NetBeans

Over the weekend, I spent some time trying out the NetBeans IDE. Basically, it is an IDE by Sun Microsystems, somewhat similar to the Eclipse IDE, which is what I (and most people I know) tend to use for a lot of our Java/C++ projects. Like Eclipse, it natively supports Java, but plugins can be downloaded to enable functionality for C++ and other languages and/or features. Some of these features are actually what I wanted to try it out. For example, one of the plugins allows you to create UML. I haven't really tried it out yet, but I did check out a sample UML project they had which looked pretty good (although the sample was for a Java project if I recall correctly). If I'm not mistaken, Eclipse doesn't have this sort of functionality, so this is a nice advantage to NetBeans. If it does have that functionality, it certainly didn't seem as easy to enable compared to NetBeans (NetBeans did require a plugin, but it was relatively easy to find and enable).

Additionally, NetBeans has support for SVN and other "versioning" tools. Once you import your project into the depository, you can simply do commits, updates, diffs, etc., all within NetBeans. There are probably some more advanced options available, but those are the basics that I was able to quickly figure out. Again, maybe Eclipse has this sort of functionality and I'm unaware of it, but it seemed pretty easy to work with on NetBeans.

I can't say whether I actually prefer NetBeans to Eclipse, at least at this point. I definitly have grown accustomed to the Eclipse layout, so there has been a bit of a learning curve in figuring out how NetBeans works. I've yet to even use the debugger, which is one of my favorite aspects of Eclipse. I've also just worked on C++ (AustralianVoting), so it isn't like I'm using it for its original purpose (Java development).

NetBeans does seem like an interesting IDE. I don't know if I'll ever give up on using Eclipse, but I think I might at least use NetBeans when it comes to certain projects. It definitely seems to have come a long way. I think I checked it out years ago (maybe 2005?), and it didn't seem nearly as good back then. I almost didn't bother to try it out again due to my past experiences, but I'm glad I gave it another shot.