Our session, Twelve Reasons
To Use NetBeans, is over. It was alot of fun - extremely
enjoyable. We tried very hard to pack alot into a short 60
minutes. The results were better than I expected as after
an overflowing, sold-out NetBeans Software Day, (where escalators were
stopped to deal with crowds) on Sunday we were presenting on
Monday. The results were much better than I expected - while not
packed it was a much bigger turnout than I expected - and it naturally
was a different crowd - most of
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them seemed to not have attended
NetBeans Software Day. A number of them approached me and like Sunday it struck me that
it was clear that there is now heavy interest in
NetBeans. Two different developers asked me how to show their Eclipse colleagues what they saw at the session. My colleagues - Inyoung, Tim (Cramer) and Tim
(Boudreau) were great to work with. We managed to squeeze alot of demos
in. People seemed extremely surprised by NetBeans features.
The growth path for NetBeans is a steep curve upwards - a tripling of
the user base in six months and that is with extremely conservative
criteria - to be counted you have to use NetBeans for a week and you
have to use the NetBeans Update Center. It continues to grow.
So what where the twelve reasons ? Here they are :
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Out-of-the-Box Experience
- what else ? You get everything you need and a fast, intuitive UI.
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Full J2EE Support plus
Java Blueprints Solution Catalog. EJBs, Servlets, JSPs, Web App
development.
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GUI Builder
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Mobility Pack.
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Ant-Based Project System
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Import Facilities.
Importing from source, ANT, Eclipse, JBuilder,etc.
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UI and UI Performance
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Debugger
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Profiler + VisualGC +
JConsole
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The (Rich Client) Platform
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NetBeans IDE Modules and
Update Center
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Collaboration
Framework/Tools
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NetBeans and Beyond -
Matisse, Simplified CVS, Editor improvements, Usability improvements,
Java EE, More refactorings, Dynamic Languages, etc.
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Other Reasons : Open
Source IDE , XML, Editor Hints, Java Hints, powerful Code, etc.
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Well - it was more than 12 - but who's counting.
Tim Cramer, Director of NetBeans introduced what NetBeans is and was followed by Tim Boudreau who showed how easy it was to bring in an Ant project into NetBeans and people seemed surprised with the ease of downloading sources (for Jedit) and bring them in as a NetBeans project. He also showed the new Code Editing features (Editor Hints/Quick Fix and other aspects like the navigator), GUI Builder and how easy it was to work with CVS now. Inyoung showed the Visual Editor in Mobility Pack module, the ease of building web apps and the Profiler and VisualGC. I covered a number of other topics out-of-the-box experience, import facilites, ui and ui performance, debugger, NetBeans module and Update Center.
People are seeing beyond marketing and trying NetBeans and liking
it - here are two great reviews - one from JavaLobby Newsletter this week which pronounced NetBeans Software Day "an overwhelming success" (will link to it when they archive it) and one from Network Computing.
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