Java IDEs? 679
Billy the Mountain asks: "In the startup company I'm in, we just got a new president and she asked us about ways of increasing developer productivity. We develop Java applications, servlets and JSP. I don't use an IDE. I use an enhanced text editor, EditPlus, because I like its color coding of keywords. I guess what I'm asking is what Java IDEs do you use and what features do you like best?" If you were to build a Java IDE from the ground up, what features would you include?
Together (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.togethersoft.com/
Hope you like it...
Re:Together (Score:5, Informative)
I don't mind paying for good software, but 4-5 digit figures... it's too much, IMHO.
Re:Together (Score:2, Informative)
It is also a bit slow for general use (I run it on a P3-1000/512MB Ram/IBM A22p), I usually design in Together and code in VIM.
Re:Together (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Together (Score:2, Interesting)
The best version in my opinion is 3.0 (I don't know if you can still buy it, but it is reasonably fast and does everything that it needs to do... later versions are somewhat buggy it seems).
Also... it is made with Swing which is a huge drawback... it runs just as slow on my dual 1.5 GHz Athlon box as it does on my 550Mhz PIII... so something must be wrong with the code...
But overall, what Together does is so amazingly useful that I can ignore the sluggishness. The way it keeps the model in sync with the code is worth a fortune in enhanced productivity. It's the best development environment I've ever used... If only they could re-implement it in C
Re:Together (Score:2)
JCreator (Score:4, Informative)
www.jcreator.com [jcreator.com]
Who needs an IDE? (Score:2, Insightful)
Syntax highlighting, data dictionary, easy compilation and debugging... what else do you want?
Re:Who needs an IDE? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone on a large scale project does. Let's throw out some useful buzzwords: distributed, scalable, flexible, etc, etc.
Projects that have those types of requirements and have a lot of developers should be using a good IDE, that contains an excellent debugger. My view is that the debugging feature is what adds the most value to any IDE so long as the IDE does not skimp out on all the basic (and advanced) text editing features.
Just my $0.02
Re:Who needs an IDE? (Score:2, Informative)
I prefer mozilla over the branded netscape browser... and with java IDE's, I prefer Netbeans over the branded version Forte.
check it out at http://www.netbeans.org
Same exact thing as forte, yet always ahead of forte in the development cycle.
Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:5, Informative)
Every version of JBuilder, I hope that it gets faster. It never did. And they changed their licencing for their free version, so i moved away from it.
Netbeans is dog slow, too.
If I were building a java IDE, it would be slim and trim. I don't use debuggers - proper logging and the occasional use of system.out.println()'s is enough for me. I want syntax highlighting, PROPERLY FLEXIBLE code reformatting, and name-completion. And I want it fast. I guess the problem with most Java IDEs are that they're written in Java (which makes sense) but without enough attention to writing fast java (which _is_ possible.)
Netbeans has some really nice simple features like abbreviations (Think autocorrect in MS-Word) so impj expands to "import java." and "psf" expands to "private static final" (how many times have you typed _that_?) but it doesn't have much for code reformatting. And it's stupidly huge.
And no, I don't like emacs. I'm a GUI guy, and emacs (or xemacs or whatever) doesn't cut it for me.
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:2, Informative)
NetBeans isn't an offshoot of Forte. NetBeans is the open source project that Forte is based upon. Saying NetBeans is an offshoot of Forte is like saying Mozilla is an offshoot of Netscape Navigator.
Netbeans is dog slow, too.
Might not be the fastest thing on earth, but it's not that slow. I mean, come on...it's an IDE, not a web server. How fast does it really need to be?
I use NetBeans every day. I wouldn't try to run it on a 486 or anything, but I do run it on three different machines (a 400mhz/256mb Ultra 5, an 850mhz/256mb PC, and a 700mhz/384mb PC), and on all of them it's a bit slow starting up, but after that it's pretty responsive. Again, not greased lightning or anything...
I've tried VisualAge for Java (IBM), JBuilder, SGI's Jesse, and one or two others I can't recall right now. NetBeans is one of the best I've ever seen, even before you consider that it's completely free (beer). JBuilder is nice, too, if you have the cash to pay for it.
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:2)
Heh, thats pretty funny! Mozilla _is_ an offshoot of Netscape Navigator (4.x code base), rewritten a few times, and then recycled back into netscape 6.x.
However, it is still an offshoot of netscape navigator
Debuggers (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with him. Take a look at the top developers (Linus Torvalds for example); almost all the best programmers use printf's (or the equivalent) and only fire up the debugger if its absolutely necessary. It's very often the case that debuggers make programmers lazy. They will spend an hour single stepping through the code rather than actually looking at the code and figuring out where to put a few well-placed printf's.
There are certainly top programmers who use debuggers (Carmack, for example, uses one I believe), but in my experience it's more the exception than the rule.
And yes, I've developed both ways. I always end up returning to simple printf's because it ends up using much less aggregate time than using the debugger.
Re:Debuggers (Score:2)
What could possibly be the advantage of using the printf instead of just inspecting the variable at that line?
Java is not C, it can be more like Smalltalk. (Score:2)
I'm with Kent Beck [xprogramming.com] on this one:
I develop Java using IBM's VisualAge for Java. Here's what I do when I find a bug:
I don't try to work out precisely where the bug is. I just set a breakpoint in its general vicinity.
