Two recent polls from Opensource.com asked Java and Python developers respectively to cast their votes for their favorite open source IDE. Eclipse emerged as the clear winner for Java and was in second place for Python after PyCharm. 

Opensource.com is an the online publication founded by and supported by Red Hat as a "community service". Its content of stories about creating, adopting and sharing open source solutions comes largely from members of open source communities and it runs regular polls. like the one on Which Code Editor Do Devs Prefer? that we reported on earlier this year.

The latest two, which had just closed asked essentially the same question for Java and Python. In each case there are three named IDE's, the option of a general-purpose text editor such as Emacs, vi or gedit. a "lightweight" editor with geany being a choice in common and "Something else".

Now we have the results of two polls and there is an obvious contrast between the huge number of responses (12,463) to the Python poll compared to the poor showing for Java of only 828, even allowing for timing and the fact that the Java poll was only available for a week whereas the Python one went on longer.

Another big difference is that "Something else" came in third place for Python with over 20% of the votes. In the Java poll this response was down to 2% possibly by the inclusion of "I'll tell you in the comments", an instruction that only one respondent complied with.

Very few respondents, less than 4% of Python devs and less than 3% of Java devs chose the "lightweight" option. In the comments of the Python poll surprise was expressed that geany was included. However, it had almost 5% share of the previous poll of code editors, which was won by the "general purpose text editor option with 28%. In this poll 13%  of Pythonistas made this choice, making it much more popular than Eric (4%) which, historically at least, is thought of as the Python IDE.

Personally I'm surprised by the degree of preference for Eclipse which was overwhelming in the Java poll (40%) and still strong among Python developers (23%). The explanation put forward by which Jason Baker for it coming second for Python is  its popularity among Java developers coming to Python, which does make some sense. However, with PyCharm coming top for Python, with 36%, one might have expected IntelliJ Idea Community edition (30%) to do better among Java Devs - especially when it is lumped together with Android Studio which is prescribed for Android development. Personally I'm a fan of NetBeans and therefore disappointed to see it trailing so far behind with only 20%.

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