I am the founder and initial architect of NetBeans, which is not just a well known IDE, but also the first modular desktop application framework written in Java. My name sounds Slavic and has a strange pronunciation (read the initial J as Y and last ch as in Scottish loch or in German Bach), because I am Czech. However, as NetBeans has been the flagship software product of Sun and Oracle for a while now, you don’t have to worry that content of the TheAPIBook might not be widely applicable and understandable.

Maintaining NetBeans Platform, its architecture and APIs has always been the primary focus of Jaroslav. During more than fifteen years of participating in the NetBeans.org project, Jaroslav has seen, made and helped to recover from many design mistakes. Such experience obligated Jaroslav to sit down and summarize it.