Highlight variable under cursor in Vim like in NetBeans

This autocommand will do what you want:

:autocmd CursorMoved * exe printf('match IncSearch /\V\<%s\>/', escape(expand('<cword>'), '/\'))

Edit: I have used the IncSearch highlight group in my example, but you can find other colours to use by running this command:

:so $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/hitest.vim

If you set

:set hlsearch

to highlight all occurrences of a search pattern, and then use * or # to find occurrences of the word under your cursor, that will get you some way to what you want. However I think a syntax-aware variable highlighting is beyond the scope of VIM.