My New Toy Is... a Processor Simulator
I'd like to show you two screenshots. Take a look at them and compare them (click to open maximized):

Original application

Ported to NetBeans platform
What I did is that I took the original application for simulation of processor and rewrote the GUI part in
2 days to work above NetBeans. I'm not done with it yet but the basic functionality is there. My impression is that the application got a really great look and somehow became professional-looking. The strange thing is that I didn't rewrite any of the components - the processor components are the same. I just reused NetBeans' components like editor, menu, toolbar and output window.
That were the changes in it's UI, but the more interesting part is which features I got for free from NetBeans, which the original application didn't have:
- Editor with search & replace, undo, redo, go to line, support for abbreviations and macros.
- Setting of keyboard shortcuts.
- Possibility to move windows, dock them, maximize editor and sliding windows.
- Automatic management of options in userdir.
- Customizable toolbars.
- Printing of source code.
- Output window with possibility of many windows opened, cleaning of output window, search, saving of output.
- Improved modularity of system, possibility to add additional features as modules, their uninstalling, updating and management of versions and dependencies.
- Availability of help window.
- Splashscreen, support for various look & feels, drag&drop functionality...
Now I have a question - do you know about an easier way of adding so many features in 2 days?! :-)
Ok, this is getting quite a marketing mambo-jumbo, I should not forget that I am an engineer... there are also some drawbacks:
- Increased start-up time (approx. 10 secs).
- Increased application size (+approx. 12 MB).
- Increased memory footprint (+approx. 10 MB).
However these drawbacks IMO are small compared to the set of functionality I gained for free. Programmer time is very expensive... and I wonder how many man-months it would take me to develop all the features I leveraged from NetBeans platform.