Foreword to the First Edition

James Gosling

The NetBeans IDE has really come a long way in the last few years. Since the first book was written, NetBeans has progressed from a tool with promise (from a small, young company in the Czech Republic) to one of the market leaders in the open source IDE tools space. It's been like watching a child grow and mature over the years and blossom in ways you could have never predicted.

It's a bit like watching Java grow. At first it was a language for the Internet and browsers. It was so versatile, people started using it in many ways. It developed into a great language for writing multi-tier applications. And then with J2EE, it created a whole new ecosystem of enterprise applications. Later, J2ME conquered the phone and mobility market.

NetBeans has been through a similar, multifaceted growth. With NetBeans IDE 4.1, one tool can manage the range of Java development. The IDE now adds J2EE EJB and web services development to the rich suite of development capabilities that service J2SE and J2ME.

I use NetBeans for all my Java development. The exciting new language features in J2SE 5.0 are fun to use and easy to develop with. One of the things that's nice for me personally is that with each release, once I download it, it is ready to go. I don't have go on a treasure hunt and assemble a particular set of plug-ins for me to begin developmentas soon as I install NetBeans, I'm ready to start coding.

The PR people at Sun like to call me "the Father of Java." Given that, NetBeans must be my first techno-grandchild. Enjoy all that NetBeans IDE 4.1 provides and the worlds it opens for you. Happy programming.

James Gosling

May 2005