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Java Programming

NetBeans IDE 3.5 Beta 33

Posted by michael from the jamaican-blue-mountain dept.
Rob writes "We are pleased to announce the availability of the beta version of NetBeans IDE 3.5 release (codenamed Tegal). This release is focused on performance improvements, especially in the area of UI responsiveness. The binary and source distributions in various formats have been uploaded onto the website. We encourage all Java developers to download, try, test the bits, report problems and provide feedback. Also check out the new netbeans.org website design."
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NetBeans IDE 3.5 Beta More

NetBeans IDE 3.5 Beta

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  • Who is daring enough (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chaotica1974 ( 572461 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @08:36AM (#5743043)
    I tried NetBeans a year ago and the UI was so unresponsive that menus would literally takes 10 seconds to come up. That's when a friend introduced me to Eclipse and I saw that Java IDEs don't have to suck. I have never looked back. I noticed this version claims to increase UI Speed/Responsivness. Can anyone that is using it back that up? When you maximize the window, do you see painfull Swing repaints? How much memory does this thing chug up when initially started (Before loading projects etc..)
    • I've not tried this new version, so I can't say whether or not is feels faster than older releases. I've had a similar experience with NetBeans myself. I don't think it could get *much* faster, as it does still rely on Swing; and it relies on Swing to do some pretty complex stuff with a bucket-load of widgets used at the same time.

      So, I imagine it still chugs. Keep on using Eclipse, which doesn't use Swing, if something non-chugging suits your fancy. Or, buy a new super-mega-ultra-fast machine just so
    • I've never used NetBeans under Linux, only ever Win2K or WinXP. The machines I've used it on were my laptop which is an Athlon Mobile 1G with half a gig of RAM. My work machine (at the time), which was a dual PIII 667 with half a gig of RAM (and I think later a full gig). And then my current work machine which is a P4 2G with half a gig of RAM.

      I used it way back when it was... crap - it was a different name. That version was absolutely terrible. Then the first iteration of NetBeans was a little better, but

    • Re:Who is daring enough (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      NetBeans will never be the IDE for low-end machines, but to claim it universally "sucks" in terms of UI responsiveness is unfair.

      On a mid-level enterprise development machine (1 GHz CPU and plenty of RAM -- how much depends on how much your other apps take), it works extremely well -- at least once you tune the Java heap and garbage collection parameters. [Sun has provided such parameters on the web, but unfortunately they're not set in the IDE out-of-the-box.]

      [Personally I'll use Swing any day over an o
      • I was not hoping to start the same old argument 'Swing is god, SWT sucks' or 'SWT is god, Swing sucks'. So, give me a minute while I stoop way down to your level:


        [Personally I'll use Swing any day over an overly thin wrapper like SWT.]

        So what your saying there is that you would rather use the fat bloated API of Swing over the thin API of SWT and JFace? Understand this: Swing is build on top of AWT. AWT is a wrapper. SWT is a wrapper. What this all boils down to is the lame argument of 'SWT is evil
        • But apparently Swing is good enough to create quick-UI IDEs like JEdit and IntelliJ IDEA. Swing has its own issues but like anything else when you learn to work with it properly it can be fast. SWT has its own issues. It is far from a panacea. I'd still choose Swing over SWT exactly because of the way Swing is written. Its highly extensible and used properly it is fast.

    • I have used both NetBeans (the release immediately previous to this advertised beta) and Eclipse (2.1) on both Win2k and MacOS X on roughly comparable systems. I loved NetBeans at first, and used it a couple of small Java projects - on Windows, it is fast and responsive enough, and I am not one of those who doesn't like the look and feel of Swing's "metal" theme (because, as lifelong Mac user, all Windows apps look strange to me). However on MacOS X, the app is a dog. The ten-second wait you described is

    • Re:Who is daring enough (Score:3, Informative)

      by j3110 ( 193209 )
      It's not Eclipse fast yet, but I was really impressed. I'm glad there are a couple of good free IDE's to compete. If it weren't for eclipse, I think NetBeans would remain slow forever. NetBeans, as it stands, has about 2x the functionality of Eclipse, but Eclipse is closing in from that angle as well.

      They'll probably meet in the middle, and there will be a holy war about as bad as Vi vs Emacs (except we all learned that different people like different interfaces from that war, so it will never get quite
  • It'd help some of us who aren't part of the netbeans community if somebody would explain exactly what the relationship between the netbeans effort and Sun is. Is it like Mozilla and AOL?

    Is there a competitive matrix somewhere which includes netbeans?

