scribbles of the perennial debugger…
Posts tagged IDE
NetBeans 6.7
May 9th
Mark your calendar. I am still a NetBeans fan. 6.7, going to be release on June…
why netbeans?
May 18th
Just like mo long love affair with Java, I have seen, criticized and learned to love NetBeans since version 3.6. Now, at its latest incarnation 6.1, let me valiate netbeans.org’s top reason why we should switch to NetBeans.
- Works Out of the Box – well, my first-choice IDE, Eclipse, works out of the box too. Is there any IDE that doesn’t work out of the box? I guess the plus factor with NetBeans is the built-in Tomcat, GlassFish, and JavaDB (Derby). Another plus factor for NetBeans is that it’s always steps ahead of competition in terms of support for the latest Java EE and ME, JSRs, as well as native support for the latest Java SE. But come to think of it, there is an increasing momentum of idiom shift to Spring Framework. IBM has not embraced Java EE 5 yet, developers are starting to shun EJBs, and a lot of enterprises are still with JDK 1.4. So no big advantage for NetBeans, out of the box. Eclipse is still the best in this arena, on contemporary needs, IMHO.
- Free and Open Source – I salute NetBeans and Sun for this. GPLing NetBeans, just like Java, is the way to go. And the communities in NetBeans are really communities, not big-enterprise backed groups that serves their master’s agenda and wishes. NetBeans wins in this space.
- Powerful GUI Builder – Need I say more. Matisse and Beans Binding rocks! “Drawing” GUIs has never been this simpler.
- Support for Java Standards and Platforms – No further doubt on this, NetBeans is _the_ leader when it comes to set the first foot in anything new to Java (as long as it’s JCP sanctioned). The only caveat in NetBeans is that the ANT scripts it generates when projects are created are NetBeans-specific. This sucks. I would have loved working with NetBeans-generated program artifacts even outside NetBeans environment.
- Profiling and Debugging Tools – With NetBeans affinity with Sun, JDK and most especially, JVMPI and JPDA, this IDE should give a serious punch when it comes to debugging and profiling.
- Ruby and Ruby on Rails Support – I’m no fan of Ruby and RoR. No thanks.
- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Support – One plus factor, of course. But the real value does not strike the core of a developer’s heart. I mean, do you really go NetBeans when your talking about integration via BPEL? My view might be myopic though…
- Extensible Platform – No comment, I’m neutral. Haven’t really used the NetBeans platform since the 3.6 days.
- Customizable Projects – customized so much that simple ANT scripts generated by NetBeans project will not build outside the IDE or without NetBeans libraries. Talk about the WORA mantra.
- Visual Web Development Support – Oh yeah. This, like matisse, is a killer functionality. But I don’t know. I have always hated web development. I am a middleware-backend guy. A console guy. So web and GUI’s not for me.
- Non-Java Code Support – Thanks but no thanks.
- Dedicated Support Available – Heavily supported by Sun, of course.
No TOAD? Use NetBeans 5.0!
Feb 7th
Continuing over my last post on NetBeans 5.0, I’ll be making rounds of similar articles about my experience with NB5. Here’s the first of the installment.
So far so good. NB5 has been very useful as a replacement for TOAD or the open-source SQuirreL (which I am fond using). Good thing for me, I have found a new tool that enables me to work on Oracle and DB2 at the same time. The SQL Editor and DB Explorer seems to be very sleek and is just having the right stuff for non-DBA, programmer-oriented development.
Next stop on my evaluation: appserver integration and Matisse.
I haven’t used the Editor, full-fledged as I am still keystroke and functionality-bound to Eclipse. So far, I still like Eclipse (at least for the Java Editor ) over NB5.
I Have A New Toy
Aug 31st
Repost from Randomized!
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I just installed Eclipse 3.1. What a breeze. The time it took me to install was 10 times faster that the time it took me to download.
I am really excited in trying out the new features in this IDE. So much for the NetBeans 4.1 crap. Now let me see… I have JDK 5, I have Eclipse 3.1. I have a java source to work with. What else… ahh! I am still using FC3. Anyways, this post is not about Fedora.
The cool stuff about Eclipse 3.1 is speed. All about speed. Since I mix up between CLI activity and GUI IDE activity, my old Eclipse 3 was just as handy. But with hundreds of codes that I work with, auto-compilation grinds to a standstill when I refresh or even introduce a new java source.
Let me see later whether VE (visual editor) is already up to the task. I dropped using this in favor of NetBeans because VE is a crap. *sigh* If only I could extract the GUI builder part of NetBeans and make it as a stand-alone kick-start utility, then I would the best utilities a java developer can ask for.
My new toy:
Eclipse 3.1
Aug 31st
A repost from my Randomized! blog. So far Eclipse 3.1 has been a wonderful toy to play with.
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Eclipse 3.1 is Out!
It has been a while since fanatics waited (since June 25, 2004) for the next version of their beloved Eclipse IDE. What’s new and noteworthy about this new release is that many woes and supposed-to-have from Eclipse 3.0 has been resolved.
Some of this blog’s text are excerpts from eclipse.org
Significant Performance Enhancements – thank goodness!
Support for bi-directional text – naah! I would not have any use for this. My stand is that since Java language is an English derivative, text and text orientation should be inherently english too.
Improved preferences and properties support – nice goodies!
Editor lookup based on content type – not so usable to me since I have been a VI baby…
Importing multiple projects – not so usable to me either…
Line delimiter support – not so usable to me either since I only work with Linux/Unix
Single JAR plug-ins – aha! nice way to remove unwanted plugins!
New JDT Goodies – these will certainly improve my productivity ten-folds
* New Javadoc compiler settings
* Serial Version UID
* Early detection of references to internal classes
* Access rules on libraries and projects
* Mark occurrences of inherited methods
* Highlighting of deprecated class members in the Java editor
* References in Javadoc
* Improved Java properties file editor
* Working with externalized strings
* Externalize Strings wizard supports new message bundles
* New Open Type dialog
Full support for J2SE 5.0 – and yes!!! The Tiger Roars!!!!
Eclipse 3.1 includes full support for the new features of J2SE 5.0. This support is both pervasive and powerful — everything that you expect to work with J2SE 1.4, including editing, code assist, compiling, debugging, quick fixes, refactorings, source actions, searching, etc. will work seamlessly with (and has been extended to support the new capabilities of) J2SE 5.0′s new types and syntax.
Here are some examples:
* Quick Fix to update JRE and compiler compliance to 5.0
* New Type wizards support generics
* Enumeration and Annotation wizards
* Semantic coloring of J2SE 5.0 constructs in Java editors
* Rename refactorings handle renaming of type parameters
* Infer Generic Type Arguments refactoring
* Quick fixes for Generics
* Search result filters for reference search for parameterized types
* Code completion for annotations
* @SuppressWarnings annotation support
* optional diagnoses for issues such as incomplete enum switches and boxing/unboxing conversions
* Quick Fix to create enum constants
* Autoboxing parameter proposals
* Quick Assist to convert for-loops over arrays and collections to J2SE 5.0 enhanced for-loops
* Support for package-info.java
Eclipse 3.1 release is now available for download from the eclipse.org downloads page. Go get it!