Ehe I've yet another perception, I remember eclipse was what everyone used in my circles back then, mostly because it was the ide used for university courses.

Then forte died of acquisition, forte for Java bombed and NetBeans took over some interesting "4gen" features, so like given a table he would go and create the whole crud in swing on top. For a while it seemed to grow strongly but then eclipse opening up rcp fagocitated all thick client projects and NetBeans was left to dry.

It was almost 20yr ago so the time line is fuzzy, but this is how I recall it.