Netbeans makes programming that little less scary! Well maybe not! Intergrated development evniroments IDE are designed to make the whole job of programming easier. They hold a number of labour saving and organisational tools. You can actually think of it as a set of tools to aid development.
You DO NOT need netbeans to program in java. It just helps! Some people hate IDE's and will prorgram out of a text editor. If you are pureist list this then make sure you use an editor with syntax highlighting!
The main features of netbeans (for the begineer!) -