
6 Reasons to Use Netbeans IDE - mirchada993
http://raed.tn/blog/6-reasons-to-use-netbeans-ide/
======
th3iedkid
One of the other good things with Netbeans is using it as a platform like in
rich clients.

We have developed some quick and good tools on this platform and it seems to
work out neatly on our overall structure.

~~~
arenaninja
Yes! I toyed around with this about two years ago, and I was able to make
NetBeans edit TIFF images (which it doesn't, by default). I also replaced some
older-looking elements from the Images Editor module, most of that was
accomplished by following Geertjan
([https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/](https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/)),
who was also regularly in IRC, reachable via e-mail, his blog, etc.

Unfortunately, NetBeans was in the middle of an internal transition at the
time (having to do with how actions are bound to keys and menu items), and I
didn't get the newer way, and the module I expanded used the old keybinding
method.

------
jeremyjh
Netbeans is an excellent IDE for developing C++ on Linux. I've been using it
for a Cocos2d-X project with few complaints. It has a really good Vim emulator
which is critical to me and where Jetbrains continues to disappoint me.

~~~
pjmlp
It helps being the official Solaris IDE.

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
They both come from the same company so it's not exactly a testament of
quality, just corporate strategy.

~~~
pjmlp
Sure, but Sun (now Oracle) could have chosen just to support Java.

So it was a good decision to give support to C and C++ developers as well.

------
pjmlp
Netbeans is great, it has changed a lot since the old days around 2002, where
it was quite slow and one even had to mount filesystems into the workspace.

The Netbeans rewrite that followed, the use of Ant and Maven as project files
and the overall plugin quality beats Eclipse any day.

The HTML5 support is great, specially the integration with JavaScript
frameworks and static analyzers.

I also enjoy the C++ and Assembly support is also quite good, given it is the
official Solaris IDE.

Best of all, no nonsense workspace or perspective modes in sight.

And the plugins API is quite good.

~~~
jimbokun
"...the use of Ant and Maven as project files..."

This is what I want most from a Java IDE. I find IDEs project configuration
complex, arbitrary, inscrutable, and un-diffable (making version control on
the project files mostly useless).

Eclipse and IntelliJ make some effort to work with Maven and Ant, but tend to
get out of sync in hard to debug ways.

~~~
V-2
Android Studio (Google's fork of IDEA) was awful at the beginning but is on
the right track to getting quite good with Gradle.

------
Zigurd
When I was first writing Java for feature phones I much preferred Netbeans to
Eclipse mainly because Netbeans avoided presenting large numbers of
nonsensical commands in the menus. That is, Netbeans behaved much more like a
proper GUI. Both Netbeans and Eclipse suffer from adapting command line
interfaces to a GUI, and it's hard to do that and to filter out nonsensical
combinations of command line flags reflected in the way those options are
presented in a GUI. But, in addition to that challenge, Eclipse's modularity-
over-usability philosophy hampers it more.

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unclebunkers
I don't want to sound like a jerk, but has the author tried other options?

~~~
un3n
Doubtful. If he had, he would be able to provide more reasoning than 'netbeans
is awesome, its the best and nothing is better!!". How about specifics on what
you think netbeans does thats better? For example in what way do you find the
git support better? Because as someone who regularly use IntelliJ IDEA I feel
that it is better in every way (which is why I use it). What I'm getting at is
blanketly saying 'X program is the best it does B better than Y" is useless,
and wont provide anyone looking for a new IDE any information on why they
should try X over Y. What makes its implementation better? I want actual
descriptions, and images, and actual use cases.</ramble>

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rootlocus
Unfortunately the link is down but I seriously doubt it would convince me to
switch from Idea or any other JetBrains IDE.

~~~
pjmlp
But from Eclipse? :)

~~~
V-2
That was a cheap shot pjmlp ;)

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chippy
The best thing for me with Netbeans is the visual diff feature and local
history, which works with git. There's a side by side diff view, and there's a
clickable gutter marker in normal mode.

You can see individual changes, see history of a file, revert back lines, see
what happened upon every save, not just every commit. I use it for Ruby on
Rails. This, and the find (grep) feature is the only feature that I use. None
of the other bells or whistles.

I've been working on plugin for Geany that approaches this, but nothing has
matched it for Netbeans.

