Sun and Eclipse Squabble 423
gbjbaanb writes "CNET news is reporting on a potential spat between Sun and Eclipse: 'Sun Microsystems has sent a letter to members of Eclipse, urging the increasingly influential open-source project to unify rather than fragment the Java-based development tool market.' Although Sun's letter says it wants interoperability, and a 'broad base' for java tools, it then insists Eclipse should push to be a 'unifying force for Java technology'. Competing tools is a good thing, but it sounds like Sun just wants everything to work its way."
Eclipse will take out Sun (Score:5, Funny)
let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:2, Informative)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:2)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Funny)
KFG
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Interesting)
a) my company pays for it
b) my company also bought me a 2.6GHz P4 box with a gig of RAM
I have tried Eclipse and netbeans (and AnyJ), but didn't really get on with them. That was probably mostly due to being used to JBuilder, though, rather than through any real failing of the alternatives.
I really see no connection to SCO here.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun has their own, free (Mozilla public license derrived) Java IDE.
Netbeans [netbeans.org]Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:5, Insightful)
Eclipse is light years ahead of NetBeans, and gaining developers everyday.
Eclipse has NEVER crashed on me, not once in about a year. nor have I found any bugs. not a one.
Also note that IBM/Eclipse has SWT. SWT is a set of graphical tools that allow you to code once, but run on any OS and look/feel/run "native" to that OS. This sort of replaces AWT/Swing but it ties you to SWT.
Furthermore, there is not Eclipse/RCP or Rich Client Platform. This allows you to use eclipse as your underlying application architecture (sort of like MFC), and end users can't even tell.
There's also "eclipse.exe" and not eclipse.jar.
Sun's problem is that IBM is doing to Java what Sun initially sought to do to Java. IBM is going to steal Java away from Sun within 5 years.
I should mention that whining wont change anything Sun...
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Informative)
That's not strictly true. The GUI widgits in SWT are provided by a shared library compiled for the local platform and linked to Java code with JNI.
This means you need a shared library compiled and tested for your platform. To see what platforms are currently supported and the status of those platforms, check out the port status [eclipse.org] section of the eclipse homepage.
My impression of SWT is it's more feature rich than AWT, faster
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:5, Informative)
And it does it pretty well. This is what AWT should have been. The fact that it actually uses the underlying environment effectively means they don't have to update their look and feel every time one of their platforms releases a new UI. As a result, applications look like other native apps, including "themes" and such.
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:5, Insightful)
A sane company who's trying to beat everyone's favorite convicted monopolist [microsoft.com] at gathering developers around their campfire for the next big platform of application development (i.e. this Internet thing). Can you name more than 3 IDE's for Windows development? No fair using Google....
What I'm saying is that I think that Sun wants to have "... all the wood behind one arrowhead " when Java &
Anyway, my prediction is that IBM will have a good laugh about this whole thing. They'll ignore it, continue to make gobs of $$$ off of their services division, and not worry about fighting Microsoft directly. It's worked well for them for 20 years... why stop now?
--Mid
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:4, Insightful)
Visual Studio
Delphi
C++Builder
MinGW Developer Studio
Dev C++
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool (Score:3, Interesting)
Some form of unification wouldn't be all that bad - but unification should not be misread as "only one IDE".
As much as Sun created a "the same bytecode runs on all platforms" - and the much the same, that XML data is portable between platforms - exactly the same way we would need some unification in the "project properties" files. If you really WANT competition to happen, what we need is a way, that the same project can be opened with a number of IDEs, but b
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Informative)
Speaking from professional experience, one needs only include an swt.jar and set of binary libraries in your distribution for the platforms which you are targeting. You can explicitly specify the swt library to be part of your libraries when you start up the VM for your java application, and then you're done.
The pain attached to using SWT is all but irrelevant considering the advantages of having the platform native widget set at your disposal through a homogenous API. If you love MDI then you won't enjoy
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:let's see sun invents java, ibm, makes a tool . (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny how when it's an open source group doing the fragmenting it somehow becomes a good thing.
There's a big difference between what Microsoft was trying to do and what IBM is doing. Eclipse works completely within the current language constructs. Since everything I've seen in SWT is just done through JNI, it's just another library, so anything made in Eclipse can be run in Netbeans and vice-versa. You may need to port your project files and fix your classpath, but none of the actual code needs to be
A lesson from Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
Opensource is the opposite of this. I would be pissed too if I were Sun. How can we sell Forte for $2000 and give java away for free to sell more copies of forte?
