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| <h1>Introducing NUG Indonesia aka "NECTAR"<br> |
| </h1> |
| <h5>There's a new NetBeans Users Group in the NetBeans community: NUG |
| Indonesia!</h5> |
| <h5>Founded by Sun Employee Eko Budhi Suprasetiawan in 2006, NUG |
| Indonesia aka NECTAR (learn more about this name below) is a 298-member |
| code-sharing force now led by Ifnu Bima, an enterprising Computer |
| Science student and Java programmer who alerted us in early March to the |
| group's existence.</h5> |
| <h5>Like many ardent enthusiasts of the NetBeans IDE and Platform, our |
| new fans in Indonesia can't get enough of the fact that NetBeans is |
| easy to use, gets them started on their projects without any fussy |
| installing or configuring needed, and actually makes working in Java a |
| breeze and learning Java fun.</h5> |
| <h5>NUG Indonesia is a welcome addition to the NetBeans community, and |
| we are pleased to profile the group and its leader, Ifnu Bima.</h5> |
| <br> |
| <h3>Welcome to the NetBeans Community! Please tell us about yourself.</h3> |
| My name is Ifnu Bima. I'm the leader of NetBeans Users Group |
| Indonesia, also known |
| as NECTAR. I'm a Java programmer—mostly working on Java desktop |
| application using Swing and the NetBeans Platform; and an |
| undergraduate student in Computer Science at Bogor Institute of Agriculture, |
| and currently trying to finish my final assignment to get |
| my degree.<br> |
| <br> |
| <img alt="Ifnu Bima" |
| src="../../../images_www/articles/indonesia-nug/ifnu-bima.jpg" |
| style="width: 182px; height: 216px;" align="left" hspace="10" |
| vspace="10">I am also a Java trainer and I have done some Java desktop |
| training |
| using the NetBeans GUI Builder. (The response has been very good. |
| People are starting to realize that developing Java desktop application |
| with NetBeans is really productive. Developers from other platforms are |
| starting to migrate to Java.)<br> |
| <br> |
| Finally, I <a href="http://www.nagasakti.or.id/roller/ifnu">blog about |
| Java in Indonesian</a>.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>How did you discover NetBeans?</h3> |
| My first introduction to NetBeans happened in 2005 at a Sun Developer's |
| Day held in Jakarta. It was a huge event |
| because it was also to celebrate 10 years of Java. I received a |
| NetBeans 5.0 CD, and from that point I started to use NetBeans to learn |
| Java.<br> |
| <br> |
| At first, I wasn't really attracted to NetBeans because I knew nothing |
| about it. I was even still an Eclipse user for about a year after I |
| received the NetBeans CD. But in November 2006, I attended another Sun |
| Developer's Day in Jakarta, and at this event I witnessed presentations |
| about NetBeans 5.5 Beta 2. <br> |
| <br> |
| I was impressed with the many astonishing features of the IDE such as |
| the NetBeans GUI Builder and the Mobility Pack. From that point, I |
| started to explore NetBeans. It didn't take me too long to switch to |
| NetBeans and forget about Eclipse. My main reason was Matisse. I do a |
| lot of Swing component work, and Matisse suited me perfectly. Now I |
| work extensively in the NetBeans environment and have never looked back.<br> |
| <br> |
| Also, after Java adopted the GPL license, I put my faith 100% in Java. |
| There is no ecosystem quite like the Java community.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>NUG Indonesia is a new group. How did it get started?</h3> |
| It was started in mid-2006 by Eko Budhi Suprasetiawan, a Sun employee. |
| But for about three months it was a one-member mailing list until Eko |
| introduced it at a JUG Indonesia event in November. People, including |
| me, began to pay attention to it. I was member #7. <br> |
| <br> |
| <img alt="NetBeans Users Group Indonesia" |
| src="../../../images_www/articles/indonesia-nug/indonesia-nug.jpg" |
| style="width: 366px; height: 274px;" align="right" hspace="10" |
| vspace="10">In January 2007, Eko, me and my friend Hadikusuma Wahab |
| hosted the |
| first meeting. It was a success. We had an enthusiastic crowd; the |
| presentations were perfect. Straight after this meeting, our membership |
| more than doubled. <br> |
| <br> |
| Since then I have devoted most of my free time to organizing the group, |
| hosting the monthly meetings and collecting learning resources to be |
