Netbeans' 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.
Sadly, that version is too old now. With no git and svn 1.7+ support, it's become just another text editor. I hope the Python plugin gets ported to this new version!
Its C++ support is also great, but a bit opinionated. I remember I wasn't able to get its cmake plugin to make out-of-source builds for example.
I use eclipse, which is buggy as anything (I actually run a debian VM just to run it on Linux, instead of OSX, so that the features actually work) for Python (with C/C++ extensions) and I'd love to see a competing project.
I actually scanned down the list of features looking for Python, and was depressed to see PHP there instead. :/
Yeah, ctrl-f for python gave a disappointing 0 results. I've been forced to use Aptana since Netbeans 7 and it's not much fun, despite the pep-8 support.
Not sure if this is related to your issue, but drop down menus in Java seem to have issues with some Linux desktop "themes" (GTK themes, I think). For example, on CentOS the default theme causes the menus in Netbeans to be drawn without any borders. Changing the theme to something else fixes the problem.
Question for those in the know: I had expected NetBeans development to stall after Oracle took over Sun - after all, there's not really any direct profit coming from it. My understanding of Oracle is that they mostly think along the lines of "no direct profit = no investment".
I think it's more a perception problem with Oracle.
They've actually been fantastic for the Java platform and have been so for nearly a decade now i.e. even before the Sun acquisition. It's hard to dispute that the JVM is thriving right now with plenty of innovation amongst the various languages. And most of us were really happy to have their JRockit work (especially G1GC) embedded back into the core runtime when they could have continued to charge for it.
And people need to ask if things are really so bad with their OSS projects e.g. OpenOffice, MySQL, DTrace etc. Sure they have tightened control over copyrights but it's not like they have actively screwed their customers if anything the projects seem in a lot better shape.
Not sure what you mean by "much" faster. Most of the benchmarks have fractional differences. I think comparing an Apple only, commercial program, to a free and open source multi-platform program, VirtualBox would "win" for a lot of people, because it's not just about benchmarks.
NB has a life of its own within Oracle. And since the product is fully Open Source, sponsoring companies carried on supporting it, even after Oracle acquired Sun.
Moreover, Java is worth nothing without people developing in Java. They need a good IDE. Hence, Oracle needs a good IDE. Oracle surely won't complain that partners sponsor NB, since it reduces this necessary cost of doing business.
Even before Oracle acquired Sun and therefore Java, they had some excellent free tools they developed and which kept getting better. For example, SQL Developer.
I've been pleasantly surprised by Oracle's stewardship of Java. They actually succeeded in getting the further development back on track, after it seemed to have descended into a quagmire in Sun's last years.
nothing in that list of new features jumps out at me. and in terms of javascript support it looks like things are still worse than nb7.2 (they gutted their language model because of licensing concerns and the new model is terrible). they've added some bells and whistles, but still don't have the basics working (ie, JsDocs, which provide the typing info for javascript)
so i'm still using nb7.2 (and purchased webstorm for javascript). i've been using (and loving) netbeans for 7 years, but from my pov, the project appears stalled (even though they're putting lots of work into it)
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/rebuild/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'm glad to see things are happening on that front.
For 2014, I predict that Java will make a comeback in so called trendy circles, and it will also get more attention on HN.
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/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.
Netbeans 7.3's support? It works fine on Java 6, though it will only grudgingly use it if 7 is installed. If you're on MacOS (assuming that from the retina screen), then, in /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 7.3.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf
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't remember any exciting changes during last version upgrade except growing into a bigger resources hog leaking memory like diarrhea.
those Netbeans features look really cool, any experience with Python plugins? how does it compare to PyDev/Aptana?
there are a lot of related projects to Eclipse and all of them are in active development. Not to mention that there are a lot of other plugins that are not a part of the 'standard release' and Eclipse based IDE's like Spring Tool Suite - that are active as well.
And if someone points out that there are some bugs that are reported years ago and they are not still resolved, that means only that Eclipse needs more manpower to focus on that as well, not that the development is stalled, the guys are pushing on new things and some stuff can get lower priority.
Several years ago, I tried NetBeans vs Eclipse and chose NetBeans altough it was far from perfect, but Eclispe was not better. The GUI was better.
I do not regret my choice. NetBeans has always progressively improved on its weaknesses, releases after releases. I revisited Eclispe a couple of times, but was not overall convinced by it.
Does it do incremental compilation now? One of the killers for me with NetBeans (and Visual Studio) was the compilation waits. I'd swap back from eclipse in an instance if they do that.
I chose Eclipse back in the day (3.2?) and forgot about the existence of NB, nowadays I'm starting to slowly drift towards Vim or lightweight ides like NinjaIDE, yet my bloat editor habits still demand having something packaged at hand. I guess I'll try NB74.
It's not you. I've always been an Eclipse guy. Netbeans was to heavy on my machine back in the day. I've only stuck with it because I am very familiar with it. I'm going to switch to Netbeans on my next project because I feel I've been missing out on a lot.
(I ask as a IntelliJ devotee.)