I step through until I find what's going wrong. I make liberal use of my ability to inspect any variable in scope, to highlight pieces of code and evaluate them while the program is halted, or to write random code snippets in the evaluation area, and inspect their results as they execute in the context of the halted program. The big problem with writing printfs is you have to guess (out of everything that's in scope, and every method you're calling) which ones are giving you bogus results. If you knew what the problem is, you wouldn't need the printfs. If you're wrong, you have to write a new batch of printfs and run the whole test again. If you're in the debugger, you can just go through them one by one, from most to least likely.
When I locate the bad code, I fix it from the debugger, save (which drops the stack frame back to the beginning of the method), and let it run. The test then goes green.
I guarantee, using this method, 90% of the time I'll have fixed the bug while you're still writing printfs and scratching your head.
Re:Debuggers (Score:3, Interesting)
than a good IDE should have good debugger support...
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a debugger at all. In fact, I think I said that occasionally one is useful (particularly for analyzing core dumps). I'm mostly taking issue with the AC who ignores the advice anyone who doesn't use a debugger, which is absurd.
I know I'll never convince people who use debuggers, because it sounds so counter-intuitive, but I have to put out the seed every now and then. I used to go through it with my employees all the time. It used to drive me crazy watching them stare blindly at the debugger, when all they had to do was put in some printf statements and then analyze the program flow to see the problem.
And that's the big advantage of printf-style debugging. It lets you see the flow of your program at a higher level, rather than micro-watching it at the line-by-line level. It lets you selectively output what's important, rather than having to deal with all the trivial details. Also, when you leave in all the tracing, you get a debug log everytime you run it to see what happened when something else blows up.
Oh well, I know from experience that this is one of those debates that you can't win. :)
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:2)
Anyway, when coding in Java the debuggers are usually broken or really slow. The ones out there usually force you to turn off JIT and other speedups for stepping and watching. That basically translates to impractical for all but the most hard-to-fix bugs.
That was the case when debugging servlets at least, there might be other options for applications, like shared memory or something.
Hence, I've been somewhat forced to use printouts and log files for debugging. Not that I like it, but I've gotten used to it and have found that it's not much of a difference than back when I was using the debugger in VC++.
So, I'd guess your "company" probably is developing shit a lot slower than it could be in Java using the shitty ass debuggers that are out there.
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad. (Score:5, Funny)
Dear god...
File Linking (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, it's a hairy feature to implement, and one that that I haven't seen much of outside of HTML environments, but file hopping when building your own libraries gets to be a pain in Java!
My 2 cents.
lxr may help... once your code is in CVS, at least (Score:3, Interesting)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lxr
It looks like they're nearing a 1.0 release and have got the database integration and CVS integration cleaned up a lot lately. You'd still have some work to do if you wanted a fully-automated in-editor version of what you're asking for, but it would be fun stuff to implement, I think most of the drudgery is taken care of by now. Wow LXR has come a long way!!!
When I was a full-time Java/C/C++ developer I often used DDD + XEmacs + the combination of LXR and CVSweb to keep my wits about me and could therefore point other developers to whatever I'd done recently, how it worked, and what it involved. Now I'm more of an admin/loose cannon...
Haven't used LXR in a while and it seems like all my code has degenerated into componentized Perl, C, and Bash lately, but I still use CVSweb, JavaDoc-style docs (POD, JavaDoc, PHPdoc, Doxygen, whatever works), and a syntax-hilighting editor (Vim or XEmacs) whenever I write anything that'll be deployed for more than a week.
I know that the Gnome and Mozilla projects use LXR integrated with CVSWeb, but don't judge it harshly just because of that
Do you mean instaties an interface? (Score:2)
1) Way to find classes that implement a particular interface. Just do a JavaDoc run in JDK 1.2 or higher, the page presenting the interface you are interested in will list all of the implementing classes with links to those JavaDoc pages (true, it's not built into the editor - but I find myself switching between the editor and JavaDoc anyway).
2) Ability to go to the class that your current variable is a type of - many IDE's have symbol browsing built in that will let you hover over your variable "foo", and jusp to FooImpl.java.
IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, as always, the text editor itself is really up to you - I use the ubiquitous emacs [gnu.org] along with the fantastic jdee [sunsite.dk] IDE that installs inside emacs for syntax highlighting, quick toolbar access to your classes, and easy creation of class from templates.
If you are serious about writing good OO componentised java though, its almost essential now to use a decent UML tool during the design stages and further like rational rose [rational.com] / together [togethersoft.com].
One of the nice things about together [togethersoft.com] is that it works by placing javadoc comments inside your java - so your design documentation is never out of step with your source. Invaluable.
I don't work for together - but I do find their tool helps me visualise the workings of complex systems without remembering all the methods and stuff.
So if I had to put a finger on it - let developers choose their editor/IDE themselves, but get all developers to use a UML tool independant of the IDE.
Mr Thinly Sliced
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:3, Interesting)
All developers should be versed in reading UML and drawing out pseudo-UML on a whiteboard or a sketch page or whatever. But it's a needless step (for some developers, not all) in the development process when it comes down to a developer writing out the code for his/her component.
So, I like Emacs+JDEE (for myself) and Eclipse (as a suggestion for others that don't like emacs). ArgoUML is becoming a decent free UML tool. UML diagrams should be generated from the code for new developers to be able to understand a developed system. High level architectural docs should be UML or better yet, simpler pseudo-UML.
Re:So the Linux kernel is not engineering ... (Score:2, Informative)
Linus isn't going to dissapear from the project in 3 months cos he got offered a higher salary somewhere else. People come and go in business. You need a robust mechanism for documenting systems.