It goes agaisnt their business model and Java is the only thing keeping them afloat since their hardware sales are losing to wintel/lintel.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
in general just think this sort of competition is counter-productive in this type of setting. competition is useful in driving innovation, but in an open-source system, if the end users are pissed off about slow progress or missing features, they can alwa
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
It requires very little effort to identify the reasons why Eclipse is better than Forte. Any fool can see this, so I won't waste time on it.
[IBM] used their own proprietary GUI API so the two projects could never interoperate.
They created an entirely new GUI API because Swing sucks. A better GUI for Java was desperately needed. Swing does not approach the results of a native GUI application, while SWT does. The SWT GUI in Eclipse is better than the GUI provided by the native OS in most cases.
Eclipse and Forte aren't even in the same ballpark. The phrase "universal tools platform" actually means something with Eclipse.
The battle is over. Eclipse won. The result isn't due to some IBM conspiracy against Sun. It's due to Eclipse being a better product.
they named their product as a way of snubbing Sun
The character of your rival says much about you. Sun and IBM are competing rivals. Nothing more ugly than that. It's a credit to Sun than IBM should name their work in such a way. It's Sun's job to remain worthy of that credit.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Sun should feel honored to have such a noble and gallant competeing rival pissing on its shoes in public.
KFG
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2)
Who moderated this troll insightful? (Score:2, Informative)
Eclipse and Netbeans are different things (Score:3, Insightful)
Mysteriously, Eclipse has no built-in support for client-side GUI development. For a product that was supposed to be pushing IBMs SWT GUI library, this is a serious weakness. You can get rather second-rate plugins for Eclipse to do this, but in contrast netbeans has a first-rate Swing GUI designer tool. (For those who don't think Swing is a useful GUI, look at its integration into MacOS/X).
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
This is not true. You obviously haven't used Netbeans or Eclipse, since there is a huge difference between both. Netbeans is built on top of Swing. Theoretically, Swing is a really nice GUI library that is very flexible. In the real world, Swing made Netbeans too slow to be usable, not to mention the metal UI made it look ugly too. SWT, the GUI library Eclipse uses, doesn't have all th
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
You've got to be kidding. SWT is entirely non-proprietary and open source--you can implement it freely, you can change it, you can use the code, whatever.
That is in sharp contrast to Swing. Not only are there no open source implementations of Swing, you can't even implement it without satisfying a boatload of legal requirements imposed on you by Sun.
Hats off to Sun's PR department: they have lots of people like you thinking that black is white.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
Hardly. Netbeans just does more than Eclipse by default. As a result it hogs tons of memory. (Not a big deal on developer machines with 512 MB.) Eclipse is quickly matching Netbeans' bloat as more and more features are added.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
NetBeans is dead, Sun needs to deal with it.
[And yes, I've used both, though I admit I haven't touched NetBeans for like a year and a half.]
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2)
You might want to retry it, or at least stop complaining about the speed of Netbeans.
I've been using it for the last two years, and its performance has gotten better over time.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid it is true. I use both Netbeans and Eclipse on a daily basis (even today...you should try Netbeans 3.5.1 It's quite different than the last time you used it when it was probably Forte 1.0). Eclipse out of the box is really fast to start up. Netbeans is not.
But then, out of the box I can edit XML, JSP, Servlets, have a Tomcat server, do Swing visual editing, have automatic code completion and a bunch of other stuff with Netbeans. Eclipse is not much more than Wordpad with synta
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
512MB is for grandma's E-machine. Give me 2 gigs for a dev box any day.
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2)
Is your problem that forte isn't for free for people developing commercial applications with it?
Re:A lesson from Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
As usual... (Score:3, Informative)
Java... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Java... (Score:5, Interesting)
They wouldn't have to accept any changes they didn't like. They could still enforce exactly what they wanted with the Java trademark. They could put the source in the public domain with the simple stipulation that non-strictly-compliant implementations couldn't be called Java(tm).
Not having it free software certainly didn't slow Microsoft down one bit from extending it without their approval. In fact, the result was a freshly-designed competitor (C#/.Net).
They don't even seem to be making a profit on the language itself, why this obsessive desire to control it with an iron fist?
