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.