The open source model is great, as developers will spend a lot of time and energy at no cost getting up to speed on code.Business can't afford that.
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:2, Informative)
Support for JSPs in emacs isn't there automatically with JDEE, but the mmm-mode [sourceforge.net] module works great. It deals with the problem of having both HTML formatted code and Java code in the same buffer.
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:2, Funny)
Write the code, get it up and running, and then reverse engineer it into UML via the Rational Rose tools. Satisfies the Architect-types, and makes you look as though you've stuck to the design outlined by those pretty UML pictures.
Err.. not that I've ever done it that way. Nu-uh, not me.
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:3, Insightful)
In practice, I have also found the various "enhanced" IDEs (with support for roundtrip UML or refactoring) to be too sluggish. I prefer a fast editor, a fast compiler, and some simple linking between error messages and source code any time
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool? (Score:2)
But generated UML is not the same as hand-crafted UML. Generated UML is a complete representation of the system, like a circuit diagram that shows every transistor; it doesn't contain any information about what the designer had in mind and it contains huge amounts of irrelevant detail. Hand-crafted UML, on the other hand, is deliberately incomplete and focusses on the important stuff. It expresses what the designer actually was trying to do without the distraction of unimportant low-level detail.
In my experience, hand-crafted UML is more useful to the reader. It's also more useful to the designer because the exercise of creating it forces some useful introspection that is well worth the time and effort.
Look into Eclipse! (Score:5, Informative)
visual cafe, forte (Score:2, Interesting)
visual cafe will cost you, but is quite good.
honestly, J++ was my favorite (i'm ashamed to admit), but i certainly would recommend it any more
metrowerks has one, too, but i wasn't very favorably impressed with my limited usage of it.
jedit (Score:2, Informative)
Written in Java. Its not an IDE, but its an excellent editor.
lots out there (Score:5, Interesting)
I've also used Codewarrior for Java [metrowerks.com], and have been pleasantly surprised. It's a top-notch environment. Metrowerks has done some fine work.
Forte/NetBeans [sun.com] has a way to go. What a pig. 3.0 has some nice speed and stability increases...
If you don't need a really fancy setup, try jEdit [jedit.org]. It's an open source text editor with syntax coloring(60 file types!), and the plug-ins avaliable give you plenty of project management features.
And a dark horse: IntelliJ [intellij.com]. I really like it. Lots of "enterprise" features bundled in a relatively cheap package.
Re:lots out there (Score:2, Informative)
I currently use Forte. This program definately requires some hardware thrown at it. It was just bearable on a 500mghz PII with 245MB RAM. I upgraded to a 1.7 Mghz P4 with 1GIG RAM, and it is very usable. I like forte becasue it is both simple and powerfull. It only does as much as you need it to do. I especially like the new method for creating .jar files in V3, two clicks and your jar file is recreated exactly the way you want. I also like how it can be used to browse the contents of a .properties file. And it's XML suport is cool as well. (XML files appear in the explorer as a node, and you expend the entire tree and change values from the propery window without ever editing the file directly). I use forte for programs that I am developing on my own. One drawback I have noticed with forte, is that since it lives on the JVM, if you crash the JVM while testing a program, you also take down forte, bummer.
For team projects, my company uses IBM Visual Age for Java. Still resource hungry (though it doesn't touch FORTE) it has the best team based development model that I have found. The IDE connects directly to a server-based reposititory in which all code is kept. Anyone can alter any code they want, but they then have to version their code for it to be available to others. Each class, package and project has a manager, who is able to meld the different versions together and then release the official version of the code. It works well in a heighrachical structure, but can get messy when there is no clear line of ownership in the project.
NetBeans (Score:2)
Together (Score:2, Informative)
With together you can make use cases, sequence charts, state charts, all the edu text-book stuff, but most of all are class diagrams. make us happy. works for c++, too.
It's a hog, though, so get a fat machine. Forte isn't bad, though for a nice IDE.
I gotta agree though, emacs is the shtuff.
Patrick Kidd [logorrhea.com]
CodeWarrior (Score:3, Informative)
Re:CodeWarrior (Score:2)
It is simply the best damn text editor out there for Mac and PC, combined with a good compiler and project system. Its search (regexp compatible) and diff tools rock. I've been using CW almost exclusively for Java development since 1997.
The biggest shame is that Metrowerks (now a subsidiary of Motorola) is focusing on J2ME and ending any sort of focus on J2SE and J2EE behind. The tools are now priced like microcontroler tools (i.e., not for individual professional programmers), and nice things like ejbc integration will never happen.
CodeWarrior with ant integration would be my ideal Java IDE. -jon
Forte. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been months since I've met anyone who doesn't use Forte/NetBeans, although people targetting IBM Websphere server tend to use VisualAge for Java.
One feature I'd like to see is a "see-through" source pane, showing superclass code with a muted background in the same pane as the class you're editing, so that you don't have to hold so much state (remembering the superclass) in your head, perhaps with a configurable depth to which to walk back up the class hierarchy. This would make working with inheritance easier for dolts like me.
Kawa (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't track it, but it seems like it got pushed around between several companies and has finally been dumped by Macromedia [macromedia.com]. Morons.
I use (Score:5, Insightful)
I've cranked out many lines of Java code with it, so it's lasted the long haul for me.
Re:I use (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, SlickEdit appears to be amazing, but I am an emacs man, and I like my mode of operation: [edit stuff]
ctrl-x v v [cvs comment] ctrl-c ctrl-c
SlickEdit doesn't do CVS, but it does other code repositories.
