NetBeans is developed as a suite of modules. This modular nature of NetBeans is one of the main features of the IDE in that it allows additional modules to be easily written that can provide extra functionality to developers. NetBeans provides a vast amount of functionality as standard; however, there is still a thriving ecosystem in third-party plugins that can provide additional functionality into the IDE. For example, there are plugins that allow NetBeans to interact with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB or modern web frameworks such as NodeJS.

The modular nature of NetBeans also means that NetBeans is ideally suited as a basis for developing desktop applications. The NetBeans IDE is after all a NetBeans Platform application that is tailored to developers' needs. All of the functionality that is required for a modern desktop application is provided by different modules that can equally be used by third-party developers to create standalone applications. You...