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highmastdon
Link is down:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?site=&source=h...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fraed.tn%2Fblog%2F6-reasons-
to-use-netbeans-ide%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fraed.tn%2Fblog%2F6-reasons-to-
use-netbeans-
ide%2F&gs_l=hp.3...509.2836.0.2979.12.10.2.0.0.0.167.584.8j1.9.0....0...1c.1.53.hp..3.9.372.0.WeH0p
--QHgI)

~~~
mirchada993
Sorry website down, the community driven hosting server seems to have issues
...

------
TeMPOraL
_(I mean absolutely no disrespect towards the author and his great post, it 's
just that after reading it I felt I have to write down an Emacs version of
that.)_

Six reasons to use Emacs

 _Emacs_ is a great IDE for octopuses and Lisp developers, but did you also
know you can use it for almost every other project? Here are 6 reasons why you
should use Emacs for your projects.

 _Emacs_ is at the top of a one-element list when it comes to great free Lisp
IDEs. But for a little over three years now I have been using it in more and
more projects. Going from basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript to Erlang, PHP, C++ and
programming ARM microcontrollers. You name it, Emacs can handle it.

It is true, that Emacs was conceived initially for developing primarily with
Lisp and various forms of stuff barely more convenient than pure assembly. But
now that it is in its 24.4 version, it has grown to cover much more ground,
from languages - as I mentioned above - to frameworks like Angular.js,
Node.js, Symfony, Zend, etc…

So here are _6 reasons to use Emacs:_

 _6 - Emacs is uber-modular_

Unlike Eclipse, Netbeans, or most others, Emacs is a _really modular_ IDE. And
this is great for both users and developers. After downloading Emacs you can
choose between different packages, modules and extensions depending on your
needs, If you only need C/C++ projects you won’t be downloading unnecessary
packages for Java or PHP. You can install, tweak and remove packages depending
on your needs, making Emacs a highly customizable IDE with little effort.

Plus, if you’re a developer, you can make Emacs do whatever you like by
modifying running code on the fly. If a feature you want is missing, you can
trivially code it up in few seconds and enable immediately, all without
restarting Emacs. You can browse through the fully-documented elisp sources to
study how the power of Lisp and right design decision can allow various
modules augment other modules without conflict…

Emacs also can have a Nyan Cat in a modeline.

This can be very instructive.

 _5 - A great community_

Like all great open-source projects, Emacs has a very active online community.
I rarely stumble on an issue that was not already solved somewhere on the
Emacs wiki. This is particularly helpful when you’re discovering a new IDE.
Also the Emacs Rocks videos. Those are great too. You can also participate in
the community using IRC. Emacs has a built-in IRC client, of course.

 _4 - Org Mode_

Trying to organize your work? Emacs has some great text-oriented tools to suit
your needs. It will happily turn your simple plaintext list of tasks into
full-blown calendaring system, complete with clocking the time you spent on
tasks, pomodoro mode (optionally installed in org-pomodoro package),
generating agendas for whatever timespan and set of conditions you want, and
many more; all of this with a very nice workflow and possibly the most
convenient tool for editing tables on the planet.

 _3 - Teamwork_

Working on a team or alone I like to use version control (Git mostly) to
manage my work. Emacs offer a great support for this (Git, Mercurial and SVN;
and Darcs, and Fossil, and even TFS, you name it). You can manage branches,
commits, pushes and conflicts effortlessly and without having to touch a mouse
or leave your editor. No other IDE has perfected this, out-of-the-box, like
Emacs (though you might want to install magit package).

 _2 - Browser REPLs_

Read-Eval-Print-Loops are awesome, as any Lisp-speaking SLIME-using programmer
will tell you. Emacs has numerous REPLs that connect to browsers to make your
life easier. Their main features are: Refresh on Save (ok, you'll probably
have to type it up yourself, but it's a single defadvice...), bi-directional
element inspection, JavaScript debugging, HTML debugging and pushing to
browser, CSS debugging and pushing to browser, etc…

If you’re an experienced web developer you’d say “I can set those up myself
with some scripts and extensions”. And you’re correct. The thing is, it's
simpler than it sounds. Emacs offers you all this with a bunch of simple M-x
package-install invocations.

 _1 - Feature rich_

I have been using Emacs for a while now, and every other day I discover new
things; and even if I discover a new thing in another IDE, the Lispiness of
Emacs never ceases to amaze me - like with all Lisps, it's trivial to copy a
feature from a competitor and do it better. That is, if you don't _already
have_ a better one.

Note: I always keep something like vim installed for quick editing, most of
the time because I'm too lazy to set up emacs-client as EDITOR for rare random
interactions with interactive editing in unix shell.

Are you using Emacs or another powerful editor? Share your experience in a
comment!

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
> Unlike Eclipse, Netbeans, or most others, Emacs is a really modular IDE.

Considering the number of plugins that exist for Eclipse, IDEA and NetBeans,
the claim that emacs is more modular than all these IDE's is a bit absurd,
don't you think?

> Like all great open-source projects, Emacs has a very active online
> community.

As do Eclipse and IDEA (NetBeans being a distant third, not so much).

> Working on a team or alone I like to use version control (Git mostly) to
> manage my work.

All the IDE's have git (and other revision systems) plugins. They all have
their pros and cons and personally, I prefer to use an external tool
(SourceTree) but emacs is unlikely to have an obvious advantage here.

> 2 - Browser REPLs

The Lisp eval mode and _shell_ interaction are nice, but they are pretty
limited to elisp and shell. All the IDE's have evaluation windows that let you
run any arbitrary Java code, something that doesn't exist in emacs.

> 1 - Feature rich

Well, yes, all these tools have a lot of features.

It's interesting that you don't list the number one (and pretty much only)
advantage that emacs has over any other text editor: macros. Macros are pretty
much the only reason why I still use emacs today (\C-x(, \C-x) and \C-xe). And
occasionally for small text files.

But for code, if you're not using a specialized IDE, you're not as productive
as you could be.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Considering the number of plugins that exist for Eclipse, IDEA and
> NetBeans, the claim that emacs is more modular than all these IDE 's is a
> bit absurd, don't you think?_

Modularity is not measured in how many plugins you can have, but in what those
plugins can do with your editor without stepping on each other's toes.

All your other criticism applies to the original text as much as to my comedy
piece.

> _The Lisp eval mode and shell interaction are nice, but they are pretty
> limited to elisp and shell._

No; go and check it out. I specifically wrote about _browser REPLs_. People
wrote REPLs that connect _to the browser_ and let you execute arbitrary
JavaScript, as well as transfer HTML and CSS between Emacs and an open page.
Check out Moz Repl and skewer-mode.

> _All the IDE 's have evaluation windows that let you run any arbitrary Java
> code, something that doesn't exist in emacs._

Well Emacs has it too. Just install a Java REPL. Or shell out from inside
Emacs, like all the IDEs used to do.

> _It 's interesting that you don't list the number one (and pretty much only)
> advantage that emacs has over any other text editor: macros. Macros are
> pretty much the only reason why I still use emacs today (\C-x(, \C-x) and
> \C-xe)._

Well, I don't find macros that important _alone_. Their power depends on
having complex text selection, navigation and modification tools. Things like
reverse incremental search (regexp or regexp-free version, whatever you like),
skipping and selecting semantic units (sentences, paragraphs, s-expressions,
etc.), expand-region, transposing, sorting, rectangle-operations, etc. And
then there are things like ace-jump, multiple-cursors, etc.

The power and convenience of Emacs lies in all those features being readily
available _everywhere_ , one key press away. Emacs is a "total greater than
sum of its parts" type of editor.

------
jisaacks
I used to use Netbeans before moving to Sublime Text, there was only really
one thing I missed, the way it showed changes in the gutter.

