Netbeans marketing?

A few days ago I added a post here about my Eclipse frustrations.  Since then I’ve gotten three comments from readers suggesting I move to NetBeans.

Now, it’s interesting enough that anybody found this blog at all.  I know I have a few regular readers (I’m reminded of the quote from The Big Chill where William Hurt says something like, “I had a small, deeply disturbed group of listeners”), but none of the comments came from them.

That means that the comments are either coming from lurkers (possible but not likely) or people who search for blog posts like mine.

Months ago, when I first mentioned how much I like the MyEclipse editor, I received a comment the next day.  I contacted that person and found that they really do search on a regular basis for people using the product, which frankly I find a feature rather than a bug.  One of my favorite things about MyEclipse is that their tech support is so responsive.  Every time I’ve sent them an email I’ve received an answer within hours, and every time I’ve left a post on their forum I’ve gotten an answer in the next day or two.  That’s really good.  It’s part of the reason (other than the excellent quality of the product) that I recommend it in my training courses.

I’m not accustomed, however, to getting messages from users of an open source product.  Here’s the other odd thing, too.  In my recent posts I mentioned trying NetBeans.  Each comment has suggested I try it, as though I hadn’t yet.  I also responded to each saying I’m in the process of doing so.  Still I got another comment suggesting I try the product.

In other words, it looks like some people are doing a keyword search for terms I’m using (IDE? Eclipse? NetBeans?) and responding without actually reading what I’m saying.

Maybe I’m overly cynical sometimes, but that sounds like marketing it me. 🙂  The question is, though, who’s gaining by doing so?  NetBeans is an open source product from Sun.  Who cares if I use it or not?  That suggests people are commenting because they really do care, but why do they care that much?  One comment I would understand, or even two, but three in three days?

Time will tell, I guess.  Let’s see if I get an automatic comment this time.

5 responses to “Netbeans marketing?”

  1. hahaha No, I’m not part of the netbeans team.

    Im just a computer systems enginner that have a category (tag) known as ‘Java’ in my blog, and I like to check the ‘Tag surfer’ function that searches for posts with the same tag; thats how I found your article.

    I’m not working for Netbeans or Sun, but If I find something good, I like to share it. 😉

  2. Ah, that explains it. Thanks for the info. I’m not normally a tag surfer, but I think I’ll start doing more of that. Interesting.

  3. Ken;

    Another possibility: some of the tools on sites like Technorati allow you to search the majority of the blogosphere based on keyword results, so I could find all the blogs that mention armadillos that day, for example.

    By the way, have you tried NetBeans? 🙂

    -Jens

  4. I have. I’m not wild about it. I’m not sure what it is — the fact that everything is an Ant build, the look and feel, the fact that I don’t really know it — but so far it doesn’t really appeal to me.

    The fact that it successfully runs EJB3, however, is the overriding factor at the moment, along with the irritating Eclipse issues.

  5. This is a very old post, and I’ll resurrect it. If one doesn’t know, Netbeans has excellent Maven support (not just Ant), excellent drag and drop GUI builders, support for multiple languages, and still has excellent JEE support.

    By the way, have you tried NetBeans? 🙂

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