3. Be careful with it because sometimes it will tell you that the code has changed and will revert it back to the beginning of the coding process. Just watch out for this because it really sucks when all of your code goes away after hours of work.
4. Back up back up back up. This is the one thing that I had to learn. Once you delete a file, it does not go to the trash bin, it goes away forever. This happened to me when I was trying to finish a project before midnight and I accidentally deleted the entire project.
Those are two very real bummers. There is no reason that they should happen to you. Netbeans has built-in hooks to several different version control systems, including SVN, git and Mercurial. The only excuse for not using version control is not knowing about it, even as a solo developer. That working-class class you enhanced until it set the Java Virtual Machine on virtual fire?
It's still there! You can revert. Need to create two or more very similar applications for different clients? Fork it. Need to work with another developer? Replicate your repository to a network location so you can both check out files and commit changes.
As for Eclipse, well, it does everything -- if you know where to find it. It's
big. It's also a huge resource hog, so you need a pretty substantial hardware stack to make it go. Linux may run just fine on an old 486SX-16, but Eclipse wants (and needs) your 2+ GHz multi-core processor and at least a couple of gigs of RAM to get out of neutral (it will run on less, but it'll feel just like an old VT-100 connected to an oversubscribed mini as you wait for your keystrokes to be echoed on screen). And while it's easy enough to hammer out simple code with few dependencies without opening a lot of books and stuff, the learning curve for anything approaching sophisticated use of the tool is pretty steep. Not emacs steep, but steep nonetheless.
