Updated March 20, 2023
Introduction to NetBeans
An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for any programming language which allows applications to be developed and modified is called NetBeans. Modules are a set of software modular components. Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris allows NetBeans to be run in their system. It is written in Java and developed by Apache Software Foundation and Oracle Corporation. This is open source and allows Java desktop applications to be written in the IDE. Any development of web, enterprise, desktop and mobile applications can be developed in NetBeans IDE. Other than Java, it supports C, C++, XML, HTML, PHP, Groovy and scripting languages.
What is NetBeans?
- In most cases, NetBeans was the first IDE in our school days from where we had learned and begun the development or practice it as a hobby or course.
- NetBeans project was started in 1996 as a student IDE development project; Roman established a company and formed a commercial version of the Netbeans IDE; after this, it was bought by sun microsystems in 1999, which released it as an open-source and freely distributed IDE for development, till then NetBeans development community continued growing by the following year, since them Sun microsystem was acquired by the oracle corporation, in the supervision of oracle, NetBeans community had developed the JDeveloper IDE, that was the product of the company till 2016 after it oracle decide to donate this NetBeans project to the apache software foundation by saying that to continue to develop of Netbeans for future success to support the upcoming releases of the Java version.
- NetBeans is an open-source, freely available development environment used to develop desktop application, web application, and mobile application. This IDE supports various languages and framework. It provides inbuilt functionality, which added a new feature and makes it more compatible with the programmer for developing the application.
- It the first IDE that provided support for Java 7, Java EE and Java FX; it also gives comprehensive support for all the latest JDK updates. NetBeans is fully integrated with the implementation of Java EE technology with the glassfish server, which comes with the NetBeans.
- NetBeans is integrated with drag and drop features which support almost all the GUI based framework to design the interface using these framework NetBeans provided the drag and drop panel for the element, attribute and the properties which are needed to develop the user interface, which makes development easier and provide the development comfort to the programmers.
- For rapid and fast development of the application, NetBeans take care of the most of thing like user setting, Windows, NetBeans panel and visual libraries, storage space, integrated framework develop tools, drag and drop UI development panel and the configuration wizard by itself, for which the programmer does not need to worry about.
- NetBeans framework’s component reusability feature simplifies the development of the Swing-based desktop application and provides the application extension facility by using the plug-ins or the extension provided and developed by other parties.
Importance of NetBeans
- There is no need to configure anything in your system explicitly; just install the NetBeans open the project, and begin the development; such a simple and useful IDE NetBeans is.
- While comparing it with other IDE like eclipse, it has its own definition of a project like the way of eclipse treated its project is way different then NetBeans, the main difference between NetBeans and other IDE is the way to managing the project, for using the build tools like maven, and with the project in eclipse it requires a bit configuration to set up a development environment after importing a project into IDE.
- Whereas in NetBeans, it is very concise to use a build tool with a project, it contains build tool information in its metadata which has been using by the project, so we can say that if a folder contains a build file inside it, it will be treated as a project by NetBeans itself. If someone is a beginner and learning programming, that does not make a big effect on it, but if a working professional wants to start working on the existing project or the code written by other people, it makes a big difference.
Why we use NetBeans?
Sometimes we know that what we have developed in our IDE is the exactly is same as developed by someone else (teammates) in his IDE, or the same thing we have built through command-prompt to deployed it in a production-based release (after compiling, saving and integrating various modules of a project and packaging), in this situation bu using the NetBeans you will get a fewer message like “it works in my system but not others”, it helps to eliminate this situation from development. Because there is no explicit configuration is required to import and develop the project, we just need to open the project and begin with the development.
How does NetBeans work?
In laymen terms, NetBeans in just like another simple text editor with a lot more extra features mentioned below :
- Documentation: NetBeans consists of documentation of the libraries which have been using in the project, so for using the API based on that library, it displays the complete document for the method, API in a popup window which is easily accessible and useful.
- Drag and drop interface for GUI based framework like swing and JavaFX.
- FTP connection for editing the remote file or accessing the remote project.
- Framework management wizard while creating the wizard.
Creating a new project is very simple by using NetBeans by following the few steps, we can create a new project and begin with the development.
- Start NetBeans IDE after installing it.
- Click on file -> new project.
- In the new project, Java configuration wizard, expand it and select the java application type.
- In the name and location, the wizard enters the few required-entry like project name, artifact Id, group ID, and set the location and then click ok.
- Now it is ready to develop the project.
Conclusion
This IDE is mostly used by the people who code in Java. It is used to reduces/ avoids the complexity and unnecessary iterative task like compiling the code full typing etc., and increases the programming comfort for the developers for developing the project from small scale to enterprise based large scale project.
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