Netbeans 5 is looking good
I spent years using gvim as my main editor for everything, including programming. A year or so ago, I started using Eclipse for my Java projects. Eclipse is not a Java IDE per se. It’s an application framework for which JDK programming modules were implemented. However, you have also find modules for developing C++ and Python within Eclipse too.
Eclipse has grown in popularity so much recently that it’s caused the other OSS offerings - and more crucially, the commerical offerings - to really move up a gear, and I think Netbeans is on the verge of becoming a first-class Java IDE.
I recently experimented with NB 5 beta and finally got around to playing with its killer feature, Matisse. This is NB’s new GUI design module and quite frankly it blows the competition out of the water. Writing GUI code is the most tedious task. Getting a few textboxes and labels on screen is fairly straight-forward, but getting the blasted things aligned properly will ensure you lose an hour of your time!
So, check out the Matisse demo to see what the fuss is about. I think I’ll wait until NB5 is released proper and then I’ll trial it for my next Java project, whatever that may be.
