The sad part is that before Apache takeover they had pretty decent website that put all the features and screenshots to the front:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160708090748/https://netbeans.... https://web.archive.org/web/20160708091639/https://netbeans....
Why did they waste time redoing it into something so useless is beyond me.
Because all of that was owned by Oracle and they didn't grant it to Apache.
There are countless companies running bizarre internal applications written using the NetBeans interface builder and I know for a fact they will never migrate away from it. It's certainly the also-ran of Java IDEs but 'extinction' is a little hyperbolic.
That "fast path" has been over 20 years long. That's an incredible amount of time for a software development tool.
I mean, netbeans was on the ascent at least as recent as 10 years ago, but then intellij stole their thunder, and eclipse held onto a core userbase more so than netbeans did.
Heh…I remember attending a Java dev conference in 2006 where attendees thought the mention of using NetBeans for professional development was a joke. Like the presenter prefaced a statement with, “if you use NetBeans…” and he wasn’t able to finish the sentence over the noise from the whole room erupting in laughter.
It has literally been a joke for at least 16 years.
This is also probably a reflection that NetBeans is a project on fast path to extinction.