It also has emacs emulation.
It is a lot for an editor. And I have only seen badly formatted code generated using it - sure programmer disfunction, but annoying.
You have to get comfortable with your editing environment. Once comfortable (say, a few weeks regular use) then you can evaluate it.
One thing - I hate editors that restrict you to Courier. That is a crap editing font.
kate (KDE editor) is also nice as well, and configurable. Built in console option, and multiple files open at the same time in a good GUI. Multiple highlighting modes (not as advanced as the 'old' KDE Advanced Editor though), not restricted to a fixed-width font, etc. I like it.
I used to like the old Amiga editors as well. BED. GoldED. CygnusEd. They were solid and good as well. Not relevant to the topic, but interesting anyway.
Re:I use (Score:3, Informative)
Visual SlickEdit also allows you to pick all your fonts (great for me who loves lucida sans in 9 point).
I've seen badly formatted code with Visual SlickEdit, but it's probably programmer error. If you know how to set up your autoformatting stuff (just how it does open and close braces when it does it automatically, and yes, you can turn it off) then you can get it to happen just how you like it. It doesn't look exactly like emacs-default, but I personally hate most of hte emacs-defaults, so there you go.
One thing that I haven't seen yet is the tags support. While in ctags you have to do something (like hit a key) to see a tag, in visual slickedit you just over over a keyword and it shows you in another pane all the references or the source of any local or class or global variable. And of course it does the drop-down listbox for all the member variables and methods and suchlike. That's the feature that really got me hooked on it, and I find it difficult to live without it at this point.
Re:I use (Score:2)
Oh, yea! Can you do M-x tetris ???
Personal Experiences (Netbeans) (Score:2)
The thing I like about Netbeans is that it runs on Linux AND Windows. Again, personally, I've only used the Linux version. I think they also have maybe a Mac OS, OS/2, and Unix (?) version of the product. The difference between Netbeans and Forte is that development builds come out often with new features that I can't deny loving.
Of course, no product is without bugs. Fortre has bugs. Netbeans has bugs. The only major problem I've found using Netbeans is that when you request an inexistent branch during checkout the program crashes. There are a few other petty problems, but, again there are builds that come out all the time and bugfixes almost daily. Hope this helps!
Netbeans (Score:5, Informative)
During the whole discussion of Eclipse the other day, I wrote about how it differs from Netbeans. [netbeans.org]
For me it meets pretty much all of my needs:
Open source
Decent interface (although some people disagree), which you can configure to appear as a single window or multiple windows (great for those multi-monitor setups)
Support for CVS
Ability to mount FTP directories as a filesystem so that I can store projects on the servers at school
Support for a whole wack of Java standards which I don't use at all - JINI, JSP, beans, etc...
ANT [apache.org] build scipts
Plenty of other stuff I won't bother to mention.
In fact the only real minus to it is that it is kind of a memory hog and takes a bit to load up (probably because it's written all in Java). Either way though, it's worth a look.
use the emacs JDE (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes a good IDE, aka: Netbeans is real close (Score:3, Interesting)
* Open source -- I want a new feature, I add it. I see a bug, I fix it.
* Code completion -- As much as you might hate M$, there ain't no faster coding that Visual Basic, and most of that is due to Intellivisio -- ur, Intellisense. If the IDE finishes my lines for me, that's half the battle right there. (Thanks, Mr. Ness)
* GUI RAD -- Look, I want to program the nuts and bolts, not spend tons of times making a beautiful set of buttons. A RAD lets me WYSIWYG my way to a great UI.
* Syntax highlighting -- as stated in the post, I like to see what's a string, what's a comment, and what's code. And see it quickly.
* The exact same UI cross platform -- When I go from Windows at work to a UNIX workstation down the hall to my iBook at home, I want to use the same tool to program my "write once, test -- ur -- run everywhere" code. My code's crossplatform, why shouldn't my IDE be too?
Hey, lookit there, I just described http://www.netbeans.org !
Sun funds much of the development team, so I know I have support. But before Sun gets their hands on the code to turn it into Forte, I've got full access. Was actually reading
Only drawback -- I sure wish this was written in assembler.
Re:What makes a good IDE, aka: Netbeans is real cl (Score:2, Funny)
NetBeans / JDeveloper (Score:2)
On Windows, I've used Oracle JDeveloper [oracle.com], which is Free(beer) software and can be downloaded from the Oracle Tech Network site if you register. I've mainly used the older version (3.1) for doing JSP work, but it contains some native code and is thus faster. I think Jdeveloper was based on Borland Jbuilder, but I'm not familiar with the new version.
Forte for Java (Score:2, Interesting)
The only problems I've had with it are a lackluster editor, which doesn't do as much syntax coloring as I would like or handle indentation very well (you have to right-click and choose to re-indent/nice-up the code).
But one of the nice things about Forte is that it uses XML and plain text for all the project files. You can copy the files from one computer to another and even between platforms and you're good to go as long as you have a copy of Forte for Java over there.
Plugins, plugins, plugins (Score:2)
I don't do Java, but I've played with it and the lack of a good IDE is a problem. Make it possible to plugin new functionality (code-snippet libraries, integrated CVS, regular expression/text search tools, etc) and people will add to it.
The current project I'm in involves a very component-based system. One of the best things we ever did was to add a "plugin" capability to our system. We now support one executeable (with very limited functionality), but we have a bunch of different options, in the form of plugins, that we can ship to different customers to fit their needs. If there's a bug in the primary code, then we fix it and all of our customers get it, no matter what customizations they have.
