scribbles of the perennial debugger…
Posts tagged NetBeans
NetBeans 6.7
May 9th
Mark your calendar. I am still a NetBeans fan. 6.7, going to be release on June…
NetBeans World Tour 2008-2009, Singapore
Sep 13th
I am marking this date. I’ll apply for leave and satisfy my NetBeans-love on this day.
Singapore — January 22, 2009
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 go for NetBeans 5.5 (for me)
Nov 24th
Having test driven NetBeans since version 5.0, I am one disappointed man. Well, the real goodie, the enticing reason for trying is Matisse. But I am not a GUI man. I am a text-based man. Hence, my utmost regard for the Editor features. However I try to change my style, I could not ward my Eclipse-driven fingers to accept the new paradigm presented by NetBeans. A lesser to that extent. (Disclaimer: my points of view, of course, is relative.) So, no matter how I try to pitch NetBeans to my colleagues. No matter how I try to change, I keep coming back to Eclipse.
My happiness is shallow, I’d like to see those simple Eclipse features (out-of-the-box) in NetBeans, such as Mark-Occurences, Add-throws-to-the-surrounding-try, etc. You see, I have been corrupted by Eclipse niceties. Gone are the days when plain Notepad or Vi will do the trick. But heck, why should I go back to those lesser-productive days. IDE technology evolves to empower developers.
Speaking of evolution, my hope and faith is not lost on NetBeans. I have downloaded NetBeans 6.0 devM4 lately. Whoah! The editor feels like eclipse. Try it, you’ll see what I mean.
Looking forward to the official release of NetBeans 6.0….
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:
