Oh Netbeans is back!

I was searching for another java related podcast and found Netbeans podcast (where is Eclipse podcast???) thinking to myself the pain of trying out Netbeans 3 a while ago. What can it do differently? WAIT! After listen to the Netbeans podcast by Roumen and Gregg I tried NB 5.5 --- and WOW! All the the NB's plug-in are at NO COST!

I currently use Eclipse at home (WSAD @ work) which works out pretty well with same key-shortcuts, l&f. I wasn't sure if I want to "change", but Netbeans makes it pretty easy to try it out! 1) convert project from Eclipse 2) has an option to map the same key-shortcuts!!! but I do miss local history...which is coming in NB 6.

Building GUI, Matisse in Netbeans is pretty easy (missing springlayout???), Eclipse has some 3rd-party plug-in that works okay... the best one is Windowbuilderpro by Instantiations supports for Swing, SWT and GWT, but at a cost :-)

One plug-in, I like the best in NB is Enterprise Pack; a working UML is a very useful tool which is not ~perfect~ in Eclipse. no no no I am not jumping off Eclipse's ship yet, but I hope Eclipse can step up... I haven't done a full project with Netbeans so I can't say which tool is "better". All this is a very healthy competition in the open source world ;-)