Granted, I'm the architect of the product, so I've got a little pride in the fact that it works so well for us (not that plugins were my idea, but for our product, it's original). But after seeing it work so well, I'm sold on the idea of creating component-based, extensible products. I think it's something that would work especially well in the open-source environment.
Re:Plugins, plugins, plugins (Score:3, Informative)
Try CodeGuide (Score:2, Insightful)
IntelliJ IDEA: the best IDE around! (Score:5, Informative)
Check out IntelliJ IDEA at http://www.intellij.com [intellij.com].
IDEA is an excellent fully-integrated IDE. It supports (among many other things):
IDEA is written in Java, so it works on the main platforms (I personally use it on Solaris, Linux, and occasionally Win NT/2000). Despite this, performace is good.
It costs something like $400US and I think it is worth every penny.
Grant
Re:IntelliJ IDEA: the best IDE around! (Score:3, Informative)
Before IDEA, I used things like vi or nedit. Every IDE I tried seemed to be mainly an interface annoyance coupled with a bunch of code generations tools (which personally I think are for dolts). Or instead it turned out to be something that insisted on a particular way of development that had very little to do with how I worked (hello, TogetherJ and VisualAge).
But IDEA has excellent attention to UI: it does what I want about 90% of the time; JBuilder is more like 30%. And its automated refactorings are the bees knees; being able to safely and quickly rename a method across a 1000-class project is alone worth the money. And that sez nothing about the other refactorings or the many other handy tools.
And like the previous poster, I'm not affiliated with IntelliJ; I just think their products kick enough ass that I coughed up my own personal dough for a copy to use at work.
VIMIDE (Score:2, Interesting)
NetBeans has ANT integration, Together does too, but they all have sh***y text editors and are sluggish.
My suggestion is to buy a copy of Together CC 5.5 for laying out projects (give it to your chief architect), and let the coders use whatever they want. If you are doing a project which requires Swing, you also might want to use JBuilder. VisualAge is good but generates terrible code. It really helps to use one of those tools when laying out panels.
Have a look at Kawa (Score:2)
Lately, I've also tried using ctags(1), with the newer options for parsing java code:
then combining the tag files with Vim(1) using Vim's syntax highlighting and the tags to hop around. ctags and vim dont really give you a visual class browser... but they're free.Re:Have a look at Kawa (Score:2)
Java based IDE (Score:2, Informative)
Chris Lee
lee@mediawaveonline.com
Omnicore CodeGuide (Score:3, Insightful)
I use Forte, and find it painfully slow, but its Swing forms designer tool is superb (it's a piece of cake to do GridBag layouts!)
CodeGuide is the best I've used in terms of quick, easy code development.
rOD.
I use Idea, personally. (Score:5, Informative)
Codeguide [codeguide.com] This was my first java IDE. I used it for a while. For a java IDE it's not so slow. Real-time compilation shows any code mistakes (it underlines them red), even stuff that others miss. Free evaluation version. Not terribly expensive. Relatively poor debugger. Nice autoindenting and code formatting. Virtually nonexistant CVS integration. Closed source.
JBuilder [borland.com] : Slow. Does a lot. Has excellent plugin support, so it can be extended a lot. Nice project management. The Enterprise version has excellent CVS integration. Has a visual editor if you do a lot of Swing programming. Fairly poor real-time error detecting. The best "enterprise" tools of these I mention. If you're doing j2ee stuff maybe you can use that stuff. Nice debugger. Library support for editing classpath is great. Autoindenting and code formatting a little weaker. Frustrating memory leak under linux has been plaguing it for years. There is a free version, closed source.
NetBeans [netbeans.org] SLOW. Reall, really slow. Has a ton of plugins. Ant integration is cool. Project management is a little hard to get used to. Etrememly flexible.I gave this one a real chance but the speed and bugs finally drove me away. Weak CVS integration. This is whas Sun's Forte is based on. (Think Mozilla/Netscape.) Open source.
Idea [intellij.com] Excellent IDE. The refactoring support is 2nd to none in any IDE for any language I've ever seen. Code formatting is excellent, I've never seen so many options for how to format code. Code templates are cool. Library support is a little weaker than jbuilder and codeguide - that's one of its few weaknesses. Decent CVS integration. (Not as good as JBuilder, nothing I've seen is.) I code faster with this IDE than any I've used. UI to override methods, implement interfaces, move methods (and fix all the dependencies in your project), rename methods/classes. Lots more. Try it. Closed source.
Here is a whole slew IDE's (Score:2, Informative)
Try this.... (Score:2, Interesting)
In short figure out the actual tool (the Java language) and the ways to use it effectively rather (patterns and best practices) rather than waste the time and money learning to use a tool which may do "something" for you but ultimately rests between you and the tool you are working with, Java. Besides, you've got at least person that department that is using either vim or emacs and there's gonna be a fight when you come for their editor.
Some decent advice here... (Score:5, Informative)
Lemme give a quick run down of what Java IDEs I have knowledge of:
Kawa: A nice, relatively clean IDE, syntax highlighting, add-on modules for stuff like EJB/servlet debugging and nice things like that. It may have a different name these days, I tried it over a year ago for a while.
