Before you go overboard, you might want to take the fact that you are creating an avionics system into consideration and that while it may not be mandated that you follow government standards for development due to the type of aircraft it is that avionics software development standards exist for safety reasons. You can find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics_software[^] You will probably want to familiarize yourself with the DO-178B standard for civil aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B[^] I've had a little experience with these in a previous job. If you want to be safe you have a lot of good learning ahead of you :-) Additionally, you could always try to break into the avionics industry this way!

Ignoring all of the ignorant comments that have been made about Java, We tend to like netbeans a bit better than eclipse. It has, in the past, had a better response than eclipse, even if you sacrifice all of the plug-ins. As far as the anti-Java comments, I have used Microsoft libraries and APIs from MFC through .NET 2.0, and I have used Java for years. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. The technology for each is actually comparable in speed (Especially with JIT compilers) for desktop applications, and also in feature richness. I have found that the Java APIs make more logical sense than the Microsoft APIs (and don't say you have to understand the Microsoft way! I should be able to do what I need by reading the documentation, not trying to figure out how something works!). The other advantage Java has is that serious consideration was given by Sun to supporting multiple computing platforms. They have distributions for Windows, Linux and UNIX systems. All you have for .NET on Linux or UNIX is open source implementations. While these are high quality, it seems that Java is the only true Write Once Run Anywhere system. To use .NET you have to crawl into bed with the evil empire :-). Personally, I've seen Return of the Jedi, and I want to be on the side of the Alliance ;-)