Anyone involved in software development would have, at some time, heard of the pragmatic programmers series of books.

The books have a superb approach learning that makes it very easy indeed to grasp the concepts they are imparting.

Their website contains their entire print catalogue ready for order and as well as the paper version of the book you can download PDF versions that are specially crafted just for you, imprinted with your own personal monogram (OK it’s your name) by a team of gerbils no less…

You can also buy beta versions of books giving you the chance to read them as they are being written. With regular updates you can get ahead of the game on the very latest versions of your chosen tipple. there are lots of Ruby books as well and some very good career development titles.

Payment choices are Credit card and now they also have PayPal as a choice if you don’t have a credit card or just prefer to handle your purchases through Paypal.

Prices are very reasonable and you get a discount if you buy the paper plus PDF version of a book so you can have a handy reference version in your pocket as well as a copy to read on the train… cool!

so pop on over and take a look at what they have got.

It’s official NetBeans 6.1 is now in full release and available for download from NetBeans.org. I have not been keeping up so well with this version and so I’m a little out of the loop on all the changes but I understand that they have been working hard on improving the JavaScript capabilities, from what I can tell this is mostly in the intellisense. Looks like the same guy’s that worked on the awesome Ruby editor functionality have been working on improving the JavaScript editor this time around.

This release did remind me that I was going to take a look and see if I could get NetBeans to play nice with some of the JavaScript libraries out there and I never did, apologies to those who were waiting for me to pull my finger out.

Since 6.1 is supposed to improve JavaScript in NetBeans I shall have to take a look. The detailed feature list can be found here.

The official announcement from the NetBeans announcement email is:

NetBeans™ IDE 6.1 supports a wide range of open source scripting technologies and offers improved performance. This release extends language support beyond Java™ technology by providing a rich set of features for C/C++, JavaScript™ and the Ruby language, including Ruby on Rails.

NetBeans IDE 6.1 also contains all of the improvements made in 6.0 including: the new smarter editor, next generation of the ground-breaking GUI builder (formerly known as Project Matisse), visual mobile designer, integrated profiler, and Java™ EE 5 support.

One of the downloads available is an Early Access preview of support for PHP. Advance versions of new modules, such as a JavaScript debugger, support of ClearCase, AXIS, and Hibernate are available as separate plugins.

NetBeans 6 has finally reached the full release version and is available for download today.

I’ve said before that NetBeans 6 is an important release for the NetBeans team and I believe it is one of (if not the) best IDE’s available for Java, Ruby and Ruby on Rails amongst others like the upcoming JavaFX.

Reasons why I like NetBeans 6:

• The UI is polished and extremely useable.
• The plugin interface is much better than the one in Eclipse.
• Getting the latest version is a very simple excercise and there are not 50 different versions to have to decide from. (try looking for the WTP edition of Eclipse for example).
• It has a much better way of managing application settings - more like a normal app not one set per workspace.
• The files you work on are much easier to organise.
• Java, JavaFX, Ruby and Ruby on Rails apps can be developed in this IDE out of the box and the IDE does a very very impressive job of making your life easy.
• The IDE is really customizable and the settings menu is easy to navigate.

As you may have guessed I have been using Eclipse and I have found NetBeans so much better. There’s a handy plugin that will convert Eclipse apps over to netbeans - just in case you are worried about switching ;0)

Picture taken from NetBeans anouncement Email

Technorati Tags: NetBeans 6

Netbeans 6 is getting closer to full release, RC1 is available to download from netbeans.org today.
I like NetBeans 6, as a ruby development IDE it is quite simply amazing and though I am an Aptana advocate even I have to admit that NetBeans does it better.

Code completion is second to none and the features included are making NetBeans the IDE of choice for many people and I’m fast becoming one of them. I still like Aptana’s Javascript CSS and HTML handling so won’t be giving it up just yet but for Ruby, Rails and Java, NetBeans 6 is my tool of choice.

NetBeans 6 is not NetBeans 5 with some new bits and bug fixes, this is a whole new development and it shows.

Technorati Tags: NetBeans 6

I have to admit I love the RailsEnvy videos, I’m certain they just p!55 plenty of people off but they are entertaining.

This is the latest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUS00QrYWw]

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