NetBeans has been in overdrive mode. It's ecosystem has been growing and if you look back a scant two years ago, there was nowhere near the number of users, plugins, features and support for a multitude of features including support for scripting languages like Ruby, Grails, PHP and key features like debugging JavaScript and much more. You can get a feel for some of the features in NetBeans IDE 6.5 by checking out this webinar presentation, NetBeans 6.5 : The Only IDE You Need ( you will be using elluminate) and the Introduction to NetBeans IDE 6.5 - Screencast. You can also check out the latest PHP features in this Demo of PHP Support in NetBeans IDE 6.5- Part 1 and Part 2. Or if you like JavaScript - Working with JavaScript Toolkits in NetBeans IDE 6.5 shows off some of the latest JavaScript features. Or if Ruby is your preferred scripting language - here is a Ruby screencast. Or maybe it is Grails - check this screencast on using Grails within NetBeans. And naturally there are lots of improvements for support for Java (all forms) and more more recently for JavaFX Script. Improvements include better support for database developers. One interesting area is the Visual Web App development features - you can see a basic example here, Developing a Visual Web JSF Application - Visual Web App development allows for an easy drag-and-drop approach to building web apps. Not only does the drag-and-drop apply to visual GUI components, but also to database tables and web services. The main point of all this is to show one of the key reasons many developers adopt NetBeans for its Out-of-the-Box support for many technologies. Even when applications are not "in-the-box" - they seem to be - you can enable new features by grabbing plugins from the Plugin feature or at worst from the NetBeans Plugin Portal.
All of this is very good news and it is not like it has gone unnoticed - adoption has grown. There are lots of blogs recounting great NetBeans experiences - from Java to Ruby to now PHP and Grails and more is on the way (Python). Let's take a look a look at some of the infrastructure aspects of NetBeans -
It took me under five minutes to use the update center in NetBeans IDE 6.5 to load the GlassFish App Server and Tomcat. It's quick. In the figure above you can get a hint that NetBeans provides some nice features to create or edit SQL tables to a number of different databases or easily deploy and debug applications to a large number of application servers. In addition, NetBeans allowed me to easily bring up the GlassFish application server console and customize the plugins and characteristics of the app server. NetBeans IDE includes a Database Explorer, Editor and Services - you get a feel for some of these features in this nicely done screencast, NetBeans TV NetBeans IDE 6.5 : Database Support Improvements, highlighting some of the many database features. There is much more. The key to making all this work is a great out-of-the-box experience which keeps developers from leaving NetBeans to search for features or tools. Ease-of-use translates into many things across a large number of languages. Another partial view (this is my comic-strip view which is not quite right - but probably close) of the NetBeans ecosystem - this time focusing on languages -
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There is so much nested in this chart. For example, within the Java Standard Edition area - NetBean's GUI Builder (Matisse) provides an excellent way to build Swing desktop applications. Also, NetBeans itself provides a Rich Client Platform (RCP) which provides an elegant set of APIs to build RCP applications - it jumpstarts the process by offering a number of useful services. Often, developers miss this important aspect of NetBeans - while using NetBeans primarily as an IDE, many developers miss the fact that it is also a full Rich Client Platform as well as a vibrant community of developers. The growth of scripting language support within NetBeans has been a boon for NetBeans. For starters, the NetBeans Ruby IDE has achieved signficant popularity. The NetBeans PHP IDE is also beginning to see similar adherents. Groovy/Grails is another recent addition. JavaScript is also an important language which provides a JavaScript IDE that has (like other languages) Source Code Editor support for JavaScript and CSS, a JavaScript debugger and a JavaScript Library Manager. Underlying all these languages is support for XML in the form among many other things - of an XML Schema Editor. The Java area shows some of the language and language-aspects that NetBeans supports which includes - Java Enterprise Edition, Java's desktop-oriented Standard Edition and a Mobile Edition. These Java-based development tools include code-centric and Visual Web App Development environment, GUI Builder (Matisse), Visual Mobile Designer, enterprise wizards and much, much more including support for Hibernate and Spring. It is relatively easy to build end-to-end Java solutions from mobile app to desktop app to enterprise server apps. A standard part of NetBeans are code editors and code debuggers and a great profiler. If you are doing SOA (check out the SOA app learning trail) - web services orchestration tools (Like a BPEL designer, XSLT designer, Composite Application Service Assembly editor) are available. There is a lot more. For example - the editor whether you are using Ruby, JavaScript, Java, PHP or other languages provides you with live parsing of the source code, refctoring, smart code completion, smart code templates, code navigation, keyboard shortcuts as well as standard source code highlighting, word matching, bracket matching and much, much more. Finally, NetBeans has a history of C/C++ IDE support - Sun's Studio product is custom IDE built ontop of NetBeans and supports C, C++ and Fortran. NetBeans' itself has C/C++ support.
The support of Java and multiple (Web 2.0) dynamic and scripting languages, databases, application servers and web services in an integrated, easy-to-use fashion has made for a great developer out-of-the-box experience. Now couple that with a an integrated Developer Collaboration Chat and file-sharing tool and support for integrated version control within NetBeans and you make a great developer experience even better.
Check out the latest version of NetBeans IDE 6.5 - it contains these features and quite a bit more.
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