As for the people-might-use-it question, it would certainly make all the difference to this developer. I know there are free Java implementations, but until I see a solid crossplatform GUI kit, I'll probably continue to look elsewhere.
I don't think it's so nefarious. (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Sun develops Java. We all owe them for that. Let's face it. Love it or hate it, Sun has created a widely used language. They control what goes into the language.
2: Eclipse, as a development platform, is gaining ground all the time. Great. I'm all for diversity.
But, Sun's position is understandable. The presence of programming tools, in this corporate climate, can make or break a language. It seems like sun, more or less, is looking to have a more formal place in Eclipse's management. Conspiracy theories, of course, are abound.... except,
JAVA IS SUN'S LANGUAGE. Imagine, if Sun had more a voice in eclipse development, think of what is possible!!! What a concept? The language developers and the IDE developers working togeter?
Sorry for my smart-assed comments. What my point is, this has just as much potential to be a good thing for Eclipse. Sun is certainly capable of providing constructive agreement, and the Eclipse foundation doesn't actually need to listen to Sun. I just think that there's a lot of potential for cooperation.
Re:I don't think it's so nefarious. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they want more influence that IMHO rather over-reaching. This paragraph show it:
The question is significant because Sun and other tools vendors want to ensure that a system for creating tool plug-ins can coexist with the Eclipse approach, which IBM favors. Large Java companies and Microsoft encourage add-ons to their products to make their tools more attractive to developers.
So, what Sun essentially wants is to have unified plugin system -- which I think it should be up to any IDE developer on how to do it rather than forcing the plugin standard. Sun sees Eclipse as a prospective unifier.
I speculate that this would have something to do with the Java beans -- which was designed to be the definitive plugin standard for Java IDEs. Unfortunately, Java beans are so poorly designed that all developers would need to extend the basic features by a whole lot. Eclipse did that and succeeded. Morever, hordes of open source programmer backed it up and become de facto standard.
What I see is that Sun wanted to get the momentum to recoup the control it has lost.
Re:I don't think it's so nefarious. (Score:4, Insightful)
JavaBeans are not about IDE plugins. It was developed as a programming model to allow one to create visual components that could be easily modified and controlled in a GUI builder (as such, tables, textfields, trees, ... are all javabeans in Swing).
Re:I don't think it's so nefarious. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't think it's so nefarious. (Score:3, Interesting)
Competition will be better in the long run... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just happy there is a real alternative to JBuilder now... don't get me wrong, I love JBuilder but there is no way I could afford it at the prices they are charging.
Re:Competition will be better in the long run... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, Sun has been a perpetual source of sub-standard implementations of their own technologies for almost 10 years. What is the most trusted Java JVM for Linux or BSD systems? IBM JVM 1.3.1 "Black down". Increasingly this is no longer the case, as sun continues to revise the Java API faster than a decent implementation can be produced. I ask, Sun wants their net beans IDE to be "The One". Why?
It's not as if they have done a great job implementing their own technologies in the past. In fact Sun is responsible for a day to day lack of leadership of the Java Platform as a whole. Take for example the great mess of XSLT and XML parsers. Sun's "reference implementations" of such things are infamous in the developer community. Incomplete implementations and low performance drive developers to find other tools, which may or may not do things the way that sun wants - more importantly it creates an environment where developers must use different tools to get the same job done, creating incompatibility and complexity in an environment that carries compatibility as a flag of independence.
IBM has finally rallied around the notion of Linux and Java as a common platform - and Sun in usual fashion tries to "gain control". I ask the community what has Sun's control *REALLY* gotten us besides a mess of different API's, frameworks and "reference implementations".
Re:Come on. (Score:2, Funny)
...which will promptly fail, probably, because its LDAP client will need FUCKING PATCHING RIGHT OUT OF THE GOD DAMNED BOX...
...I mean, it's going to be released non-compliant and b0rked, like Sol8 and Sol9 were.
Re:Come on. (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me? You must be confusing the IBM JVM with the Blackdown JVM from blackdown.org [blackdown.org], which is a specialised port of the Sun JVM to Linux.
Faster than a decent implementation can be produced? You're really exaggerating now:
Java has gone from 1.0 (Januari 1995) to 1.4.2 (June 2003, which was 9 months later than 1.4.1, September 2002) to 1.5 (alpha available now, not sure when scheduled for release, I thought the end of this year).
