NetBeans IDE 8.0 | Hacker News Reader

NetBeans IDE 8.0

netbeans.org

98 pointsconductor64 comments

NetBeans is slick. I just finished a small java/swing project to make a desktop data conversion tool. I don't have much experience with java and almost none with IDEs but I was pleasantly surprised.

I found the editor to be decent and had good emacs bindings, even enabling the "tab goes to proper indent" behavior. The debugger was very good. It was able to easily manipulate the various threads of the program and quickly find a problem. The build files that NetBeans generated were well designed and I was able to easily add some build actions.

My only other experience with an IDE was visual studio in 2004 in my freshman c++ classes. That was huge pain. Nobody really understood what it was doing. And problems were regularly solved by creating a new project and copy-pasting code from the old to the new. On the other hand VS may have been great and it's the additional 10 years of experience that made the difference. haha

Yup. Netbeans was the IDE that finally dragged be away from Emacs. Well, at least for Java programming, I still use Emacs for pretty much everything else :o)

I never quite get why there are so many people so keen on Eclipse. Always seems slow, hard to configure and (to me) less intuitive than Netbeans. Ah well, each to their own =)

Netbeans 8 is great for HTML5/JS work as well. Been using the beta version for AngularJS development the past 2 months.

Netbeans JavaScript support is great.

Good enough autocomplete, integration JSLint makes you aware of possible errors as one types and there is the integration with a myriad of JS frameworks.

Really nice.

Have you tried Brackets or JetBrains WebStorm? If so, how does it compare as far as HTML/CSS/JS dev?

No I have not.

How fast is the Netbeans UI compared to IntelliJ(fast) and Eclipse(slow)?

I just finished this IntelliJ plugin and wondering if anyone could use a Netbeans one:

https://github.com/wakatime/jetbrains-wakatime

Anyone here use Netbeans as their primary IDE and want a similar plugin developed?

NetBeans is vastly underrated. It's ugly and runs like a pig, but then again so is/does Eclipse. The difference is that Eclipse's UI seems oriented to accessing the vast and confusing library of Eclipse plugins, whereas NetBeans's UI is oriented to getting shit done. NetBeans is like "Oh, what are you writing today? An enterprise app? Need a database? Boom -- installed. Need an application server? Bazinga -- installed. Need Hibernate? Zap-boopity-bop -- you get the idea. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you." It's basically the Java programming tool, and it really helps in making the fiddly bits of writing a complex Java application much more manageable for people like me, a humble programmer from the old Unix tradition.

But you almost never hear of it. People are like "oooh, Eclipse, Eclipse, Eclipse, if you want to program in Java you need Eclipse!" Fuck Eclipse. The few times I tried it I ended up more confused, and I think I screwed up my install somehow. NetBeans for the win.

Though when writing Android apps I still use vim or emacs.

Ah Netbeans! I remember using this IDE during my university time - and it still looks like shit after so many years :)

Take a good look at what JetBrains did.

IntelliJ also looks like shit. It has its own toolkit and the same horrible font rendering as any other swing program. If you want your IDE to be pretty, try Eclipse.

you are really mentioning Eclipse as a pretty IDE or is it a joke ? :P

If we're talking Linux, then yes, IntelliJ is a gruesome sight indeed.

Not in the guise of Android Studio, using the Darcula skin. It is actually rather pleasant to look at, as far as IDE's go. Just make those humongous fonts a bit smaller and it looks quite sleek. I wonder why so many Java apps insist on using oversized fonts and features, especially since Swing was introduced?

Font rendering is still horrible on Linux compared to Sublime.

Am i missing some magical eclipse configuration? I need to increase font sizes and at best i can only do half the IDE. Eclipse has been an atrocious experience for me so far.

I'll admit that the default eclipse theme looks hideous on a mac, which is why I use this: https://github.com/jeeeyul/eclipse-themes

This plugin should be preinstalled by default for all platforms.

Yeah, still doesn't let u customize the right fonts. I am using it now. I think a newer version removed that feature (wtf)

It is really ugly and yes with jeeyuls themes, yum! Soon Eclipse will have icons ready for dark themes too, can't wait.

Re antialiasing, if it's not looking right, try passing -J-Dswing.aatext=true -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd -J-Dorg.netbeans.editor.aa.extra.hints=true (on the command line or add it in $NETBEANS/etc/netbeans.conf)

Netbeans is actually my favorite IDE for PHP development.

JetBrains isn't free, and for PHP I do prefer Netbeans anyways.

I like the IntelliJ community edition. Sure, it doesn't have everything in the full version, but it's pretty good for what it offers.

Unfortunately, the IntelliJ community edition doesn't support most non-JVM-based languages. This is the main thing holding me back from it -- I mostly program in PHP but I do a fair amount in Python, a little in Ruby, some in Javascript, and recently some in Clojure. To do all this with IntelliJ requires the full commercial "Ultimate Edition."

