NetBeans Update, Briefly and Vaguely

29 October 2007

Following up on my previous, surprisingly popular post about NetBeans, I finally wrote a Java GUI program with it. Simple program, but the writing of it confirmed my initial impression that NetBeans will be a good Java IDE for me. I’ve been avoiding the learning curve of Java GUI, but this weekend I thought of something I figured I could manage. It went pretty well, and I’ll be writing another post about the program soon. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m confident now I’ll be able to muddle my way along.

Random bullet points:

I certainly haven’t put the Matisse GUI builder through its paces yet, but I’m still impressed by how robust and full-featured it is.
The overall environment still feels comfortable to me and intuitive in a way that Eclipse hasn’t. In both IDEs, I get a sense of so many things I need to learn, but with NetBeans it has been easier to get started.

For example, it’s easy to start a new project and pick a place for it, without having to worry about something like Eclipse’s workspaces. Workspaces may be great, but it’s not something I want to manage up front. This is not to stoke arguments over which is better! I’m just stating personal opinion and vague impressions. Granted, that example is a beginner’s concern. It’s just one example.
I like how the debugger works. Variable inspection and watches work well. You can modify code while running the program, which is something I haven’t noticed being able to do before. Maybe Eclipse allows this also and I just haven’t tried. I always liked this feature in Visual Basic. I’d like to have something like VB’s “immediate” window where you can execute ad hoc statements against the variables in memory. Maybe it’s already there and I’ll find it eventually.
It’s easy to compile to a jar and run with java -jar the-program.jar. Not like this is some gargantuan feature, but it’s nice when simple things work simply.
Subversion integration seems to be excellent. I had installed the SVN module/plugin a while back but hadn’t used it yet. It was no problem to import the new program in to my repository and do updates and commits. Moving a file from one folder to another also worked fine.
This isn’t NetBeans specific, but the cross-platformness of Java is great. I tried running my program on Windows and it worked the same there. This is important to me because I still use Windows at work and may want to use my programs there, and I’d also like them to be available to a wider audience of Windows users on the Net.

On the one hand, I’d love to have more killer software that is only available on GNU/Linux, but on the other I think the more free software the better, even if it runs on unfree Windows. If Java makes it easy to write free software that runs on multiple platforms, then I’m happy to include the largest possible group of potential customers. We just have to convince people that freedom is better so that they will want to run those Java programs on GNU/Linux.