Beginning NetBeans IDE: For Java Developers

Beginning NetBeans IDE is your authoritative guide for getting started learning and using the free and open source NetBeans IDE. Written by Geertjan Wielenga, who has worked on the NetBeans Team since 2004, it shows you what the IDE is all about and how to use it with real-world case studies built from the ground up as you learn all about the IDE.

In this book, you get a tour of the various, essential, and key NetBeans features, including a range of wizards and plug-ins. Then, you start building a more complex Java EE-based application using Maven with the NetBeans IDE. And, you learn how to improve that application by exploring the NetBeans refactoring, testing, debugging, and profiling tools.

After reading and using this guide, you'll come away with a working case study and many insights into how to understand and optimally make use of NetBeans IDE.

What you’ll learn

• What is NetBeans and how to use it
• How to install and set up your NetBeans IDE and environment
• How to write your first Java application using NetBeans
• How to explore the key NetBeans wizards and plug-ins
• How to build a complex Java EE-based application using Maven with NetBeans
• How to improve applications by refactoring, testing, debugging, and profiling

Who this book is for

This book is for those who are new to NetBeans who may have prior Java coding experience.

About the Author

Geertjan Wielenga is a product manager in the NetBeans team. He lives and works in Amsterdam. He is a Java technology enthusiast, evangelist, trainer, speaker, and writer.

His journey into software was long and winding. He spent most of his youth in South Africa, where he studied law at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. On graduating, suspecting that the world of suits and ties was not for him, he decided to travel for a while and see where events would lead him. In early 1996, he found himself as a proofreader for a software organization in the Netherlands called SuperNova, which was a 4GL language that rose and fell while Java was just beginning its upward trajectory. After having worked at various other software organizations in the Netherlands, such as Seagull and Uniface, he moved to Vienna, Austria and joined Coca-Cola Computer Services, which at that time supplied most of the ERP needs of the Coca-Cola Company around the world. When he had an opportunity in 2004 to move to Prague, Czech Republic to work on the free and open source NetBeans IDE, he took the chance to continue his adventures elsewhere.

He discovered that NetBeans IDE was a unique product, project, and ecosystem. NetBeans is used all over the world at schools, universities, open source projects, and large organizations, and Geertjan became inspired and continually enthused by the open source ecosystem and the central role that the NetBeans community was playing in it. At the time at Sun Microsystems, the place of NetBeans IDE was unambiguously as the enabler of Java learning and Java productivity around the world, as well as the driver of a wonderful and diverse ecosystem that had spread to all the nooks and crannies of the software development universe. With the change to Oracle, the focus became even more specifically on Java and gradually on JavaScript. Since NetBeans IDE is pluggable and extensible, NetBeans has been able to take this change in stride.

Now, in the 20th year of Java's existence, Geertjan is happy and proud of the role NetBeans has played in it, as well as his own small personal contributions to the process. He's looking forward to the next 20 years of Java and many more books about NetBeans IDE!