Developing Java Applications using NetBeans
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This article introduces you to all of the Java productive tools available in the market. It also explains how to develop simple Java applications using NetBeans IDE.
Java Tools offered by Sun Microsystems
First of all, what is a tool? Initially, when Sun Microsystems first released Java (or JDK), there existed no tool to develop any productive Java application. In fact, in those days, everybody used to develop and practice Java programming using their own favorite text editor (some even used notepad). You can imagine, developing and debugging a Java program using a simple text editor is quite a tedious job.
I hope any programmer in this world would definitely take a look at the Visual Basic (any version) environment. It is considered to be a well known IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and RAD (Rapid Application Development) environment. Being myself a Microsoft programmer, I really like to work with any environment which is close to that of the Visual Studio environment.
Based on programmer demand, several companies (including Sun Microsystems) released their own productive development tools (or IDEs) for faster Java application development. The companies include Borland, Oracle, and others. Microsoft also initially contributed (with Visual J++ 1.x) and later gave up. Such top products were tightly licensed and very expensive. There existed then (and even now) several free Java IDE tools, but none of them really met all the requirements.
Now, Sun Microsystems is FREELY offering four powerful development tools (or IDEs) to work and program Java. Following is the list:
- Sun Java Studio Creator
- Sun Java Studio Enterprise
- NetBeans Mobility Pack
- NetBeans.org
All of the above tools can be freely downloaded from http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/devtools/index.html. I must admit that they are really good for any Java programmer who is unable to buy licenses for the other existing products. We can even develop enterprise level applications using those tools.
If you wanted to work with an Oracle/Java combination, then Oracle JDeveloper 10g (which is FREE) may suit your requirements. Long ago, Oracle bought JBuilder from Borland and started extending it by tightly integrating it with Oracle products. If you are familiar with JBuilder, you already know the JDeveloper environment. It can be freely downloaded from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/index.html
Next: Which tool for what? >>
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