Netbeans <3

I have a confession to make. I never really got to terms with Eclipse at any point for a number of reasons, most of which will be immediately apparent to anyone who has fought a long running insurgency campaign against an uncomfortable and frequently idiosyncratic IDE. In fact I never really liked IDEs very much at all, preferring the simplicity of text-based editors where you can get right under the bonnet and tinker with the mechanics of your code. Netbeans in its latest incarnation 6.7 RC1 changed that.

Finally I have found a Java IDE that even when it breaks (and mine blew up just the other day after a borked update) can be fixed without spending the rest of the week on it – five minutes of checking through the logs provided the solution to the problem, a disastrously big .zip file splatted onto my Vista Desktop (my bad). Move aforementioned .zip file, take out a lock file or two, run the installer again and back in business, all before breakfast. Not only is it robust ( at least if you have anything approaching a clue as to how to backfix stuff), but it has very few irritating features relative to the many which are handy and time/effort saving. My advice: try it. You won’t hate it and you may even like it…