Using NetBeans To Develop Project

[indra00]

I am new to java... I am really confused about using NetBeans. Is it okay to use NetBeans to create college projects ?? I will show that Project in my CV in campusing. So I wanna know using Netbeans to create layouts is a discredit from any point of view ?? What Should I do ?? does it matter to companies ?

[Tolls]

Assuming you're talking about the GUI designer in Netbeans, rather than Netbeans as a whole, I would say it's like having a license to drive a manual car, rather than an automatic. If you know how to drive a manual car, then you can drive an automatic...the reverse isn't true.

An employer who sees you can manually build a GUI (ie not using the GUI designer) will see that you probably understand how Swing works, whereas if you only know how to put one together through the designer then it's quite likely (and we see it here alot) that you wouldn't be all that good if you had to do some Swing by hand.

[indra00]

thx for the quick reply...

But so does that mean I should not use it?? But consider when developing complex project including database/ client-server model .... Designing different GUIs for each each window manually will take most of the time....

Considering that if i submit the project they gonna interview me anyway to see if I know things.... So what U suggest ?? I m confused and unless I decide it I cant start my project...

Please Suggest what Should I do ....

[Tolls]

I'm not a fan of auto-generated code (beyond a skeleton anyway), which is what the gui creator in Netbeans is. You get code that's hard to read, and even harder to debug and change outside of the editor. And is also limited, because no creator is as flexible as hand written gui code.

The couple of places I have been in that used Swing did it all by hand for this very reason. You get more robust code, and don't find yourself fighting the editor to do something you know can be done in Swing, but the editor isn't really set up to do.

Besides, screens really aren't that difficult to create once you know how the layouts work. Before long you'll have a toolkit of code snippets to do most of it, which you can then simply drop in as needed. It's no harder than doing a full fledged web gui in Javascript. I'd say a lot easier in fact, but then I'm not so hot on JS.

[Prajin]

Using net-beans for Swing good idea, if u know what r u doing. But as already said, it's gonna be very hard to edit or simply modify the generated codes. They are like forts (you can't edit the code, at all.)
Give the hand written code a try, it's better that way. I myself is learning that way. I use net-beans for GUI design just to understand what my window gonna look like, I don't actually use them. Instead I refer it to do hand written code.
My suggestion:
Do it yourself, don't rely upon solely upon software for the GUI design.

[Eranga]

UI builders like NetBeans are really good to use for projects like you explain here. You are able to lots of things easily using Java. But you may not learn well about the underlying process, which is take place in auto-generated code. While using the NetBeans try to understand how the generated code. And also if you want to move your project, to a different machine and use there, copied the complete project folder. If you want to move a single UI Java class then DO NOT forget the *.form file along with it. Otherwise you cannot open the file in UI mode in a different machine.