Real Stories From People Who Are Switching to NetBeans IDE

Many developers are migrating their applications to NetBeans from other IDEs. Here are some of their stories.

Akintayo Olusegun Don, Java Developer, Access Solutions, Nigeria

I have been developing with Java since 2001. Recently, I was called upon by a company because they "badly needed a Java developer". I responded and began the development process using my favorite IDE of course. The company has several developers all vast in PHP and a little bit of desktop apps development, but nothing about Java at all. The first developer I worked with noticed the "superb code completion" that exists in Netbeans 5.5. (He actually said, "I have to pay for this" when he later saw 6.1's code completion.) Before, their IDE was Macromedia Dreamweaver. I told him to try NetBeans out and I installed the PHP plugin for him. After two days, he did something very crazy - he uninstalled Dreamweaver, Rapid CSS and Notepad++. He said he didn't need any other IDE. Before long, two other developers joined the NetBeans campaign. One day I come in with NetBeans 6.0 with SVG plugin; this literally blew their minds. They have been toying with SVG for some time and now they have not just an IDE but superb code completion. (Code completion seems to be their motto now.) With NetBeans 6.1, even the most adept of them all, fully committed to Dreamweaver before, now uses NetBeans alongside Dreamweaver. Please note that this is not a slight to Dreamweaver - its a super IDE, the best in its class. But these developers now feel that NetBeans is definitely not in that class - it belongs to a higher class. The good thing about all this is that they aint paying a dime for it.

If you have not used NetBeans, go try it out. I have used Intelli J, Eclipse, JBuilder and I must say that the best of them all is NetBeans.

Patrick Julien

Excerpt from blog entry: NetBeans 6.1: The Best just got Better

When it comes to IDEs, I've been around. I've used Visual C++ since version 1.5. Tried other environments over the years, but Visual Studio was by far the best no matter what other people claimed. I started using Eclipse since that's what everyone around me was using for some Java work and I hated it. I'll reserve my thoughts on that for a future blog post but it was never a comfortable fit for me. Needless to say, I've converted my entourage from Eclipse to NetBeans now.

Version 5.5.1 of NetBeans was pretty good... .
NetBeans 6 was simply fantastic... .
NetBeans 6.1 has really been great for me, so great that I've ditched 6 for the 6.1 beta... .

I won't be switching back to Visual Studio anytime soon. The only real problem I have with NetBeans is that since everything is in the open and announced upfront, I find I'm always eager to get my hands on the next release, never truly satisfied with the current one. I would imagine however that's a good problem for NetBeans to have.

Zachelko

Excerpt from blog entry: NetBeans: Why It Matters

... The fact that NetBeans offers a full-fledged IDE that runs on multiple platforms is enough in itself. The fact that it has support for every language you could ever want (or need) to write code in is nearly unprecedented. The fact that it does all of this better than any IDE I've ever seen is teetering on goofy. The fact that it's open source is down right nuts. ...

The IDE war will never be settled. Maybe that's for the best, to each his own. However, the bottom line is NetBeans makes you a better developer. It helps you do your job, and it helps you do your job well. The fact that it covers the major elements of all of the languages it supports is second to none. Break your code down by classes? Done. Attach an in-depth profiler? Cake. Debugger? You betcha'. Source control? Look ma', no hands. ...

If you've never tried NetBeans, I strongly encourage you to do so. It's alright, you don't have to tell anyone that you're using NetBeans. You can lock yourself away, keep all the lights off, cover your face if you must, but just try it. Once you put all the hype aside, you'll realize just how invaluable a tool like NetBeans is. And then you'll wonder why you weren't using it years ago.

Jon Guenther, Software Developer, USA

Excerpt from blog entry: NetBeans 6.1 IDE (Beta): Prepare to Make the Jump to Light Speed!

Visual Studio and Eclipse had best find a shady spot on the side of the inter-galactic thoroughfare, because the beta version of Sun's NetBeans integrated development environment is out. And she's running on all thrusters, Chewie! (Grew up in the Star Wars generation — who, me?) I've had it on my plate now for some time to begin developing a desktop application with a MySQL back-end that I could use to help me in my writing. The project (codename: WriteLite©) has never gotten off the ground to this point because of the steep learning curve and heavy footprint of previous IDEs.

