It's been a great NetBeans year in 2014 and here are the highlights as I see them!

Release of NetBeans IDE 8.0, 8.0.1, and 8.0.2. Continuing

a trend set in place by Oracle, NetBeans 8 was released in parallel

with Java 8 this year. Need to refactor all your code to use lambdas and

the Streams API? Look no further than NetBeans 8 to provide all the

tools you need, as well as a great tutorial.







Together with the strong focus on Java 8, the NetBeans 8 release integrates even more closely than before with new web technologies, such as Cordova, as well as HTML5, which is the subject of the next highlight. Continually growing commitment and innovation around HTML5.

With its strong foundation in the Java ecosystem, NetBeans has over the

past years been expanding its features in step with the needs of its

users. Where once applets and JSP were dominant technologies, now

JavaScript, with all its frameworks from Angular to Knockout and with

all its supporting technologies such as Grunt and Karma, is the central

domain of innovation. And that's where NetBeans is now squarely

positioned, too. NetBeans as a tool for web development? Yes, indeed:



Next, don't be surprised when you see NetBeans providing even

more, and even deeper, support in these areas. For example, how about

integration with Docker? So, don't be surprised when you hear more about that in the coming period...

Very successful JavaOne 2014 and more NetBeans Days. I've blogged about the successful NetBeans Day at Java One 2014

before, but let me reiterate again how successful it was.



Full rooms,

especially James Gosling drawing crowds (so that we had to switch to a

larger room than planned at the last minute), and the great panel

discussions (i.e., sessions with 5 speakers, all talking about a common

theme, e.g., teaching with NetBeans or Maven and NetBeans, etc.)

NetBeans as a tool for "Internet of Things", as the very best tool

available for Maven development, as well as for Java EE and HTML5, these

were very clear themes in NetBeans Day and at JavaOne as a whole.



Also

announced was the new NetBeans Teachers community and the start of a

continual series of NetBeans Days around the world, the first of which

was the recently held NetBeans Day Germany. And, guess what, 12 February will be NetBeans Day Netherlands and 16 March NetBeans Day Germany, again! More details about these here and elsewhere when they become available.

NetBeans Dream Team expansion. Over the past months, 16 new members joined the NetBeans Dream Team, mainly from Germany, the UK, and USA. They bring expertise and insight into all the areas of software technology and are a great benefit in keeping the NetBeans team in touch with ongoing discussions in the community at large. Moreoever, they're great representatives of the core ideas of the NetBeans ecosystem at conferences and events around the world. Over the coming year, I'm looking forward to seeing even more new faces in the NetBeans Dream Team, there's already several who have indicated that they'd like to be part of this community too. The enthusiasm around NetBeans is simply unstoppable!



Books. More books have been written about NetBeans over the past year than ever before. On NetBeans IDE itself, as a tool, see NetBeans IDE 8 Cookbook, by David Salter and Rhawi Dantas; on Java EE and NetBeans, see Java EE 7 Development with NetBeans 8 by David Heffelfinger, on Java EE, HTML5, and NetBeans, see Java EE and HTML5 Enterprise Application Development, by Arun Gupta, JB Brock, and myself, and on NetBeans Platform, see NetBeans Platform for Beginners by Walter Nyland and Jason Wexbridge and JavaFX Rich Client Programming on the NetBeans Platform by Gail and Paul Anderson.





For example, here's the excellent book by Walter Nyland, and Jason Wexbridge, on the ins and outs of the NetBeans Platform, a book you absolutely must get if you're interested in extending/building on top of NetBeans in any way at all:

Can you believe these were all published over the past year? Plus there are probably some that I left out.

Into the New Year, and throughout 2015, I'm excited about the

support for other technologies around NetBeans, thanks to the great

community around NetBeans. In particular (and click the following links for details), support for Scala, Python,

Android, and UML has been increasing further over the last few months and will continue to do so over the coming year. Also, you should expect NetBeans Facebook and the NetBeans YouTube Channel to grow even further than it did over the past year, while the new NetBeans Community Podcasts will power on, too!



More and more, I'm seeing NetBeans as a mechanism for getting to see friends around the world. :-) (And a big highlight in that regard was the GDG Conference in Istanbul, Turkey last month.) Looking forward to seeing them all again this year and making many new ones!