At this moment I can choose between installing Sun 1.4.2, blackdown 1.4.1 and ibm 1.4.1 I on my gentoo box. Then there are also JVMs like JRockit, which is also at 1.4.2.
The are also no major API changes between the point releases (1.4.1 for example added support for Webstart, 1.4.2 added WinXP and GTK look and feel), the rest are only bugfixes.
Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I like the direction that Eclipse is going. I tried Forte once and it just didn't feel right. Eclipse however, has been fantastic since I found it and started using it as my work IDE. (My whole project team adopted it as well.) It has made coding Java a pleasure as no other IDE (in any language) has, and has led to me using Java as a development language for personal projects where I otherwise would have used C or C++. I've largely given over using XEmacs for coding Java. I'm also impressed by the speed of the Eclipse development cycle with new milestones coming out approximately every month. I always get this kid-in-the-candy-shop feeling checking out the New and Noteworthy page with each new milestone.
Re:Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:2)
NetBeans gives Swing a bad name. The code in NetBeans is so slow and crap that everybody feels they need to blame something, and most people point the finger at the Swing API even though there are other IDEs written in Swing that work even faster than Eclipse.
IMHO, Eclipse didn't need to be written on a whole new widget toolkit. If you want native widgets, write a set of UI delegates that use the native widgets. If you want a crappy API without garbage collection, use C...
Re:Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:2)
Suppose you want native widgets on 14 different OS's? Are you supposed to custom-build your widgets on each of those 14 OS's - even though you don't understand half of their API's?
The whole idea of SWT is that somebody else has already "writ[ten] a set of UI delegates that use the native widgets". Why go and write another set?
I haven't seen too many swin
Re:Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:3, Insightful)
What I was saying was that 'somebody else' could have written them all as native UI delegates, and still had the Swing API on the top, instead of having to invent a whole new, worse, API.
Then you could easily have your gnome app lookalike contest. Windows is already taken care of if you have -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.swing.plaf.windows.Wind owsLookAndFeel set as default in your Java installation, or if the equivalent is done in the code.
Re:Eclipse invited Sun... (Score:2)
I hope this squabble starts pushing the team a little, as numerous others and I, have been waiting on a "Folding" implementation [eclipse.org] for a very long time.
Oh, well. Another pointless PR ping-pong match. (Score:5, Funny)
Eclipse (with exaggerated innocence): Moi? Whatever do you mean?
Sun: You know.
Eclipse: Actually, no, I don't.
Sun: Don't be coy!
Eclipse: YAWN. Do you have something to say or what?
Sun: You know damn well we're working on Swing, and Netbeans, and all that, and here you come out with SWT and start going off on weird tangents, I mean, hell, who's in charge here? I thought you were going to be cool about this.
Eclipse: I am. People really dig java, and they're having a blast using Eclipse to work on it.
Sun: Yeah, thanks a lot, poor Forte...
Eclipse: I didn't tell you to charge so much for it.
Sun: I didn't tell you to be free!
Eclipse: No, that was my idea. But it's cool anyway. Anyway, you've got problems of your own. It's like, make up your mind already.
Sun: What the hell are you talking about???
Eclipse: Java 1.1.8, then Java 1.2, then Java 1.3, then 1.4, and every five minutes you "depreciate" something, driving your developers nuts...
Sun: You... How can you... You...
Eclipse: And then there's AWT, no, it's Swing, no, it's going to be some kind of weird beany scheme...
Sun: You... OOOOH you make me SO MAD! Swing was a good idea! So were the beans!
Eclipse: Well, so's SWT. Deal.
Sun: It's not the same thing!
Eclipse: Sure it is.
Sun: Is not!
Eclipse: Is too!
Sun: Is not!
Eclipse: Is too! Anyway, what's the difference? SWT is based on AWT, so it works everywhere, doesn't it? You should really dig it.
Sun: (Sulks)
Eclipse: Aw, come on, join the board of directors. You know you want to. You can even keep your Netbeans. I promise.
Sun: I'll think about it...
Eclipse: Yep. I know.
Re:Oh, well. Another pointless PR ping-pong match. (Score:3, Funny)
Sun is just pissed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sun is just pissed (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe not that bad, but not good. We use swing across the board at our company and I can't tell you how hideous each window is. And they look different on every machine. A layout that looks good on my system has buttons cramped in the corner on somebody else's.
