NetBeans 7.4 – New and Noteworthy

That features list doesn&#x27;t give me much information. Can you tell me a few highlights that would make me say, &quot;WOW&quot; if I tried them out?<p>(I ask as a IntelliJ devotee.)

Netbeans&#x27; Python support was quite nice as well -- so nice I kept a separate Netbeans 6.9.1 just to keep Python support. However, it was never ported to Netbeans 7 and upwards.<p>Sadly, that version is too old now. With no git and svn 1.7+ support, it&#x27;s become just another text editor. I hope the Python plugin gets ported to this new version!<p>Its C++ support is also great, but a bit opinionated. I remember I wasn&#x27;t able to get its cmake plugin to make out-of-source builds for example.

Here are some plugins for other popular languages in NetBeans. I&#x27;m linking only actively developed plugins.<p>Shell scripts:<p><pre><code> Install Official C++ plugin </code></pre> Ruby on Rails:<p><pre><code> Plugin - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;plugins.netbeans.org&#x2F;plugin&#x2F;38549 GitHub Mirror - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nbruby&#x2F;nbruby Quick Start - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MarkUsProject&#x2F;Markus&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;NetBeans </code></pre> Python (not sure about Django):<p><pre><code> http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.netbeans.org&#x2F;Python * UPDATE * - Sorry, there doesn&#x27;t seem to be active Python support anymore. </code></pre> Lua:<p><pre><code> Possibly active: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sourceforge.net&#x2F;projects&#x2F;luatopping&#x2F; Probably inactive: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;plugins.netbeans.org&#x2F;plugin&#x2F;29607&#x2F;luasupport </code></pre> NodeJS:<p><pre><code> https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;timboudreau&#x2F;nb-nodejs</code></pre>

On Linux, I experience a lot of lag when I cycle through the menus on the top. Anybody have the same experience?<p>I have had this issue for the last couple of releases and I can&#x27;t narrow down the issue. It works fine on Windows.

Question for those in the know: I had expected NetBeans development to stall after Oracle took over Sun - after all, there&#x27;s not really any direct profit coming from it. My understanding of Oracle is that they mostly think along the lines of &quot;no direct profit = no investment&quot;.<p>Why does it keep getting better?

For a pure Java UI app - NetBeans 7.4 beta looks and performs acceptably. This is on a fast SSD with 16Gb RAM but still the fluidity of workflows has improved a lot. For example I just created a JSF based Enterprise Java app and modify&#x2F;rebuild&#x2F;redeploy were pleasantly fast. So was the code completion. Got contextual help on CSS properties as well! If this continues to rock I might dump Eclipse which has grown to be too complex, slow and disorienting.

NetBeans is far from perfect but it is a pretty good development environment, so I&#x27;m glad to see things are happening on that front.<p>For 2014, I predict that Java will make a comeback in so called trendy circles, and it will also get more attention on HN.<p>Java 8 will bring less boiler plate code and more expressive code, and hopefully the general development cycle will get shorter. Java EE 7 is quite interesting for the type of development I do.

Really looking forward to angular support improvements. Does anyone know of any plans&#x2F;plugins that might bring sublime text-ish multi cursor editing to netbeans? Rectangular selection is, erm, all right. But I do seem to spend a lot of time with netbeans and subl open at the same time.

One issue I was having was it&#x27;s support for Java 6 because Java 7 was not handling Retina screens correctly. Or is that taken care of?<p>BTW Git diffing between revisions is very cool, I used to have some custom scripts which would call meld to do that.

kinda offtopic, but on a related note: is it me or has Eclipse development stalled? I fail to find any noteworthy list of features for 4.3, and I don&#x27;t remember any exciting changes during last version upgrade except growing into a bigger resources hog leaking memory like diarrhea.<p>those Netbeans features look really cool, any experience with Python plugins? how does it compare to PyDev&#x2F;Aptana?

IMO, the best practical feature about Netbeans is easy code-indenting, while writing large HTML&#x2F;JS code.

I use Netbeans for PHP and I love it.

I use NetBeans for everything and this looks really good.

great to see nb moving forward. I&#x27;ve been a user since 5.x. it&#x27;s serving me pretty well so far.