JBuilder: This is old faithful amongst Java IDEs. It's not that fast, but it has a lot of features, and a lot of nice modules (I like the JxBeauty plug in, makes quick reformatting really easy). Also has great JSP editing support, with dual mode syntax highlighting (a MUST if you are doing serious JSP work, i.e. HTML and Java syntax highlighting in the same file). I've never seen it do autoindenting, which I can't stand (nothing else I've seen does as good a job at this as Emacs). But as an IDE is the best package I know of. Has improved a lot since 3.0, but I've only tried each successive version a few times. 5.0 is installed on my box and I used it for JSP editing for a while, but not much else, and I don't do JSP work anymore.
Netbeans/Forte: I have seen people who swore by this. Actually, only one guy, and I fired him (not because he swore by Netbeans, which I consider a slow bloated piece of dog turd, but because he was incompetent). I really disliked it and found that I had uninstalled it within a day. YMMV depending on your tolerance for REALLY slow REALLY laggy Swing apps (and this was on a PIII 750 with 256 megs of RAM)
I've also tried some editors that are nicely Java-aware but don't include the other IDE features. jEdit, Textpad and Emacs are my favorites. Nothing beats a nice, well configured emacs, IMHO. It actually can be configured as more or less a full IDE with automatic compiler and debugger invocation, but I just use it for the slick editing capabilities and the nice color configurable syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, etc. Only weakness is that the dual-major-mode JSP highlighting hacks I've seen out there are all pretty weak and annoying to use. JBuilder is easier on the eyes and brain if you are doing JSP work.
That's about it for my experience. I have come back to emacs every time, since ultimately it's more work than it's worth in terms of any productivity I'd gain to use an IDE. The reality is that if you know the command line tools for your development platform (i.e. javac, jdb if you need to debug, and java for the VM) and you have a good build tool (I HIGHLY recommend Ant for pure Java apps, then using emacs and the command line, you are just as productive if not more so than the dude down the hall with the IDE. Once the stuff you are working on has become part of a large application with its own build structure, etc. making your build system and your IDE work together is really not feasible.
Most importantly, what I really STRONGLY don't recommend is forcing everyone in the company to use the same IDE. This will have a hugely negative impact on developer productivity if you have people who like and prefer to use emacs and command line tools. Offer official training and support for a "preferred" environment if you want, whatever that environment may be, but don't force it on people who are comfortable and productive in a different environment, unless you really want to piss them off AND you can afford the several weeks of down time while they familiarize themselves with the new environment.
On the subject of integrated debuggers, etc., sometimes they are useful, sometimes they are not. Occasionally I have to turn to the debugger, but as apps get more complicated, if you have threaded anything, etc. it becomes difficult and poor practice to rely too much on the debugger. It's a tool, know when it's appropriate, whether you use one on the command line or embedded in your IDE of choice.
And if you are building GUI apps, I highly recommend getting an IDE with some decent RAD tools in it (the IBM Java IDE as I recall had better tools than JBuilder). If you are just hacking JSPs and Servlets, productivity is primarily limited by developer competence and coordination between development and design staff (that's the hugest one in my experience), not by anything fundamental to the IDE or editor you are using.
Again, YMMV and these are just my opinions.
Re:Some decent advice here... (Score:2, Interesting)
> company to use the same IDE.
It's interesting to note how many dev shops force their developers to use a particular operating system too - this is gradually changing but what I really want to do is develop in the way I am most productive and making me use windows + JBuilder cos everyone there does is pants at best, unproductive and expensive at worst. It's got to the stage now that I take my laptop with me. (Linux/emacs watch me alt-meta-shift-cokebottle [houghi.org] those naughty windows boys)
Kawa (Score:2, Informative)
Tek-Tools made Kawa.
They sold it [tek-tools.com] to Allaire (for $9 mill!).
Macromedia bought^H^H^H merged [macromedia.com] with Alliare.
Macromedia killed off [macromedia.com] Kawa.
The tek-tools version of Kawa was quite nice, by all reports it was destroyed somewhere between Allaire + Macromedia.
Big Blue's Open Source Java IDE (slashdot link) (Score:2)
a long-term committment? (Score:2)
Why I like Forte... (Score:4, Informative)
Drag and Drop controls, property settings, code linking - very, very easy - and Java! Don't get me wrong, I know how to code Java using a text editor, etc (NEdit is my favorite) - but it is a bitch to do Swing "by hand" - Forte takes the pain away (for the most part - some of the more custom stuff you still have to do by hand, and it has its glitches - but it still beats hand coding to whip out a quick app).
What I hate about Forte: It is a resource intense HAWG!!! In order to be able to use it at all, you need at least a 300-350 MHz machine, and at least 256 MB of RAM - the faster you go and the more memory, the better it is (my first experience with Forte was on a P200pro w/ 64 MB RAM - don't try it unless you like watching your disk grind away)...
Borland JBuilder (Score:3, Informative)
Most importantly, it has an amazing OpenTools API for customization. Check out codecentral.borland.com and you can find dozens of (usually open-source) plug-ins that really increase the utilty of the IDE.
Oh, and there's a rumor on the JBuilder newsgroups that version 6 will come out at the end of the year. You might want to check into that if you're making a big purchase and at least get a guarantee of a free upgrade (Borland often gives upgrades to people who bought within the last month or two, but after that it's big $$$).
--JRZ
recent experience with Forte (Score:2)
Older article (Score:2)
IDEs & tools I have used... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have used Together, and I usually dump new lumps of code in to get a handle on them. I don't use it for day-to-day editing.
For straight Java that winds up being packaged as a JAR, I use VisualCafe. The JAR packaging tool is very nice. I'm a "real coder" and don't use the debugger really, so I can't comment for those who have had problems.
I have been investigating NetBeans and believe that for machines that are 650MHz+ it's fine.