And everything runs slow as hell.
Not saying that doing the stuff in C++ would be any easier, but Java's GUI packages are all sorts of shady.
Re:Sun is just pissed (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like you're not using layout managers correctly (or to put it differently, to their full potential).
Re:Sun is just pissed (Score:2)
IDEA [intellij.com] from the folks at intellij just about blows all other java IDEs out of the water IMHO, and its Swing.
It does suffer from the occasional slow down (during garbage collection) but so does eclipse.
Whats more, the look and feel is miles ahead of eclipse. It is commercial, but its worth every penny if you spend long enough infront of it.
GNOME vs. KDE (Score:2)
Sun and Eclipse will work together eventually, just like we now have freedesktop.org. Just cut the politics and "the community needs this and that" and keep doing what makes sense technology-wise.
User Interface (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:User Interface (Score:2)
Re:User Interface (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't. I want it to look the same on different platforms, and I don't care about "native" performance, at least on my machines netbeans is more than fast enough. Now, why is Sun (or rather the netbeans.org people) supposed to do what you want, anyway?
Re:User Interface (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't have to - any more than MS has to listen to my needs when coding the next version of Internet Explorer.
However, when somebody does come along and listen to the needs of their customers, you'll see them flocking away in droves.
If Sun wants to be the official creators of a substandard version of Java they should feel free to do so, but they shouldn't be surprised when people are publishing hacks left and right to make it actually work the way developers want it to work. Sure, the hack might not be the "one true way" in Sun's mind, and it would be better if Sun and IBM cooperated to get SWT integrated into Java rather than working in opposition. However, enough developers prefer the IBM way to the Sun way, to a degree that Sun is having trouble controlling their own language despite the fact that they have worked hard to keep much of it proprietary.
They should just do what other have suggested and open source the language. They could take the UNIX(tm) approach and tell those who package up JDK's and JRE's that they can only use the "Java" trademark if they meet certain requirements.
Re:User Interface (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you are a fool, I pity the users of your software.
As a user I expect apps running on Windows to have a L&F that is consistent with other apps on my platform, ditto for GTK, and OSX. IBM recognised this simple fact with SWT. Sun didn't quite get it with Swing but then tried to correct their mistake by reimplementing native L&F over their cross-platform widget set - which is nuts.
It is just amazing that some developers are still s
Eclipse Forte (Score:5, Informative)
I've tried the 2 of them and they both are pretty decent IMHO. The big difference, and I mean big, is how responsive each are on a fairly moderate system. After starting forte, I can go have a coffee and a smoke and maybe even take a quick nap...at which point forte should be running when I get back and I can then get to work.
Eclipse on the other hand is really fast. When I first tried it I couldn't believe that it was a Java program. It even looks good, rather than that ancient, dull look that most Java apps have.
Since then, I've upgraded to a P4 with 1G ram and they both run pretty good (although Eclipse is still much faster). I do like both of them but Sun and IBM and anyone else interested in furthering Java should collaborate on 1 killer IDE that puts any MS tools to shame, and allows lazy programmers (like me!) to be more productive in less time :) As Eclipse appears superior to forte and probably has the largest installed base (don't know how it compares to Jbuilder) Sun would probably get a lot more respect from developers.
-Pat
Dissenting opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
I repeat.
SWT GTK is unusable under Linux and Eclipse devs do not know what is wrong and cannot fix the bug, even after much screaming on bugzilla!
This shows a clear inferiority of SWT to me. It's not crossplatform in a workable way.
AWT may be ugly, but it works! It may not be the fastest, but it is f
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
First, I dont' think it's realistic to cripple a UI's features for crosscompatibility. Second, looks do count or most people wouldn't switch from Swing's nasty ass metal look.
"IDEA uses Swing and it's fast enough. JEdit using Swing and it is fast enough."
The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE). On the other hand, most people like me, do not have the money for a nice rig that costs $3000.
And no, JEdit is not fast enough. That's like saying Netbeans is fast enough. Neither can handle Eclipse's cool coding features on a crappy computer, and neither responds to me faster than I can think (using a crappy under $1000 computer).
"It's not crossplatform in a workable way."
It is, that's why Eclipse is super popular.