    • AFAIK the code for Netbeans origonally come from Sum from their IDE. Netbeans is now under some Sun open source lisence and is developed by the netbeans community. It is, however, extended by a number of commercial outfits with more functionality, typically J2EE stuff etc. Sun is one of thouse outfits which extends the IDE to give us Forte.

      .Incidentally Forte community edition is almost exactly the same at netbeans but tends to run a few months behind. There is a road map somewhere with both netbeans and f

    • Re:Give us some help here (Score:4, Informative)

      by timotten ( 5411 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @09:39AM (#5743355) Homepage
      ...what the relationship between the netbeans effort and Sun is. Is it like Mozilla and AOL?

      Off the top of my head... yes and no.

      Mozilla and NetBeans both started out as college research projects [netbeans.org]; both grew into businesses; both were assimilated by larger businesses; and both were eventually released as open source. NetBeans is availabile under a variant [netbeans.org] of the Mozilla license.

      That said, I think NetBeans is more important to Sun than Mozilla is to AOL. As far as I know, AOL doesn't get any commercial fruits from Mozilla directly, and itisn't being used in any significant commercial projects. Sun, however, does market some heavish software on top of NetBeans (Sun ONE Studio), and so do several other companies [netbeans.org].
  • doesn't this kinda thing belong of freshmeat?
  • Do the "performance improvements" include not hanging after clicking "Next" in the Windows installer? It would be a lot easier to use the IDE if the installer worked.
  • While I haven't tried the new NetBeans, I have been using the latest stable for a couple of months now for some servlet development with Tomcat. There was a HUGE improvement when I upgraded to the 1.4 Java SDK. All the repaint problems disappeared, which was the most annoying thing in the first place. I'll be excited to try out this new version, though.
  • I've never understood the use of IDEs, it just seems like an overly bloated piece of software that creates basic application structure (that most could scrawl out on a decent sized cocktail napkin) and assist in GUI building (assist used loosely). These minimal benefits don't outshine the speed and extensibility of vim, a whiteboard and an API.

    • An equally valid argument (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've never understood the use of computers, they just seem like overly bloated pieces of hardware that allow you to do calculations, create documents, and drawings. These minimal benefits don't outshine the speed an extensibility of pencil and paper.
    • IDE are important, especially for the Java community. Didn't you notice that there are hardly any Swing applications real people actually use other than IDEs with Swing GUI builders?

    • Re:why IDEs? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stj ( 607714 )
      Well, there are some geniuses that can visualize complex, 2000 files, 1mln lines of code software design and remember all components. There are some who can possibly write this whole thing in edlin and not miss a character, compile and voila - there you have a perfect operating system, word processing application, VLSI design package. The only problem with them is that they are stubbornly hiding in some caves. I have never seen any.

      I appreciate IDEs for:

      functions' and variables' definitions at the mous

  • I've been using NetBeans 3.4. As yet it forced me to upgrade from 256MB RAM to 640 - with 256 it was simply impossible to use. I'd gladly welcome a good update, so I open my NetBeans, it asks about autoupdate and there it is not...
    Are they gonna actually post it on autoupdate? I don't really feel like downloading the stuff from the web and reinstalling everything manually...

    Now, I can't really say a bad word about NetBeans responsiveness - it just requires unbelievable amounts of memory - with 640MB and
  • Me and a fellow developer worked on a Java client application using netbeans, I would say netbeans is fair in performance, compared to IBM's VisualAge which sucks real bad to the point of discouraging development, but generally all Swing IDEs are slow and unrepsonsive, because Swing is based on AWT, so it is layers and layers of bloat, So far I think the only think Java is good for is server side not desktop applications, imagine developing something like Adobe photoshop using Swing, and netbeans required a
  • Runs so smooth, live templates kick, it has seriously been the greatest improvement to overall productivity since I don't know when. I cannot recommend IDEA enough, of course I don't do any visual stuff, so maybe it's weak in that area.
  • While this is totally OT I realize, anyone ever run across an IDE that is as functional for Python, as NetBeans is for Java?

    Back OT: Its good to see NetBeans is still advancing, I got really concerned when Sun absorbed it..

    • Google is your friend (you really should try it one day):
      • I did do a google long before I asked this question.. and the first few I was not impressed with.. ( thus the original disclaimer of a IDE as functional as 'Beans.. ) I've been watching for one to appear for some time now..

        However the ones I've not heard of before ill check out.. ( active-state integrates with studio, so I cant use it here in a BSD shop )

        But thanks though...

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