And just to top it off, from all appearances the free Clojure plugin is being deprecated in favor of the third-party Cursive Clojure, which is free now but "will be a commercial project at a similar price point to PyCharm or RubyMine." Since it's not a JetBrains product, that's more than likely means another $99 on top of the $199 for Ultimate. I like what I've seen of JetBrains' stuff but I don't think I like it enough to shell out that much.

Author of Cursive here. You're right, it's unfortunate that I can't get around having to charge on top of Ultimate.

However note that the Community edition now includes their Python support (although not the frameworks), and for a lot of people one of their specialised IDEs (PyCharm or RubyMine, for Python or Ruby support with all the web tech) will be sufficient. I'm going to look into providing Cursive as a plugin for those IDEs to make the price more reasonable for folks who don't want Java, but I'm not sure how much work that will be since those IDEs don't include the base Java support that Cursive relies on.

(Just catching up a bit late...) Yeah, I don't blame you for not being able to get around charging. The only obvious solution is being bought by Jetbrains, but neither of you may be interested in that outcome. :)

I'm in what's probably a minority position of wanting to have Python, PHP and Clojure all in the same place. I can get there, just not at a comfortable price point...

While I enjoy being able to use tools for free, as a developer I do appreciate the value of paying for tools.

The said teams need to be able to live from something.

Netbeans and Eclipse can be free, because Sun/Oracle/IBM get their money from somewhere else.

JetBrains sells only InteliJ based tools.

It doesn't have to look that bad, their screenshots are not using the OS's native look and feel (LAF) but the really ugly Java fallback one.

Regarding UI appearance, it really depends on what OS you're using and what theme/feel you choose. Though I agree, some people using some very ugly Netbeans settings [0].

[0] - https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/leiningen_clojure_an...

When you make a comment like this, please specify what operating system you're running the software under. I think Netbeans looks quite good on OS X. Much better than Eclipse (low bar) and competitive with other IDEs.

Good point! I find that the look of the IDE is the most important feature when I'm coding.

It is my favourite Java IDE.

Granted it was a bit shitty around 2003, when it still used mounts points and a virtual workspace concept. It was also a bit sluggish back then.

When they changed the architecture to drop those concepts, base their build systems on top of Ant/Maven and optimize their UI resource usage, it became great.

Not to forget the work started by JRuby team that helped improve the support for dynamic languages, to the point it feels almost like Java.

That work was done by Tor Norbye who worked on the core Netbeans team at the time.

He is now driving the Android Studio development, right?

Netbeans is by far the most powerful PHP IDE out there. The intellisense like search, jumping to definitions, code re-factoring, file search, integrated debugging, and code analysis makes everything else look like a joke.

It's not the most prettiest IDE out there, but it's free and open source. It's the visual studio of PHP and java, only better. And open source.

Couldn't agree more. I would add that the Git integration is just about perfect, as well as the remote synchronization.

My main complaint, however, is slow load time and occasional hangups/momentary unresponsiveness.

I take it you haven't tried PHPStorm then? We used NetBeans for a long time until we tried out PHPStorm and it is amazing how much better and faster it is.

I was totally into netbeans until an update broke it in my environment (java issues)> I grudgingly switched to phpstorm about six months ago. Wouldn't even consider going back to netbeans now.

NetBeans is pure Swing, so you can do some tinkering to pretty it up to your liking.

Have you tried IntelliJ? I haven't used netbeans for years but for me IntelliJ is light years ahead of eclipse. I would be interested to hear from anybody who has tried both for a reasonable amount of time.

PHPStorm takes that title hands down

Netbeans has always impressed me. It's a very solid IDE, but I moved away from it after they decided to ditch more and more non-java language support. I'd still pick it over Eclipse though. IntelliJ is my current tool of choice, mostly due to their Scala support.

The official Scala IDE is Eclipse based though (http://scala-ide.org/) and I trust that people who develop the language itself are best suited to develop the IDE as well. Plus I hate the fact that both Netbeans and IntelliJ are developed on top of Swing and it has that forever-not-fixed issue with font rendering on some major linux distros - Ubuntu just to name one. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15053069/netbeans-on-ubun...

Except their plugin tends to not play nice with other ones, like the Groovy one.

So in the end, one needs multiple Eclipse installations for different types of work.

Uh what? I use the groovy plugin and scala ide plugin just fine and a bunch of others.

It might be the case now. I had lots of issues with JDT and aspects being used by both plugins last year.

Since then I always use separate installations.

I've tried both and the IntelliJ plugin is much more polished.

I find the comments are not very helpful. I am myself familiar with Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA (my assessment based on experience is that both are equally powerful and pleasant to use, excepted that IDEA is much much more stable). How does NetBeans compare? Does it have any specific feature worth mentioning?

Being free from the tyranny of Eclipse workspaces is, on its own, damn nice.

If you're the type that likes your version control integrated in your IDE, SVN and git feel much more natural in NetBeans than the Team Provider implementations in Eclipse. Eclipse requires navigating to the source control perspective, adding the repository, checking out, and then selecting the option to look for projects which you can open in your workspace.. its not exactly a smooth process. NB is more akin to what you'd do if your terminal was open.