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:4, Informative)
First, I dont' think it's realistic to cripple a UI's features for crosscompatibility. Second, looks do count or most people wouldn't switch from Swing's nasty ass metal look.
As opposed to SWT's nasty ass Windows 2000 look.
The people who use IDEA typically have the money to counteract Swing's slow ass performance (this is a good assumption of someone that drops a couple grand for an IDE). On the other hand, most people like me, do not have the money for a nice rig that costs $3000.
This is complete bullshit. IntelliJ IDEA runs fine on a PII-333 laptop with 256Mb of RAM, whereas Eclipse runs like complete shit on the same box. Since I don't have $3000 for the new laptop with specs high enough to run Eclipse, I won't be buying up in order to use it any time soon.
And no, JEdit is not fast enough. That's like saying Netbeans is fast enough. Neither can handle Eclipse's cool coding features on a crappy computer,
Well you're right there, at least, JEdit and NetBeans both stink.
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
The Windows XP look in Swing is 10 times better than the Windows 2000 look in SWT. Metal doesn't enter into it when one line of code can set it to Windows look and feel. Now I'm waiting for the GTK look and feel to actually use the current style...
And no, I always ran the current EAP version of IDEA. And yes, it did say those requirements were minimum for some reason, but it worked fast enough to use on the PII-333, which is much more than I could say for Eclipse.
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:2)
Who's buying IDEA? I'm using the EAP, continuously updating every 30 days. That's for the last 4 months or so, before that I was using my work's license, but unfortunately I haven't managed to wean the current employer off Visual Studio.NET yet.
This also means I'm on the current version, not this "older version" of which you speak.
Even if I did buy IDEA, the laptop I could buy with the money would be hardly any better than the last one. The situation would probably be the same, fast IDEA vs. slower Ecl
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:2)
As far as Visual Studio.NET goes, the complete lack of refactoring makes it a non-option. I recently asked a colleage how to do it, and he had been on VS.NET for so long he didn't even know what refactoring meant. Apparently it's become common practise to use "find and replace in files" to perform refactoring (find next match, check if it's the right kind of object, rename if it is, don't if it isn't, repeat until the refactoring job is complete 2 hours later.)
Eclipse and IDEA can both do it, and both h
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:2)
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
I beg to differ: it's very usable for me.
More importantly (in a text editor), it has excellent font support, thanks to GTK+'s fontconfig/freetype support. AWT/Swing basically only supports the quite unreadable Lucida fonts that are included in the JRE -- and no sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
That hurts readability a lot, especially on an LCD monitor.
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:2)
I can't speak for SWT coding, but SWT GTK runs fine in linux, so does eclipse. I wouldn't have been using it as my main editor for the last 2 years otherwise. I've had the motif and GTK versions running on sub 500mhz machines and they're still plenty useable enough to develop on. Thats even on different distro's with different versions of java installed. Sounds like a local issue rather than a problem with SWT.
SWT works great
Re:Dissenting opinion (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, maybe if you don't need silly controls like tables or trees, then awt is great.
A Company of Dilberts (Score:5, Interesting)
Why care about this? (Score:2)
In the end, you, as a developer need to figure out what tool you want to use. I think it's great there are so many choices. On the project I'm working
New name for Sun -- indian giver (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems Sun has a problem understanding GPL, and similar Free Software/Open Source Software type licenses and projects today.
Yeah.
Unix will be back. Really, it will. Customers will return to Solaris one day! After all
I don't care what you say about Microsoft... (Score:2, Informative)
Eclipse is really not very good (Score:3, Interesting)
What's with SWT? It's horrible to code with. It has no really control over look and feel. You have to dispose of everything explicitly (al la C++) which completely goes against Javas garbage collection paradigm.
I right an app in SWT it looks one way on Windows and another way on Gnome (usually a complete mess on one).
Don't get me wrong I think Forte and Sun One are pretty awful too. The only sensible choice in the IDE market right now is Intellij (no don't work for them). However this IDE is not open or free (unfortunately).
Personally I don't think Sun or IBM are particularly good at writing software and should stick to their Hardware and Consulting (IBM) core competancies.
Re:Eclipse is really not very good (Score:2)
Eclipse is really very good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eclipse is really not very good (Score:3, Informative)
GC was not made to clean up (native) resource allocations, but only to reclaim memory. You should bear that in mind.