Not any more! First, I get to the download page and find a beautifully crafted Web site with a self-explanatory grid and (YES!) links for bundled installs. So, instead of having to crank down this 900MB monstrosity (think downloading the ISO image for the Visual Studio Express tools), I get a 24MB file that installs and starts up in less than five minutes — no mean feat considering my computer's 3 years old. ....

Rob Dempster, South Africa

Excerpt from blog entry: Java and NetBeans - Finally a Brew that I am Able to Enjoy

As an academic teaching Computer Science for the past thirty years (currently here) I have seen major changes take place in terms of the programmers working environment. ... However because of my university's commitment to MS, I have also used Borland's programming IDE with Pascal, C, C++ and Java. But because of my commitment to free software, I have always been on the lookout for an IDE that I could share with my students with them working under MS and me under Linux.

When NetBeans first appeared, I tried it, but only once as it was so slow on my box that it was unusable. This has however changed in recent times and I have tried it again, only to abandon it as it was often an overkill for small teaching level programming projects. I also tried Eclipse and abandoned it for the same reason. These more recent efforts were renewed efforts to migrate from Emacs to bring myself into line with my colleagues and students who as I have already mentioned mostly used Borland's IDE. I should also admit that I also wanted to access the additional capabilities these IDEs now offered.

This year I have once again tried both NetBeans and Eclipse. This time NetBeans 6.0 won me over. It worked out of the box both under Windows XP and openSUSE 10.3. It is also fast thanks to advances in hardware and so far has allowed me to easily develop non-GUI Java applications (programming assignments) for the Object Oriented Programming module that I am currently teaching. My students who used Borland's JBuilder previously, were equally impressed.

For me, NetBeans now works and I have encouraged my colleagues to consider using it for their teaching!

Paul Clevett, Software Developer, UK

The company I work for was looking at developing some large scale applications for clients. Some of these were new applications and others were going to be rewrites of existing systems that had stopped performing. Our choice of NetBeans was really driven by a number of factors:

• Low cost set up for developers (we only pay when we deploy)
  
• The IDE is awesome and the development environment Is perfect for developing 3 tier client server systems
  
• We can run multi platform
  
• We felt there was better support with NetBeans, especially with in the virtual world Second Life where a lot of developers meet
  
• It works perfectly with the 4 different types of database we have to work with
  
• Development of web applications and “stand alone” and mobile apps is all done in one place
  
• We have no need to copy and paste code around as the code can be centralised on the app server
  
• Using the Sun App server we are able to give 100% uptime to our clients rather than the standard downtime required by other applications
  
• The code completion and documentation is very elegant
  
• I seem to spend more time dragging and dropping and less time coding
  
• Profiling tools are fantastic
  
• The flexibility of being able to choose different frameworks and mix and match them is awesome
  
• The integration with databases is perfect, very tight and easy.
  
  

I could go on (I do at my blog: www.freesoftware.co.uk) but all in all I think my message to developers has to be get stuck in to NetBeans, you won’t regret it. Even if you are a .net or VB programmer it’s not that hard to switch any longer and there are a whole bunch of excellent people willing to provide any assistance you need. (Although if you are in a commercial environment Sun Developer Support is WELL worth the money).

Mujtaba Alshakhouri, Systems Integration Specialist

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all of you guys for developing this great IDE! I have been using MyEclipse for more than two years and two days ago I decided to give your IDE a try. I was totally blown away. NetBeans is just so great and moreover it is for damn free! I have fired MyEclipse and dumped it into oblivion.

Ryan Penn

I love the Ruby and Ruby on Rails support in NetBeans! I believe it's the best Ruby IDE out there. Please keep up the good work. I've abandoned RadRails for NetBeans.

Dustin McCartney, CTO, DAM Entertainment LLC

We've been following NetBeans's development for quite some time.... And with NetBeans 5.5, we decided to give it a shot. Unsurprisingly, we ended up replacing Eclipse as our Java development environment of choice with that NetBeans release. Some of the reasons for our switch to NetBeans 5.5, were:

• The Matisse GUI builder enabled us to quickly build good-looking GUI forms.
• Robust integrated Java debugger.
• Smaller memory footprint.
• Faster UI responsiveness.
• More active development/frequent release schedule.
• More elegant project management.

With the release of Netbeans 6.0, the reasons for using NetBeans became more compelling:

• Further improvements to the Matisse GUI builder.
• Easy-to-use integrated Java profiler.
• Cleaner "Plugin" management.
• C++ Development...