Finally, the most revolutionary tool we use, which has radically improved our development is Macromedia DreamWeaver UltraDev. For our JSP work, I can't say enough nice things. It does an amazing job of parsing existing code and adding new code without reformatting or destroying custom tweaks. We have done a few things, like standardizing on a JDBC-driver level connection pooling mechanism, and it works great.
Regardless of your tools, I cannot recommend adding memory to your development machine enough. No matter what you are doing, it's a lot more productive to be an alt-tab away from your other tool than having to go through a disk grind to load another app. 256MB would be a minimum. And before you squawk, it's cheap! Damn cheap!
As a final note, we use CVS for version control. We mostly do development on Win2K and deploy to Linux and Solaris. Finally, we are really looking at Mac OS X closely as MySQL, Postgres and Apache look better there than on Win2K.
All in all, it's a bunch of tools, but I feel about as productive as I have since THINK Pascal (bonus points if you remember that one).
If you don't like Forte, try version 3.0 (Score:3, Informative)
Version 3.0 seems to have fixed the major shortfallings and improved responsiveness tremendously. I run 3.0 on my 650 MHz laptop with only an occasional garbage collection pause, but it runs flawlessly on my 2x1 GHz machine. I've not switched to using it full time and haven't had any significant regrets.
Faster on a fast machine (Score:2)
Something both of these products have in common is that they are resource hogs that bog your machine down and require very fast CPUs to be usable. If you have a fast machine, try them.
Evaluated several IDEs, decided for JB4 (Score:5, Informative)
I work at a consulting company, and about 1 year ago I was in charge of evaluating several IDEs in order to standarize the development environment. Before that, there were people using vim, emacs, Editplus (my favorite - I still keep it around) and whatever-editor-you-can-think-of. I considered the following IDEs during the evaluation:
- Forte for Java
- Netbeans
- JBuilder
- Visual Age
- Kawa
Most of the applications we build are web-based J2EE applications. The requirements for the IDEs were:In the end my recommendation was to purchase several licenses for JBuilder 4 Enterprise for the EJB programmers and to have the rest of the team use JBuilder 4 Foundation. The main reasons were:
The only ugly part was the price, but the Enterprise Edition, along with our own inhouse OpenTools, boosted our productivity quite a bit, so we could say that it more than paid for itself. It also doesn't support HTML, but since then we also bought Macromedia's Ultradev, and the graphics designers take care of most of that part.
Right now I'm looking at the latest version of JBuilder 5 Enterprise Studio, which also contains Rational Rose. It might be in our upgrade path in the future for the JB4 Enterprise users, but there doesn't seem to be any replacement for JBuilder 4 Foundation, since the JB5 Personal Edition has a more restrictive license.
As a side note, recently I've been using the latest version of NetBeans (3.2.1) quite bit in my house and it seems pretty nice. It handles remote debugging quite well, and it does understand HTML.
------
Me
Best FREE Java IDE's: (Score:2, Informative)
1) TogetherSoft allows for UML->Source and Source->UML. Try the Community version of Togethersoft for FREE, only the print functionality has been disabled in this version. Has great syntax highlighting, and is fairly fast for a full blown java application.n .shtml
http://www.togethercommunity.com/community-editio
2) Forte for Java CE the Community Edition of the popular Forte Software is what I personally use for my Java Development. While not having the UML features of the Togethersoft product, I find it suits my needs just fine. An integrated debugger, and syntax highlighting make for a friendly (and free) product!
http://java.sun.com
3) Glimmer for linux. While not a full blown IDE, for simple projects, I find myself using glimmer alot. It's quick, written in C, and supports syntax highlighting for a plethora of languages (php, c, c++, java, perl, and lots more!), and best of all.. it's GPL!
http://glimmer.sourceforge.net
Gene Ruebsamen
Orange County Real Estate [erachampion.com]
VisualAge for Java` (Score:4, Informative)
VisualAge has a rather steep learning curve associated with it compared to a lot of the IDEs, but it really is the first product that I can recommend for Java coding.
Unique features that I find useful are:
* No files -- just a big 'ol database repository that is managed by VisualAge. There really is no need for files in Java, really, and this makes things great for reorganizing your code and proper versioning.
* Incremental compilation that works with the debugger -- breakpoint your app, change code, continue with new changes.
* Method-atomic units of editing. You edit at the method level instead of the file level. Easier to conceptualize large OO systems as you don't spend time navigating lines and lines of code and various files. Just pick a package, class, and method from a nice hierarchical window system and start coding.
* Semi-open plug-in interface. Write your own little applets to do things to your own code base (fancy search/replace, exporting your code, merging changes...) -- this also means you can download/buy cool add-ons (Instantiations' VA/Assist and JFactor come to mind).
* Good Enterprise team coding system. That repository is pretty good for keeping versions around and keeping things straight between teams of coders. You can also use and SCCI? compliant version control system.
It can be tricky to master at times, but worth it, IMHO. Best of all, you can get a copy for $60 with the book Effective Visualage for Java at your local Barnes and Noble.
Not affiliated--just finally satisfied with an IDE.
Re:VisualAge for Java` (Score:2, Insightful)
My only concern are its steep learning curve, difficult to use different version of jdk and pretty slow response. As with other IDEs it requires you to work in a certain way.