Re:Eclipse is really not very good (Score:3, Insightful)
large open source project open-ness "a sham". (Score:2, Insightful)
according to the article, IBM is basically going to maintain control of this project. it is also hinted, in the article, that the project is not going to accept code contributions from outside of the group of people who are members of the project.
in other words, it is possible to obtain the source code, but the open-ness of the project is a complete sham.
that's fine by me, because at least the code is available.
Sensitive to Business Interests? Why? (Score:2)
I won't speak for Eclipse, but if that question were put to me, I would answer along the lines of: "No. We are technologists. We will focus on technology. It is the responsibility of busineses to focus on business interests. Agile busineses will adapt to new and changing technology, or they will die."
I don't want to *need* any tools. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I code in C, I use Emacs and Make, and I don't think I'm at much of a disadvantage with respect to people who are using C IDEs. In an ideal world, when I code in Java, I'd like to use Emacs and Ant, and I'd like to be at not much of a disadvantage with respect to people using Eclipse and NetBeans.
I actually have high hopes for Java 1.5 in this regard. The whole "metadata" thing could totally revolutionize Java development, making it pretty simple to do fairly complicated things. My hopes are that once that's in place, the tools are much less necessary.
Too late, fix swing instead (Score:3, Insightful)
And even worse, swing was full of bugs. Up until j2se 1.4.x swing doesn't support european keyboards, and some characters commonly used in many programming languages can't be typed using various European locales on some platforms. This bug has bin around since the day of jdk1.2 and there are numerous others that act as show stoppers for writing serious applications with java GUI. And they have bin around for years.
This is very sad since the swing architecture is quite elegant. But somehow Sun decided that java was for the server side only.
Now they complain that a major app like an IDE isn't using their archtecturally good, but in reality unsuported GUI framework. Sun would do much better if they started to fix the bugs in swing, and perhaps use some profiling tool to find the worst performance bottlenecks, than to try to make development tools of their own.
That way people could actually use java for creating cross platform GUI apps. This is what java once was intended for. As it is today, you are probably better of using QT and C++ for cross platform work.
Today the developers have already chosen Eclips.It have a good chance of replacing emacs as the swiss army knife of software development.Just like most people extending emacs didn't complain that they had to use lisp to extend their tool even if they normally didn't do their work in lisp, people extending eclipse will not mind using swt.
As Eclipse is the dominating java IDE of today tool venders will have to support it for a long period of time. A defacto standard is alread set.
By creating an alternative standard Sun is the one who is creating the fragmentation. And given Suns long tradition of creating IDEs with low usability fragment is probably the only thing it will be.
The only OK development tool I have seen so far is Forte/Netbeans and that was adopted by Sun in a quit mature state.
Instead Sun should focus on fixing swing. That way people might start using it for their cross platform GUIs regardless of what IDE they prefer to use. If they don't, people might find out that swing in reality only sort of works on windows, and then having a native swt library support for a few other platforms doesn't seam too bad.
Sun needs to join Eclipse, not the other way round (Score:4, Interesting)
Eclipse allows you to develop plugins for the IDE, and provides a powerful interface to do so. NetBeans allows for plugins as well. More people are doing plugins for Eclipse. Plugins help drive the market. Seems like Sun has plugin envy.
"Don't define 'interoperability' on your own terms, but rather work with other major players in the industry to achieve actual interoperability," the Sun letter told Eclipse members. "Push the organization to be a unifying force for Java technology."
Sun should take it's own advice. I hope Eclipse doesn't try and fix what ain't broke. Sun should adopt Eclipse's model. It is clearly superior.
Eclipse is *not* a Java IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see: you want to build an IDE. You want to write it in a high-level language with garbage collection. You want high performance. You don't want to use a non-mainstream language like Smalltalk. There aren't so many options.
So you pick Java.
The GUI APIs suck. So you build a new one from scratch and create SWT.
The fact that Eclipse is written in Java is not supposed to be of interest to its users except the few power-users that write extensions. The fact that it can be used to write Java code is irrelevant, too. After all, you can write Java in Emacs or J# in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Sun, get off IBM's back.
astounding hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, no lock-in other than into Java itself, of course.
In particular, Sun warned that the new bylaws of Eclipse give the position of executive director, now held by an IBM employee, an "unusual amount of power" to dictate the work of the open-source group. Sun also questioned whether IBM employees will continue to make up the majority of project staffers.
