I haven’t had much chance to use NetBeans in recent years, as every role I’ve taken on has involved Kotlin to some extent. But back when I did use it, it felt like the Toyota Hilux of IDEs—sturdy, no-nonsense, and reliably got the job done. That was a big part of why I loved it.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit concerned it may have gone downhill since. It used to have dedicated full-time staff behind it, but now that it’s been handed over to the Apache Foundation, I suspect the budgets are tighter than they were under Oracle.