, Linux, Mac

     Summary: Eclipse is a free IDE that has taken the Java industry to a next level. Eclipse is highly extensible and customizable. Eclipse is built on its own SWT GUI library. Eclipse excels at refactoring, J2EE support, and plugin support. The only weakness of Eclipse is its lack of a Swing (SWT GUI) designer.The eclipse platform provides tool developers with ultimate flexibility and control over their software technology.

2. Netbeans : 
        Price: Free
        License: Open Source
        OS Supports: Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, Independent(zip)
       Summary: Netbeans is a free IDE by Sun Microsystems. It is the main competitor of Eclipse.The main advantage of Netbeans over Eclipse is Netbean's excellent GUI designer. It includes syntax highlighting and language support for Java, JSP, XML/XHTML, visual design tools, code generators, ant and CVS support.

3. IntelliJ :
        Price: Free / Trial
        License: Proprietary
        OS Supports: Windows, Linux, Mac
       Summary: Intellij IDE really knows your code and helps by giving smart and relevant suggestions in every context: instant and clever code completion, on-the-fly code analysis, easy project navigation and reliable refactoring tools.

4. JCreator :

     Price: Free / Trial

        License: Proprietary
        OS Supports: Windows
      Summary: IDE from Xinox. JCreator has two editions: JCreator Pro (free 30 day trial), JCreator Standard (completely free). Note also that unlike many other Java IDEs, this one is not coded in Java but is written in C++ and optimised for the Windows platform.

5. BlueJ :

     Price: Free

       OS Supports: Windows, Mac, Linux

       Summary: The BlueJ environment was developed as part of a university research project about teaching object-orientation to beginners. It is easy-to-use teaching environment for the Java language that facilitates the teaching of Java to first year students. Special emphasis has been placed on visualization and interaction techniques to create a highly interactive environment that encourages experimentation and exploration.

NOTE: If you are not new to programming and wants to switch to JAVA than Eclipse will be the better option for you, and if you are starting your programming tour with JAVA and wants an easy and user friendly IDE or want to create swing(GUI) application than I will recommend you to use NetBeans IDE.