Sun is one to talk. Eclipse is open source. Anybody can take it and fork it if they don't like what the Eclipse effort is doing.
That's in stark contrast to Sun's Java implementation: not only is it fully owned and controlled by Sun, Sun even owns the patents and copyrights related to the specifications. And Sun's "Java Community Effort" is run by numerous people from Sun. And because Sun is so afraid that people are going to run away in droves given a choice to do their own thing, they are refusing to open up their Java specs or implementation. They say there is "a risk of forking"--you bet there is, given how poor a job Sun has been doing.
So, what does that mean? IBM has a little influence over an open source effort to produce one of many development tools, an influence that only matters as long as Eclipse does a good job because the minute they stop, people will fork it. Sun, on the other hand, has sunk their teeth and claws into the Java standard and platform and isn't letting go. Sun has the entire industry by the throat and various other unmentionable parts.
Sun's hypocrisy is simply astounding. What I can't figure out is whether anybody at Sun actually believes the PR bullshit they are releasing or whether the entire company is in on it.
Real Programmers(tm) use a *text* editor (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, both are too intrusive on the development process. I have a file with some program, script, or data and I want to edit it. Maybe this file will be fed to some type of filter, or is in some form that the editor does not "know" about. Maybe it is from one of my "projects" or maybe is a random file that I want to edit or examine.
It seems like in these situations, the typical IDE wants to know what "project" this file belongs to, or wants to *copy* this file from its working directory to some IDE owned part of the filesystem. Like I've made some commitment to never use other editors again, so I won't mind that the "real" copy of this file will now live off of some IDE owned directory now. I don't understand why an IDE can't keep what ever type of metadata it wants its own namespace but let me keep my working file in whatever place suits me.
It also seems that the point of these IDE's is to enable people to program who need crutches to do so. It seems with the excess supply of labor, it is now possible to hire people who don't need this type of help. I would question the wisdom of hiring someone who cannot build a mental model of the system they are working on, or need "wizards" that insert boilerplate "hello world" programs to get you started. Yet, I've seen plenty of job postings that seem to suggest that knowing how to use a particular IDE is equivalent to knowing the language itself.
That is not to say some automation like completion are not good. The less typing the better. But there is a difference between saving keystrokes and enabling people who don't know what they are doing. It is also interesting to me that the types of people who rely on their editor to know how to program are the same types who end up wasting more time navigating through a bunch of menus per lines of code written.
Its like the person who uses some GUI filemanager rather than a shell with file completion abilities. Witness the shell user change directories before the GUI users hand even reaches the mouse. While a GUI filemanager is a good tool to enable a secretary who doesn't care to learn how to use a computer, it is a sad statement when an IDE is used to enable a programer who doesn't care to learn how to program.
Re:What does Sun have to do with Java? (Score:2, Interesting)
get real. I have os x, and I use Sun systems everyday - no comparison. it's makes me gag, to read you making such a simplistic and ignorant comparison. os x can't touch solaris/sparc - sorry game over,that's life. when os x can handle 70+ CPUs in ONE system - give me a call. Otherwise, take your little no experience skinny 14 year old ass back to the farm.
Re:java technology. what's it all about? (Score:2)
Eclipse isn't a Java implementation, it's an IDE implementation. Personally I like IDEA better for developing in Java since it's a lot smoother than Eclipse, but to be fair, Eclipse can be used for more than Java.
On a related mote, GCJ actually compiles SWT-laced code, and thus may actually be possible to use to compile Eclipse. :-)
Re:Jesus. You people really don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Java feels as if it has a new lease of life thanks to Eclipse and GCJ. Sun have done absolutely nothing on AWT to make it any better - making sure that everybody goes for Swing instead - whereas I would imagine that IBM would have been fine with Swing sitting on top of a better AWT.
At the end of the day, there is almost certainly a technical solution to this. Eclipse might well move to a swing like system that can sit
Re:C# (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure I'm with you on pass by value, it's already done with RMI/Serializable Objects for instance.
Big +1 on generics, I can't wait until 1.5! Also, Java 1.5 attributes will make themselves useful in some situations, but they are already here in several open source libraries.
I'd take C# as an option in a real solution (read: billable) only in two scenarios: 1. I have a MS only client (I do!) or 2. The open source community gets a lot more excited about it.
To elaborate, the fact that Java has such a ri