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Aug
2
Woohoo! I'm in love! What a great feeling, to find such a sweet platform that does almost everything I need, and most of it very well.
Sweet! I didn't know
My main squeeze, Eclipse didn't know I was checking out other fish in the sea, but really I wasn't. I was just googling for "Swing OSGi" and here comes NetBeans releases an OSGi version.
Netbeans as Platform? Huh?
I've been following Netbeans for years, but always ignored it as an application framework, because I'm going steady with the Eclipse platform. OSGi and all that stuff. You know.
But it was like falling in love. All these well organized Netbeans tutorials! Really easy to follow screen casts. Whew. And look at everything she does! Get out of the way Eclipse platform!.
NetBeans the Platform makes sense. It feels right. The API really is open, and it really is quite logical. Lots of easy choices, and you don't have to use stuff that you don't need.
It's a winner.
WebStart in seconds.
OK, I'll try one. Got my JNLP (Web Start) app up in what seemed like seconds. Wonder what else I could try. Beats the holy heck out of building an RCP distribution, that's for sure. Seconds can turn into days learning all the APIs that need to be tied together for a distribution.
Get some sleep. Try it again next morning a few times, look for problems. Nope, it's still sweet and dumb. Code looks clean. I like it.
Netbeans guys aren't like Eclipse developers.
Whoa. I'm watching 10 part Netbeans Platform series, reading tutorial after tutorial, these guys are funny, decent chaps. They seem to appreciate simplicity over impressing people with complexity.
Never thought of Eclipse devs as uppity and reserved, but since there are so many people involved with Eclipse that key players tend to get lost in the shuffle, it's easy to lose perspective on that, at least for a weekend.
Straightforward modularity ramp up.
The links between modules, and how they are all put together, seems much more dumbed down on the Netbeans side. Again, today these guys seem like a more coherent bunch.
I don't even know if the module interconnects really are easier, but it did appear that way. I guess I know too much about the innards of Eclipse and OSGi - and that can get hairy at times.
Sexy JFx
I'm not a big fan of sexy visuals, but in the JFx docs you get thrown into that, and it's enticing. I'm thinking "hey, I could really use a couple of these sexy visual features in my web release..."
But I'm also encouraged that it says I can create Swing components that deploy directly to both desktop and JFx. Same component, two deployments, less work for me! Yeah!
Your Advice Solicited:
Romance is a tricky subject. Let me know what you think below.
update Aug 6, 2010: This article is followed up with these:
There's a reason the NB APIs "make sense" and "feel right". It used to be very different (say, 7 or 8 years ago). The APIs used to be pretty bad. But the NB team learned from their mistakes, developed a strong methodology for designing and evolving APIs, and pushed it dogmatically across the codebase. The main architect of this, Jaroslav Tulach, has since written the book on API design. Check out apidesign.org.
I started building on the NB Platform around version 3.2, when it was a bear to work with. The modularity and APIs were pretty good by that point, but there were no tutorials and the wizards, project types for modules, etc, were nonexistent. Since then, it's gotten tremendously better. They really care about the development experience you have when you work with the platform. And Geertjan is a force of nature when it comes to documenting the platform.
I would definitely recommend trying it out for one real customer project, to give it a real chance. As others have said, every platform has its warts, but I really think the NB platform is less frustrating.
The Maven project view and generally speaking the Maven integration is slightly more sensible in NetBeans. It just looks/works right. That's a primary reason I keep going back to NetBeans.
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