Surprisingly, we also ended up replacing Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 with NetBeans 6.0 for all our C++ development! The default NetBeans 6.0 C++ Pack contains all the functionality we used in MSVC++ (including the 3rd Party "Visual Assist'' plugin), plus provides us these additional benefits:

• A unified project for all our target C++ platforms (Windows, Mac OS X Universal Binary, and Linux x86/x64).
• The freedom to develop on any platform targeting any other platform (using NetBeans's "Compiler Collections'' settings with cross-compilers).
• A consistent, unified development environment within which to develop our complete applications from start to finish; including both Java and C++ (via JNI) components.

The future looks bright for NetBeans, and I can't wait for what subsequent releases have in store!

Rick Sprague, Development Engineer

With regard to Forte: the last time I've seen a Sun IDE for Java. NetBeans is a quantum leap. With regard to Eclipse: a three-year veteran. NetBeans is FAST, POLISHED, & WELL ORGANIZED.

In particular, I'm impressed by your visual editor, Matisse. Eclipse Visual Editor is no match for Matisse. Eclipse Visual Editor is so slow, buggy, and resource intensive - not to mention unsupported in the current Eclipse version - that I just created all my GUIs by hand. While I would consider myself proficient at coding Swing and AWT, I just don't have time to develop 100+ wizards/forms/dialogs etc by hand. I need to get product out the door while at the same time developing GUIs that are logical, consistent, attractive, and easier to hand off to other folks that need to update the code base.

Keep up the good work!

David Heffelfinger

Excerpt from blog entry: Eclipse Veteran Switches To NetBeans

...I had briefly tried NetBeans before, however I always went back to Eclipse because it offered a much better Java editor, I think this has changed in version 6 of NetBeans. Things I earlier missed from the Eclipse editor are now available in NetBeans, such as:

• highlighting a variable highlights it everywhere in the file, making it easy to see where it is been used.
  
• crtl+clicking a method call navigates to the method declaration
  
• Any file can be quickly opened via a keyboard shortcut (in Eclipse it is ctrl+shift+R, in NetBeans it is shift+alt+O)
  
• ctrl+space automatically suggests variable names

...All in all, with the improvements made to the NetBeans editor, the tight integration with Maven, and the painless way of setting up a JSF project (essentially, all required code completion and features works "automagically") NetBeans has now surpassed Eclipse in usability. Count me in as a new convert.

James Carr

Excerpt from blog entry: NetBeans is Now My Favorite Java IDE

Sorry Eclipse, but it was bound to happen. I installed Eclipse on my laptop awhile back and had been suffering somewhat harsh just trying to prevent it from running out of PermGen space.... Finally, I decided to give NetBeans a try and, Thank God, I don’t have any issues yet… I’ve done my 300th deployment now and no memory warnings, no bumps. And even better, redeployments seem to go pretty smoothly and take a couple seconds to do. And gotta love HTTP monitor.

Ghetto Java

Excerpt from blog entry: NetBeans: Back from the Dead with a Shaved Head

I have been playing with NetBeans 6 since the betas and I have to say I’m impressed. The work that has been done on the editor is amazing and you can tell that they are taking cues from IDEA in that regard. For the kind of development I’ve been doing lately, Struts2/Spring/JPA webapps, NB RC1-6.0 has been solid....

Scott Carpenter, Senior I/T Professional, Minnesota, USA

Excerpt from blog entry: Moving to NetBeans (from Eclipse)

...So what has tipped me over to NetBeans? It comes back to GUI programming and started [] when I went looking for a way to do this in Eclipse. I quickly found references to the Visual Editor plugin, and I found a lot of information about it, but I couldn’t get it working with my installation of Eclipse. With enough motivation I might have persevered, but I had the NetBeans alternative to look at....

Maciej Wegorkiewicz, Software Consultant

I want to thank the team for the best IDE I use for six years for development of personal finance application ePortfel (www.eportfel.com).

Professionally, I used also Eclipse and IntelliJ Idea in other projects, but never even thought of switching to any of them with ePortfel. I must admit that I also very much like Idea for its refactoring capabilities and for many possibilities it gives for developing multi-tier apps. But for rich client GUIs, NetBeans has no competition on the market.