~~~
velodrome
Have you tried using something like GitGutter?

------
progx
1 Reason to Use Sublime Text

1 - I need a good Editor, not an IDE

~~~
simi_
This is my exact use case, and I moved from ST2/3 to Atom a while ago, and
haven't looked back. (that's not to say Atom doesn't suck, because it does,
but it's getting better at a very brisk pace)

~~~
progx
I think Atom can have a great future. The modular design and nodejs under the
hood are great benefits.

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dozzie
> 6- Netbeans is modular

OK, how can I replace its shitty editor with something decent, like Vim or
Emacs?

> 3- Teamwork

I don't see how clicky menu would help with issuing git commands apart from
few obvious entries. I would end up needing terminal anyway.

> 1- Feature rich

So is AutoCAD, but this alone doesn't make it good environment for developing
code.

~~~
highmastdon
> OK, how can I replace its shitty editor with something decent, like Vim or
> Emacs?

[http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/2802/jvi-vi-vim-editor-
cl...](http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/2802/jvi-vi-vim-editor-clone)

~~~
dozzie
I didn't ask "how to configure its editor to use vi-like mappings", I asked
"how can I _replace_ the editor". Mere clone will not have even one third of
the features and functions I use every day.

NetBeans' editor is shitty not because it's not vi-like, but because it lacks
plenty of editing functions fully featured Vim has.

~~~
meddlepal
Can you educate us on what those features are?

~~~
shapov
Emulating vi keybinding is great and all, but that only scratches the surface.
A big reason people like vim is the extensibility. I don't think that there is
a single vi user(not necessarily a power user, but someone who uses vim for
more than just editing a value in a config file) who doesn't have a single
plugin installed.

~~~
meddlepal
Great! Except you haven't told me anything about Vi(m) does that Netbeans,
Eclipse or IDEA cannot do. We have powerful plugins too! I promise!