In terms of stability, NB definitely wins there. Never crashes and none of the typing slow downs that used to bug me [what seemed like] all the time in Eclipse.

The one incredibly irritating thing about it is the way it forks processes when running via maven. Start an http server with netty and hit stop, the process is still running. I've taken to doing most of my testing from a terminal, which is a somewhat janky process I've forced myself to get used to.

Remember mount points? At least the Netbeans developers learned that workspaces as Eclipse does it makes no sense.

I really love being able to use Ant and Maven as project files, without internal IDE lifecycle builders like Eclipse requires.

I haven't used Eclipse in quite some time, but I do use IntelliJ occasionally. I like NetBeans' gradle integration (plugin), and I think the UI is a lot more simple and intuitive than IntelliJ (it's a lot easier to figure out how to do something). Also, I think it's quite pretty and elegant.

But it boils down to personal preference. Both IntelliJ and NetBeans are terrific IDEs.

I realize this doesn't contain specifics but I haven't used anything other than IntelliJ for some time so I can only offer my impression...

I went from Eclipse (which I never liked as it always felt slow and clunky) to Netbeans (which I liked a lot) to IntelliJ products and in my opinion Netbeans is very similar to the IntelliJ products only a bit slower and perhaps a tiny bit less capable.

I would say that IntelliJ's products are a 9, Netbeans is an 8 and Eclipse is a 4.

I use it for C++ and have found the refactoring feature to die for. Couple to vim bindings and its my Linux goto.

I'm using it for c development for the GT OMSCS Advanced Operating Systems course, and it was a life saver. I tried Eclipse, Sublime Text and plain old VIM. NetBeans got to stay. Why? it doesn't crash, it's lightweight, it works very well with GDB, good warnings / errors highlighting etc. I'm still checking the new 8 features, but I was missing things like introduce local variable or extract variable. can't wait till intellij release a decent C/C++ IDEA...

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the one feature of Netbeans that is completely unrivaled by neither IntelliJ nor Eclipse: the integrated profiler.

Yes, you can use VisualVM. However, it is essentially a standalone version of the Netbeans profiler, that lags behind in terms of features and gives you bad to no IDE integration.

Just to position myself: I started coding Java in Eclipse, and I love its powerful refactoring capabilities but otherwise hate pretty much everything else about it. Then I switched to Netbeans, where I felt way more comfortable, but still got annoyed by the occasional hangs and sluggish response. Now I'm primarily using IntelliJ, which has the best of both worlds in terms of refactoring power, ease of use and interface slickness. However, i still go back to Netbeans from time to time just because of the profiler.

For profiling I'm pretty happy with JRockit Mission Control in Eclipse[1]. Plus, jvmmonitor[2] is a good lighter alternative, and there is YourKit[3] as well.

[1] http://download.oracle.com/technology/products/missioncontro...

[2] https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/jvmmonitor/

[3] http://www.yourkit.com/overview/index.jsp

"I don't often program in Java (anymore), but when I do, I use Netbeans" - Me

NetBeans is probably the best free IDE out there. I've used it before switching to Jetbrains' products which I believe are superior. Eclipse on the other hand was making me sick every time I tried to use it...

I've been using NB from Java to C++, PHP to Javascript for about 6 years. I tried others but nothing is like NB believe or not.

Around 2007 I started a major Java project using Eclipse on Linux. It would work well for awhile then freeze for no particular reason, sometimes the project settings would get trashed and I'd have to create a new project and move all the source code over to it. Once day after running some updates, Subversion stopped working. The Eclipse subversion plugin wouldn't update because of some plugin dependency problem. Plugin updates didn't work all that well in general.

So, I decided to check out NetBeans. I have tried years before (4.0 ish) and wasn't all that impressed, but 6.0 had just come out.

Everything just worked.

No special plugins needed, It seemed more responsive, SVN worked fine. Plus it supported PHP and c/c++, both of which I would need for the project.

The other developer and myself switched to Netbeans and never looked back. I've been upgrading Netbeans with each release and will probably upgrade to 8.0 this weekend.

I've found NetBeans to feel less resource hungry than Eclipse, or IntelliJ IDEA, on my linux box. It also feels more intelligent than Eclipse when offering suggestions or code completion. I've, overall, been extremely pleased with it. I also prefer it aesthetically over Eclipse, for what that's worth.

The transition from Eclipse is really smooth, and there are many helpful FAQ's on the subject if you need it. I've been recommending it to friends since I made the switch a few months back.

I used netbeans when I was doing a lot of Java dev. Since I've stopped, I've been using Komodo and it serves my purposes. I don't particularly miss it, but if I go back to more java dev, I'll be downloading netbeans first thing.

I just tried it out, unless I am missing something, it does not support AOP. Which basically makes it worthless for me, my project uses AOP.

Netbeans is nice. Especially with the jvi plugin, that makes vimers feel right at home.

Oh man they need a designer.

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