These are main reasons that make NetBeans best:

1. Great GUI builder
2. Great Ant integration (no more hand-keeping consistency between IDE and separate build script!)
3. Great and CONSISTENT IDE ui (no more ui mess like in Eclipse)
4. Great IDE speed (faster than Eclipse that liked to freeze my desktop)
5. Great Debugger
6. Great Profiler (easy and effective - you feel like using simple wizard and get exact info)

And as a summary I have to say I do not have any need for looking for better tool. I just have everything in NetBeans - out of the box.

Hans-Joerg Alles, Project Leader, Prego Services GmbH

I worked with Oracle JDeveloper for a while because of heavily used Oracle DB's in our company. Before Version 10.1.3, it was almost impossible to follow the concepts and code generation behind JDeveloper.

Some months ago, I tried out NetBeans and I was really surprised. Good and well-documented tutorials, where the examples are really running without a mistake!!! Easy to follow code generation, and all you need to start as a beginner and grow with the IDE. I also find quick help in Roman Strobl and the guys around when I had some problems with virtual forms.

Go on, you are doing a good work !!

John Blanco, JSF Developer, Colorado, US

Excerpt from blog entry: Eclipse Hits The Mat...NetBeans New Champ!

Recently, I have undertaken some changes in my development environment. This all started when it occurred to me that I was going nowhere fast trying to do PHP coding with Eclipse's PHPEclipse plugin....NetBeans was selected to replace Eclipse itself for my Java and Java ME projects. This made me the most nervous because it can be quite a dance dealing with Java dependencies, etc. I was afraid I'd have to go through mountains of tutorials to regain my level of proficiency I had with Eclipse.

Dead wrong.

Through the entire process of transitioning my projects over, NEVER ONCE did I ever have trouble figuring out what to do...and I didn't look at a single tutorial. The boys at Sun have done an extremely amazing job of writing an IDE devoid of anything overly cryptic. It just worked...and perfectly! On top of that, the tool is slick and clean....

My advice to Java developers out there: Give NetBeans a try! You won't need any training, it's that easy. You will love it!

Balmeyer

I just tried NetBeans 5.5 under Linux, plus the VisualWeb Pack, and I am breathless. I used Eclipse for a long time, and one day, I was curious and gave NetBeans 5.0 a try, but I still wasn't completely convinced. Until now. NetBeans 5.5 is incredible! I want to tear off my T-shirt in joy! The new website is clear and easy to navigate: I know where to find the IDE and any packs that I need. The little palette to drag and drop JSF components in the VisualWeb Pack? Pure bliss!

Original Text: "Je ne sais pas si c'est le bon endroit pour poster cette remarque, mais bon, voilà: Je viens d'essayer NetBeans 5.5 sous Linux, plus le pack VisualWeb, et je suis soufflé: c'est terrible! Incroyable! J'ai envie de déchirer mon T-Shirt, de joie et d'enthousiasme! J'utilisais Eclipse depuis pas mal de temps, et puis un jour j'ai été curieux, j'ai essayé NetBeans 5.0 et mon coeur a balancé un bon moment... Mais là, on atteint des sommets... le site est d'une limpidité absolue, j'ai tout compris du premier coup d'oeil: On installe l'IDE, plus un ou deux Packs supplémentaires, si besoin. La petite palette pour glisser-déposer les composants JSF sur la page web, que du bonheur! Non seulement ça concurrence sérieusement Eclipse, mais également un IDE payant comme Visual Studio 2005, que j'utilise par ailleurs... Sans être connaisseur, j'ai vraiment le sentiment que l'équipe Netbeans a cravaché dur pour effectuer un sacré bon en avant..."

Levan Dvalishvili

Here is the top 5 features that pulled me to NeatBeans from Eclipse:

1. Very decent JSP Editor, plus seamless integration with Tomcat. (Saves me a lot of time.)
2. Incremental deployments (that's awesome). (Saves me a lot of time.)
3. HTTP monitor that actually works. (Saves me a lot of time.)
4. Profiler that actually works. Used it few times but still nice feature.
5. Debugger that actually works well with web applications.
6. Code sharing (collaboration).

David Saintloth, Chief Software Architect, Apriority LLC

I have been using NetBeans since the time it was called Forte, way back in 2001. I enjoyed the ease with which I could get my project going and really liked the color coding. That was about it, I used it for about 6 months before I was forced to work with JBuilder in early 2002.