On a side note, I think a good IDE should have a good documentation system that integrates with other software design tools so that requirements can be reflected in the code/doc easily. It'd be a dream come true if I look at any part of a project (design/doc/code) and from there get to the other part of the project easily to allow me to view from the big picture all the way to the smallest detail real quick. Then again I don't have experience designing big enough system to really have an idea of how the doc should be integrated with the design. If anyone here has a good idea of how it should work I'd like to hear about it.
Turing-completeness (slightly OT) (Score:2)
My $.02 and some lint.
Re:Turing-completeness (slightly OT) (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Sun's Java compiler is written in Java.
Re:Turing-completeness (slightly OT) (Score:2, Informative)
How bout this: (Score:2)
For all things text related I use the VI(de). Others may be more robust, have better features, cost more money -- but damnit I spent 23 1/2 years learning VI , and 1 day without using it may well indeed set me back 10 years in the study of VI. And those $10 a minute calls to the VI helpline can get a bit costly.
Information About Eclipse (Score:5, Informative)
Although it's written in Java, it can be used to develop programs written in other languages; there are already proof-of-concept plugins for C (using gcc) and make.
It is being developed by OTI, an IBM subsidiary who did Visual Age Smalltalk and Visual Age Java. These people have a lot of experience building IDEs.
Currently you can download the basic framework and a set of plugins that let you edit, compile and debug Java applications --- a pretty decent Java IDE. (The very-context-sensitive code-completion is pretty nice. It also has a great feature where it compiles the code every time you save and puts unobtrusive error icons at every line with an error --- an excellent way to keep your source error-free as you go, without getting in your face.) You get the source but currently not under a true open source license. The OTI people promise that they will be moving to a true open source license soon.
This is a big initiative within IBM. The WebSphere Workbench product is already based on Eclipse. Lots of people within IBM, including IBM Research, and several other companies are building new development tools as Eclipse plugins.
One slightly weird thing about Eclipse is that it doesn't use Swing. Instead it has its own toolkit called SWT, which is designed to expose a single cross-platform API but is reimplemented using native widgets on each platform. You can download versions for Win32 and Motif but in the newsgroups some OTI people said that they're working on a Gtk port.
More information at http://www.eclipse.org [eclipse.org].
Java the UNIX way: Ant and vim (Score:2, Interesting)
Ant [apache.org], of course
Use what the developers like. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is good to standardize is directory structures and locations of projects, which helps you define the environment for the build a little easier.
The setup that seems to work well for us is something like this (some things are new elements I've not quite tries yet):
<DIR - project root>
build.xml (ant build script)
setEnv.sh.default (keep this one in source control and people can modify it locally once for odd setups - called by
runAnt.bat ( does all of the stuff the bashrc does, but in the way only a batch file can. Ick! Used by those poor souls without Cygwin)
<SUBDIR build> - generated by ANT (compiled class files go in here)
<SUBDIR source> - holds all source code
<SUBDIR other...> any other subdirs you might need (resource, deploy, etc.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
JBuilder for me (Score:2)
We all use JBuilder here, out of preference rather than any compulsion. It is a swing app, so needs decent machines (runs sweet on a dual P3-800) but the interface is pretty nice, and it has lots of syntax highlighting & auto completion features. There is a cheap/free basic "personal" version, but the license says you can't use it commercially. The standard version is a couple of hundred, well worth it. If you want to get flashy then the Enterprise version has some fantastic features for supporting teamworking and EJB development. Trials are available from their website for all versions.
Other than that, I have heard many bad things about Visual Age, mainly around it's use of a repository rather than the filesystem - while there are some advantages, it has a habit of rewriting your code for you, losing comments etc in the process. Also, unless your whole team are working in VA, it's a royal pain in the butt.
Visual Age for Java (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Java IDEs (Score:4, Interesting)
I've also had good results with JBuilder, with VisualAge (for projects where I have no need for source code in files, which is not many of them...), and with plain old text editing.
Re:Comments on Java (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you serious?! I don't think Java is on its way out, it seems to be gathering steam. Look around -- many more companies are distributing signifigant products built with Java. The installer technology is finally getting to the point of being useful as well. I've shipped products built in Perl, C/C++. Java, VB and even some early access stuff in C#. Of all those, I see Java as having the most promising future.
Re:Try FreeBuilder (Score:2)
WARNING - DON'T GO TO THAT LINK!!!
Yes, there used to be a freebuilder IDE - I know, I was on a dev list at one time - but where it is at now, who knows...
Re:IntelliJ IDEA (Score:2)
For example, I had to change a class name in a system of 400 classes and 35,000 LOC. IDEA did it in about 5 seconds. I haven't yet tried the other refactoring features - but they look amazing.
I also like the remote debugging (IDE on my machine, debugged program on another server in another city).
P.S. I played with Netbeans and Forte, but IDEA seems much easier to use.
Re:Don't forget Ant! (Score:2)
Re:JBuilder is OK... VAJ sucks! (Score:2)
VAJ uses a repository to store code.
Re:The best IDE (Score:2)
Re:IBM Visual Age for Java (Score:2, Informative)
However, the drawback to VAJ is its size makes it a cumbersome application. In addition, files must be imported and exported, meaning they cannot be edited by any other editor without being exported first. Not to mention, VAJ costs over $1000.
Thankfully, IBM is coming out with an IDE that provides all the features listed above while eliminating the need to import or export files and reducing the size of the application. Even better the new IDE is free, Open-Source. Mentioned on slashdot a couple days ago, the new IDE is a part of the Eclipse Project [eclipse.org]. They just released version 1.0. You have to join the Eclipse community to download and but its a simple process.
Re:Even better than an IDE (Score:2)