| compiled into our own “NetBeans CD”. Hadikusuma and I have also been |
| able to persuade our alma mater to support our monthly meetings by |
| providing a classroom and a projector.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>The group is also known as NECTAR. What does this stand for?</h3> |
| NECTAR stands for “NetBeans Code Test And Release” and is the name of |
| our monthly meetings. It reflects our manifesto, which is that we don't |
| merely share general knowledge or just gather for meetings, but that we |
| aim to share code to inspire others to learn how to create solutions |
| using NetBeans.<br> |
| <br> |
| But NECTAR also has two symbolic meanings. Nectar, the substance, is |
| important in agriculture, and we proposed the name in appreciation of |
| the support our group has received from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture. |
| Second, it reflects a reason why we're are trying to adopt |
| NetBeans locally. Agriculture is an important industry for Indonesia, |
| and we hope that NetBeans will not just be a tool for coding Java, but |
| will also be a tool we can use to transform the agriculture industry.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>Why is NECTAR significant for you and other developers?</h3> |
| The open-source movement is in a big bang here in Indonesia due to an |
| initiative led by our Ministry of Research and Technology, which |
| launched a national campaign called <span style="font-style: italic;">Indonesia, |
| Go Open Source!</span> or IGOS.<br> |
| <br> |
| Recently, the Indonesia government signed an MoU (Memorandum of |
| Understanding) with Microsoft that stated that the Indonesia government |
| violated Microsoft's software license by using illegal copies of |
| Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in government PCs. Indonesia has |
| to pay almost $178 million as compensation to Microsoft. That's a huge |
| amount of money for a country like Indonesia. <br> |
| <br> |
| The MoU hit us right on our foreheads. Government, the public sector |
| and educational organizations realized that they had to start migrating |
| all of their solution to open-source platforms. Java, of course, was the |
| easy choice. And NetBeans is positioned as an option for Indonesian |
| developers that are |
| starting to realize the importance of legal software.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What's the general opinion about NetBeans in Indonesia's developer |
| community?</h3> |
| Although NetBeans is an emerging Java IDE here, it has established |
| itself as a complete and easy to use IDE. When people try it, there's |
| not much reason to switch to another IDE. Java newbies find it |
| easy to start creating Java applications using NetBeans. In the past, |
| developing Java application, particularly Java desktop application was |
| never easy, and students tended to avoid Java because it was difficult |
| to |
| learn. <br> |
| <br> |
| NetBeans makes it all look so simple and easy; new users can focus on |
| learning Java rather than on how to use the IDE, because with NetBeans |
| we don't need to learn about installing and configuring. One of the |
| NUG's aim is to help people learn Java and little-by-little erase the |
| word “difficult” as a reference to the language. <br> |
| <br> |
| Personally, since investing the time to learn Java, it has changed my |
| live. I have gained an enormous experience, and through this NUG I want |
| to share that experience with others and hopefully make their lives |
| better too.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>How would you describe the group's membership?</h3> |
| Currently, there are 298 members in the group. We have a mix of |
| students, Java newbies, and experienced developers. <br> |
| <br> |
| Many of our members are college students who use NetBeans as their IDE |
| to learn Java. The intuitive and smart code completion is perfect to |
| help them memorize JDK API. NetBeans's capability to embed Javadoc API |
| and Javasource on a particular library helps them to understand the |
| logic behind that library.<br> |
| <br> |
| Some of our members are senior Java developers with years of experience |
| in developing applications. They really love NetBeans's first-class |
| support for Java EE 5—creating EJB applications is now a lot easier |