Well, JBuilder was okay but it didn't have the intuitive feel that Forte did. Forte was replaced by NetBeans, I went through all the major versions up to 4.2 before the buzz on this "uber" IDE called Eclipse started up. I decided to download and install Eclipse and for the life of me I don't know how anyone could compare that to Netbeans. By version 4, Netbeans was incredibly intuitive, stable and offered good tools for refactoring (the global search and replace features are a godsend) then came version 5, then 5.5. I haven't bothered to use Eclipse since.

Code completion, automated javadoc building, automated jar deployment and the astonishing Profiler make this THE best IDE out there for developers working on large projects. I am currently working on an Enterprise scale distributed web application framework with over 200 source files and about 2 dozen import packages and NetBeans has managed the coding and execution of my work perfectly. I highly recommend NetBeans to all my coding friends over any alternative when I get the chance.

Jean-Yves Mengant, CTO, Sefas Innovation

In order to provide cross platform portability to our customers, our company has been involved in Java technologies since 1999. Java IDE are one of the most important piece of software for our developers which have important impacts on development productivity. This is the reason why after using Jbuilder and Eclipse we definitively switch to Netbeans since it offers for free the most impressive and efficient Java development environment available in 2006 and 2007. With invaluable plugins and features like the matisse GUI design tools and the integrated profile, it outperforms the Java IDE competition today. In order to contribute ourselves to the impressive work of the netbeans team and since Python development is also part of our development activity, we have developed a Python development plugin environment available for free in the Netbeans plugin catalog(jpydbg). Thanks again to the NetBeans team for the great work done.

Jens Technau, Contact Air

Just wanted to express my appreciation for your IDE. I used to develop with JBuilder since the very beginning and refused to switch to any other IDE until Borland said they eventually stopped working on it.

This happened by the end of last year. Being the only architect and developer for the paperless-cockpit project in our company, I just couldn't afford to spend more than one or two days in managing the transition to another IDE. I tried Eclipse. I soon realized that there is no GUI Builder worth mentioning. I do the whole thing including GUI, so I can`t use any GUI builder below the standard of JBuilder.

Then I came to see NetBeans with Matisse and the ease of migrating my J2EE projects. Today I'm happy that Borland stopped JBuilder because otherwise I would still work it without enjoiing the benefits of NetBeans. Please keep on developing NetBeans!

Julien Ponge

Some of you might know that I am more an Eclipse guy than a Netbeans one. However one would be blind not to recognize the tremendous amount of effort of Sun toward making Netbeans a better IDE. Quite frankly, the competition between the 2 big players (Eclipse and Netbeans) is fruitful. For the moment, I think that Netbeans is strong on J2EE and Swing development. Eclipse is not as good if you develop a Swing project, and the J2EE stuff in WTP is as good as in Netbeans, but much less straightforward. Eclipse is also more versatile, but all of this genericity comes at the price of more customization before you can actually work. This is were Netbeans clearly shines when it comes to doing J2EE development.

Part of my job is to teach at a French engineering school, and I have decided that my students will do their J2EE duties with Netbeans. Here are some reasons why.

• The Netbeans + Sun Application Server bundle: There is a full-stack J2EE server integrated with the IDE out of the box.
• Running a webapp is as simple as pressing the start button. It does everything from starting the server, reloading the webapp, launching a web browser at the right URL and so on.
• Students don't have to deal with web.xml, or creating the files in the right place.
• NetBeans uses Ant, meaning that the project can be used outside of Netbeans, too.
• There is an embedded database (PointBase), which is very useful for instance when Oracle instances are down due to other lab courses.
• The editors are reasonably good, and the code completion in Java classes and JSPs is always helpful to students.
• The JSTL support is very good, there is no reason for teaching plain-old and ugly JSPs anymore.

With Eclipse, things would have been slightly more difficult: get Eclipse, get the WTP plug-ins, get a J2EE server, install it, configure it, integrate it with Eclipse... I don't mean that Eclipse is any bad for J2EE development (I actually think the opposite), but NetBeans is a clear winner because it is (from 4.1+) simple and works out of the box.

If you have to teach J2EE as well, I strongly recommend Netbeans. Netbeans team: Well done and keep up the good work, you've managed to change my mind on your IDE so much that I do enjoy using it for J2EE.