NetBeans

I’ve just returned from the first NetBeans Day conference in London and I have some impressions to share.

A little bit of background

I am a happy user of NetBeans and I’ve been for quite some while. I use it routinely to develop my personal projects (EnumJ is one and there is another one that I don’t disclose yet) and this last conference opened new doors.

Disclaimer: the dispute “which editor is best” is a type of religious war that rarely brings any good. So, my intent here is not such a dispute. I do not believe in relativism, I don’t consider that all things are the same or that all views are of equal value. However, the choice of editor really does not make a difference: the best editor or IDE for a developer is the one that makes him or her happy and productive.

That being said, I’ll tell why NetBeans makes me happy.

Why NetBeans

My love affair with IDEs started with Turbo Pascal 2.0, more than two decades ago. Over the years I’ve used for Java both IntelliJ and Eclipse. For Python I used Eclipse and the most charming PyCharm.

I also love Vim and I’ve never used Emacs. I’ve been, for more than a decade, an adherent to Visual SlickEdit (popular within Microsoft at a time, allegedly Dave Cutler‘s favourite). I purchased (as a Microsoft Alumnus) almost all the editions of Visual Studio over the years. I tried SharpDevelop a couple of times but I found it immature and I’ve never used MonoDevelop.

All the editors and IDEs that I used have their merits (including IntelliJ and Eclipse, competitors to NetBeans), but NetBeans makes me tick because:

• It is free. This is slightly better than IntelliJ. OBS: I don’t imply that paying for IntelliJ is a waste of money; I just find it more compelling to program in a free IDE on a free platform like Java.
• It is simple. It does everything I need without unnecessary complexity.
• It is standard. This is a very important reason for me. The fact that it had strong support for latest Java out of the box made me stick with it.
• It has unparalleled support for Maven (very important to me) and Java Enterprise (less important for the moment, but this may change).
• It is a platform in itself and this is related to the content of the conference I’ve just attended.

No wonder that I was quite expecting the very first NetBeans Day conference in London.

NetBeans Day

It was a whole-day conference, kindly hosted on the University of Greenwhich‘ campus. Food provided (nothing gourmet, to be sure, according to the well established tradition of geeky events like OJC, for example). Talks of unequal level mainly because some talks were not very related to NetBeans, or NetBeans’ extensibility - arguably people’s most important reason to attend.

However, three highlights make me warmly recommend the event:

• opening talk by Geertjan Wielenga which showed what NetBeans can do for you – nice even though I am not a fan of shortcuts and editing tricks (after years of assembly in kdbg¹⁾, I want to rejoyce that mice exist)
• talk on evolution from BlueJ and Greenfoot to NetBeans with emphasis on education – important for a father with children like me
• closing talk by Geertjan Wielenga on how to program solutions on NetBeans platform – important for a “lazy” GUI developer like me

The last point hit a nerve: although all the IDEs I know exhibit extensibility in one fashion or another, it seems to me that NetBeans has a more general type of extensibility - which is not confined to adding new programming languages or programming productivity features. It looks as if in NetBeans you can program anything - Geertjan even showed us an application in farming!

Conclusion

Although not a perfect event (understandable for a first edition), the NetBeans Day in London is definitely not to miss. I am looking forward to the next edition which, according to the organizers, may happen later this year.

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¹⁾ The Windows Kernel Debugger, part of the DDK. Not to be confused with KDE GNU Debugger.