| than before. Developing CRUD application using EJB3 and JSF is just a |
| matter of following a simple wizard. No boiler plate code and no |
| cryptic way of mapping object to relational data. Everything |
| looks explicit and clear.<br> |
| <br> |
| We also have members who are university lecturers teaching OOP and |
| Java. One of them is Hendro Steven; he uses the NetBeans IDE to teach |
| Java. His students don't have any difficulties using NetBeans, so he |
| only needs to focus on teaching Java without the need to teach the |
| student how to use NetBeans properly.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What features do members like about the NetBeans IDE and Platform?</h3> |
| Most of our members have migrated from VB, FoxPro, Delphi or Clipper to |
| Java. They use NetBeans GUI Builder extensively to develop Java desktop |
| applications. Others members use the NetBeans Mobility Pack to develop |
| Java mobile applications, and the rest use NetBeans to develop web |
| applications.<br> |
| <br> |
| <img alt="NUG Indonesia, Image 2" |
| src="../../../images_www/articles/indonesia-nug/indonesia-nug2.jpg" |
| style="width: 288px; height: 215px;" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="5">NetBeans's Profiler is starting to gain more adoption. Profiling a Java |
| application is no trivial task, but that is before you try the NetBeans |
| Profiler, using it to find difficult bugs or bottle necks.<br> |
| <br> |
| Some |
| of our member working extensively on the NetBeans platform. |
| Developing Swing applications from scratch is not easy, and in my |
| opinion, not a smart way to go. Lots of redundant work have to be done |
| every time we create such an application. For example, adding docking |
| feature, organizing menu and tool bars, creating a splash screen, |
| packaging and launcher, and so on. The NetBeans Platform makes it a lot |
| easier and we just have to concentrate on our main application's |
| functionality without worrying about the rest of it. <br> |
| <br> |
| NetBeans's Java debugger is terrific. We can set break point, start our |
| application on debug mode and examine our application easily. Tight |
| integration between NetBeans and bundled Tomcat make it easy to debug |
| Java web application. “Apply code change” in the Java debugger is |
| a really slick feature that allows us to apply code change without |
| restarting the application server. It saves a reasonable amount of time |
| when debugging an application. <br> |
| <br> |
| On top of all these, our members like the way NetBeans organizes its |
| main plugins. The tight integration between the packs is the strong |
| point of NetBeans. There's no nitty-gitty detail we have to do to |
| install or configure NetBeans. Just double click the installation and |
| we are ready to go!<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>Have your members seen the preview of NetBeans 6.0? What do they |
| think?</h3> |
| <span style="font-style: italic;">“Whoa!”</span><br> |
| <br> |
| I have showed the <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/download/flash/netbeans_6_gui_builder/netbeans_6_gui_builder.html">NetBeans |
| 6.0 Beans Binding Flash Demo</a> created by |
| Roman Strobl on several occasions and people have been very |
| impressed. <br> |
| <br> |
| For me, NetBeans 6.0 is really what I'm looking for. There is nothing I |
| can complain about in NetBeans 6.0. Everything looks great and neat. |
| Tons of new cool feature added to standard distribution of NetBeans |
| 6.0. In this way, NetBeans will become a complete IDE to develop |
| solutions.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>How active is NECTAR?</h3> |
| We've held five monthly meetings so far. Besides sharing knowledge |
| about NetBeans and Java, we have also tried to setup a group project; |
| unfortunately, the members who attend our meetings differ from |
| month-to-month, so creating a dedicated group to develop a project has |
| not been really feasible. But we will keep trying until we're ready. <br> |
| <br> |
| What we really want to accomplish in these meetings is what we call |
| “capacity building”. That is, building groups of people with strong |
| Java knowledge, after which ideas can be generated and projects born.<br> |
| <br> |
| For now, the group communicates mostly through the mailing list and |
