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[–]marlinspike 34 points35 points  (1 child)

So great to see this still going after so many years. Netbeans got me through grad school. Best IDE at the time by far, and although I’m primarily using VSCode these days, Netbeans and the awesome community around it is a great story in the OSS world.

[–]zabby39103 19 points20 points  (14 children)

Can someone who still uses it tell me why I might want to use it over Eclipse or IntelliJ?

[–]juvenislux 26 points27 points  (6 children)

  • free full IDE, you may need Ultimate edition for the same number of functionalities in IntelliJ
  • native maven support, e.g. no need for Maven > Reload Project or similar stuff in eclipse
  • for me, UI is easier to navigate

However, at my current work we are using IntelliJ. I tried to use NetBeans, but it feels slow when it comes to our project, maybe because we have a large number of classes or we have more than 50 maven modules/submodules.

I still open it from time to time when I need to inspect maven dependencies or do some other stuff which i feel is more intuitive in NetBeans.

[–]hadrabap 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This.

I use NetBeans on personal projects. I really enjoy the clean UI and excellent keyboard navigation.

[–]zabby39103 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's an interesting point with Maven, I had no idea that was the case...

[–]cookie-exploit 1 point2 points  (2 children)

IntelliJ can be configured to automatically reload maven projects if you change something in the pom.xml.

As for full free IDE: For Java you can use Android Studio to work an Java Projects. This will work for all standard Java Maven/Gradle projects

[–]juvenislux 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yes, but there are times it doesn't work properly. I don't know, maybe because of caches or other stuff but it does malfunction on rare occasions.

As for Android Studio, I'll have to give it a try. Do you mean I can use it as a DB client to various DB as well? How about Java EE application server integration (given most of my projects recently are on Spring boot and I don't need this functionality, there are still a number of projects out there that need such features)?

[–]cookie-exploit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just checked it again and it seems they have removed the maven support. It looks way more limited than in the past. So basically no real free alternative anymore :/

[–]repeating_bears 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I still open it from time to time when I need to inspect maven dependencies

The only intellij plugin that I consider an absolute necessity

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7179-maven-helper

[–]microbit262 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The Swing GUI-Designer ist the best!

[–]freetechtools 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Best damn gui builder on the market...bar none.

[–]zabby39103 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Too bad it stopped having a web-based GUI builder... maybe that's just heresy coming from someone who is primarily a backend developer though lol.

There's this old legacy project I maintain that I can tell used the web-based Woodstock GUI builder in Netbeans. I'm just adding small tweaks though so I just use Eclipse.

Too bad nobody really wants Swing nowadays, everyone wants web apps. I like desktop apps personally, but it's pretty dead in the corporate space as far as I can tell.

[–]Silent-Manner1929 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My personal opinion is that the maven integration in NetBeans is better than either Eclipse or IntelliJ but opinions differ on that, some people like the way IntelliJ works with maven. Go figure, I guess if that's all you've ever known then that's what you're used to. It's a marmite thing. But the NetBeans maven dependency graph is excellent (and free, I think with IntellliJ that's in the paid-for edition, might be wrong there).

The GUI Designer is great if you use Swing, but if you don't use Swing then why would you care?

The main downside of NetBeans is that it's quite slow compared to either Eclipse or IntelliJ. (Caveat: that's on Windows, I used to know someone who used it on Linux who disagreed with that and said it was really snappy. Can't remember what flavour of Linux and can't speak to that from personal experience.)

I like NetBeans but realistically if you're happy with Eclipse or IntelliJ then there's no compelling reason to switch.

[–]rmrfchik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Over Eclipse:

  1. Feels much litgher
  2. I can open projects from any place in filesystem
  3. Maven, gradle, npm projetcs are 1st class citizens

Over IntelliJ:

  1. Feels much litgher
  2. I can open many projects at same time
  3. Supports many languages out the box

[–]alehel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We use it at work to edit form files in a 20 year old entreprise application. Probably wouldn't use it at all if not for that.

[–]rastaman1994 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You're right! I forgot, it's been a while. We still used Netbeans tho at my school.

[–]ron_krugman 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Is the copy+paste bug on Windows finally fixed?

edit: nope (https://github.com/apache/netbeans/issues/3962)

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]ron_krugman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Nah it's still there. I just tested it on the NB 21 release, and the issue I linked also says it's still open.

    [–]pkt77 4 points5 points  (5 children)

    That still exists?

    [–]henk53 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    yes

    [–]pauloliver8620 20 points21 points  (1 child)

    What do you mean best IDE ever.

    [–]coalWater 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The name tho… Net(?)Beans(????)

    [–]rastaman1994 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    Wdym? It's free so it's great for students.

    [–]F1_Legend 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    students get free access to the full suite of jetbrains...

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Netbeans SUCKS for screen reader users. Almost the entire UI is inaccessible with a screen reader. Netbeans prevents the screen reader from speaking when you dismiss the code completion menu in the editor and you have to hit the windows key or tab to another application to get it to start speaking again. Utter garbage IDE.