I couldn't disagree more. I think netbeans is the worst Java IDE out there and has a LONG way to go.
It depends on ant for everything. The build files are very difficult to read, so it's like a black box. They are also cruel enough to name the root file "build.xml" so it interferes with you trying to make a convenient IDE agnostic build script. It depends on netbeans specific libraries for copying files (WHY?!). It's very difficult to get it to build from the command line. If you check out the hudson tutorial on how to get a netbeans project building in their CI server, you have to run a headless version of netbeans on the box to do it.
Not only that, the build scripts do some really crazy black magic. You can edit parts of them and your changes get ignored. It's like netbeans generates them every time you try to run. This allows you to do things like put echo statements in the build scripts that don't get printed out even though the target runs. It's really confusing.
It is not very organized. If you go into the "Options", it has 5 big buttons at the top. Most things are in the "Miscellaneous" section.
The debugger and profiler are really slow. When I remote debug, I have to click "step over" two times for one line of code. Expanding objects in the variables tab takes an annoying amount of time. My app is apparently too big to even start with the profiler. I've waited over 25 minutes before giving up. In intellij, the jprofiler plugin lets me start the same project without any noticeable slowdown.
Many many UI problems. You can't work with multiple "run" configurations like you can in the other IDEs. EG: If you want to run a certain unit test, you have to find it, go into it, and then run it. In the other IDEs, you could save that unit test as something to run and run it while you're looking at another file.
Speaking of unit tests, there's no way to run an individual unit test. The finest granularity is the entire file.
It crashes all the time. You're going to have to accept my anecdotal evidence here, but everyone else in the office complains about this, too.
The list goes on and on. I'm extremely skeptical of anyone that claims netbeans is good. I suspect you're using it as a glorified text editor instead of an IDE.
It's not 100% terrible though. One thing that netbeans is good at is generating code. I haven't tried in Eclipse, but netbeans' webservice generation support is better than intellij's. It also has a good Swing WYSIWYG.
I suspect you're using it as a glorified text editor instead of an IDE
Your suspicions are unfounded, I have never had an issue with Netbeans builds or it rewriting my files. It is a pluggable build systems where the build.xml is a templated file that pulls in the files that you are supposed to edit such as build-imp.xml and project.properties. These files do not get overwritten. I suspect you are using the build system wrong.
Further I like that Ant is used for the build because it gives me a head start on something I would end up having to write anyways. The build file is generated when you create a project, it saves a lot of time and is standardized. As for the org-netbeans-modules-java-j2seproject-copylibstask.jar it is a jar, I don't find it to be a big deal to install it on the build machine given the amount of time saves having the default build and deploy script generated for me.
The build script gives you a starting point not and end solution for testing, custom build instruction and other build related stuff you have to put in your own files and plug them into the build not edit the build directly. I don't find it that difficult and I think it is offset by what netbeans does for you. Further, on the remote occasion that Netbeans wants to rebuild the build.xml file it always prompts you before it does so, but even with that, you should not be modifying the build.xml you should be creating your own build files and importing them into the build system. Netbeans does this so when you add stuff like web services, JAX-B generated classes, JPA change from Glassfish to WebSphere it can auto generate all of the build and deployment instruction for those items. For me having all of that boilerplate stuff generated is a huge time saver for only having to make the trade off of keeping my custom Ant instruction in a separate file and copying a jar to the build server.
As for Hudson I cannot comment, we use Cruise Control,
It is not very organized. If you go into the "Options", it has 5 big buttons at the top. Most things are in the "Miscellaneous" section.
Not a show stopper for me, I spend all of 45 minutes in there when I do a fresh install and then I never touch it again. It does not affect my day to day work. This is also a preference thing not an issue with how Netbeans performs as a development environment.
The debugger and profiler are really slow.
I have never had an issue with the debugger being slow on my machine. I will give you that my Machine is top of the line so it may not be exemplary of the standard, but still no issue. In fact Netbeans has a feature that I have not seen in any other IDE, that is a must have for me now. And that is the fact that I can trace and debug from the execution of the Javascript in the browser, through the REST services, into the app logic and down into the DB. For me being able to step through the code from the JavaScript in the browser to the DB and back again is an amazing feature that I cannot live without now. It was the reason I switched to Netbeans on my friend recommending it to me based on that feature. Further the DTrace hooks are amazing, being able to see what is going on at every level provides another level of insight that I have not seen in other IDE's.
It crashes all the time.
We have never had this problem. We use Netbeans on OSX this may be a platform thing. I work with 10 to 15 freelancer at a time. We all use Netbeans and crashing has never been an issue.
It depends on ant for everything. The build files are very difficult to read, so it's like a black box. They are also cruel enough to name the root file "build.xml" so it interferes with you trying to make a convenient IDE agnostic build script. It depends on netbeans specific libraries for copying files (WHY?!). It's very difficult to get it to build from the command line. If you check out the hudson tutorial on how to get a netbeans project building in their CI server, you have to run a headless version of netbeans on the box to do it.
Not only that, the build scripts do some really crazy black magic. You can edit parts of them and your changes get ignored. It's like netbeans generates them every time you try to run. This allows you to do things like put echo statements in the build scripts that don't get printed out even though the target runs. It's really confusing.
It is not very organized. If you go into the "Options", it has 5 big buttons at the top. Most things are in the "Miscellaneous" section.
The debugger and profiler are really slow. When I remote debug, I have to click "step over" two times for one line of code. Expanding objects in the variables tab takes an annoying amount of time. My app is apparently too big to even start with the profiler. I've waited over 25 minutes before giving up. In intellij, the jprofiler plugin lets me start the same project without any noticeable slowdown.
Many many UI problems. You can't work with multiple "run" configurations like you can in the other IDEs. EG: If you want to run a certain unit test, you have to find it, go into it, and then run it. In the other IDEs, you could save that unit test as something to run and run it while you're looking at another file.
Speaking of unit tests, there's no way to run an individual unit test. The finest granularity is the entire file.
It crashes all the time. You're going to have to accept my anecdotal evidence here, but everyone else in the office complains about this, too.
The list goes on and on. I'm extremely skeptical of anyone that claims netbeans is good. I suspect you're using it as a glorified text editor instead of an IDE.
It's not 100% terrible though. One thing that netbeans is good at is generating code. I haven't tried in Eclipse, but netbeans' webservice generation support is better than intellij's. It also has a good Swing WYSIWYG.