| private chats. We don't have a group website or wiki yet, but we will try |
| to set it up in the near future.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What future plans does the group have?</h3> |
| We're still in the beginning stages and don't have any concrete major |
| event or projects ahead. Our plan this year is to establish the group |
| to have a decent level of activity, virtual and real. We're trying to |
| gain more members and increase daily posting to the mailing list. <br> |
| <br> |
| For now, we're trying to share information about NetBeans by creating a |
| “NetBeans CD” and sharing it among our members; localizing NetBeans; |
| and some of our members intend to write books about NetBeans in |
| Indonesian language.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>We love localization! How much of the NetBeans IDE or NetBeans.org |
| has been translated into Indonesian?</h3> |
| Two of our member, Ibrahim F. Burhan and Thomas Edwin Santosa are |
| localizing NetBeans into Indonesian language. Right now, the <a href="http://nblocalization.netbeans.org//5.5/status.html">status |
| of translation</a> is 100% complete for the NetBeans Platform. For the NetBeans |
| IDE, 16% or 155 parts of 924 have already been translated to Indonesian. |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>Perhaps a good project for the group would be to get the IDE translated |
| from 16% up to 100%?</h3> |
| Yes, that would be a great idea. I and Ibrahim have created two blog entries |
| that contain guidance for those who want to join us in translating the NetBeans |
| 5.5 IDE into the Indonesian language. The translation process has been slow in |
| the past two months; we need more volunteers. The problem is that Ibrahim and |
| Thomas live in the different provinces, so we can't invite them to our monthly |
| meetings. If we are able to invite them and they have a presentation on how to |
| translate NetBeans I'm sure more people will join the Indonesian translation |
| team. For those who are interested, the blog entries I mentioned above can be |
| found <a href="http://ibrahim.burhan.biz/netbeans/how-to-penerjemahan-netbeans-ke-bahasa-indonesia/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.nagasakti.or.id/roller/Ifnu/entry/20070326">here</a>. |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What about individual projects that members are working on?</h3> |
| One of our members, Tony Kohar, did a cool project called <span |
| style="font-style: italic;">Sketsa</span>. It's |
| an SVG editor which is quite popular and has received lots of awards. |
| He was also featured in a <a |
| href="http://platform.netbeans.org/articles/nbm_interview_tonny.html">NetBeans |
| interview</a> with Geertjan Wielenga. <br> |
| <br> |
| I developed a NetBeans plugin called <span style="font-style: italic;">Intelligent |
| Tutoring System</span>. It's |
| basically a software to teach you programming language. For now, it can |
| only teach you C language, but in the next six months I plan to add new |
| capabilities to teach Java language. I created a <a |
| href="http://www.nagasakti.or.id/roller/Ifnu/entry/20070521">blog entry</a> |
| to explain |
| what the plugin tries to do, but it's in Indonesian, not English.<br> |
| <br> |
| <div style="text-align: center;"><img |
| alt="Screenshot: Intelligent Tutoring System" |
| src="../../../images_www/articles/indonesia-nug/ifnu-bima-plugin.jpg" |
| style="width: 765px; height: 677px;" align="middle" vspace="5"><br> |
| <br> |
| </div> |
| <h3>Have you considered submitting the plugin to the <a |
| href="http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/">NetBeans Plugin Portal</a>?</h3> |
| For now, I'm not too confident to share it |
| because it's not a ready-to-use plugin. But my next version will be a |
| ready-to-use application with proper documentation that I'll try to |
| submit.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>How can people contact the group or join?</h3> |
| You can join or contact NECTAR aka NUG Indonesia through our mailing |
| list: |
| NetBeans-indonesia@yahoogroups.com<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>Ifnu, thanks for a great interview. Please keep us informed about |
| NECTAR's activities. And best of luck with the group.</h3> |
| Thank you.<br> |
| <br> |
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