I’m probably the last to notice, but NetBeans 5.0 has hit beta (the web site seems to be running very slow now). It’s under 60 megs with many out-of-the-box new features justifying the 5.0 name. Make sure you hit the update center and install and try the “Developer Collaboration” feature.
Most of them are Ease-Of-Use features: you could do it before, but it was just much harder: Matisse (new GUI builder) and writing Rich Client and NetBeans Modules are my two obvious favorite features. I’ve been a Swing developer for almost as long as Swing existed and a NetBeans module developer for about a year, and NetBeans 5.0 doesn’t make me feel grumpy ;-)
Bistro! 2.0 