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Java Programming IT Technology

NetBeans 4.0 Release 45

Posted by timothy from the free-in-some-senses dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Various news sources are reporting the 4.0 release of the free Java-based NetBeans IDE. You can read the anouncement, or proceed directly to the downloads. Perhaps the most significant improvement is that the IDE's native build system is the latest version of Apache Ant. I see this as a distinct advantage over its competitor Eclipse (and NetBeans is pure Java). If you create desktop applications in Java, you may wish to read up on the NetBeans 'platform' as well. Enjoy."
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NetBeans 4.0 Release More

NetBeans 4.0 Release

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  • The horror, the horror (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pacifix ( 465793 )
    We're required to use NetBeans at school. I end up coding all my stuff in IntelliJ and copying and pasting. NetBeans is much too controlling in terms of all the code it generates for the UI and has always seemed very counterintuitive to me.
    • Actually, netbeans tends to do things the way they are supposed to be done, not the way you think they should be.

      Which is what an IDE should do, especially when you are dealing with large projects and need some fomalisation built in to the structure of the project.

      IntelliJ may allow you to fudge things a little, but in 6 months time when the project ends would you rather have controlled steady development or a bundle of spaghetti code to deal with and debug?

      For example, I love the way you can build a bea
      • "Perhaps the most significant improvement is that the IDE's native build system is the latest version of Apache Ant."

        RTFA
        • I'm not talking about the compiler, I was talking about the project file format - you know, the little file thats written when you create a new project in the IDE?

          Re-reading my post, I think I was actually describing the behaviour of the .form file rather than the actual .nbattrs project file. Both are actually written in XML, although a little cryptic - I just checked.

      • Actually, netbeans tends to do things the way they are supposed to be done, not the way you think they should be.

        Holy Crap!

        I laughed so hard at that, Milk came out of my nose!--- and I wasn't drinking any milk!

        That whole statement, is precisely what is wrong with NetBeans (note: those are not beans... -- just like a rabbit)

        IDEs are like assholes. Everyone needs one, but they all spew shit like yesterday's lunch. The horror here is that everone tends to pick a favorite IDE, and then attempts to convin
      • My only gripe in the last version (I don't know about this one) is that the way the project is stored - you cannot edit it easily if your form goes "wrong". It also rebuilds the code (even if you change it in another editor) in the uneditable regions for you each time.


        In this version, there's an option to save the GUI forms as binary classes or as strict java code.

        I'll admit, I've never given NetBeans a good try, but I think I'll try now.

  • hideous code (Score:3, Informative)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:16PM (#11096908) Homepage
    2 points.


    1. prior versions of netbeans auto-genned fugly code for the gui's you laid out.


    2. Many people I know do visual coding by hand, similar to html to some degree.

  • Shame... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by finnw ( 415539 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:18PM (#11096930) Homepage
    They haven't improved the speed of the background compilation (that is used to update the code completion database). One of my more complex files (which contains 9 inner classes) still takes about 15 seconds to rescan whenever I change anything.

    And theres still no 'exclude from .WAR' option on individual files.

    • Re:Shame... (Score:2, Funny)

      by flumps ( 240328 )
      two words - system upgrade ;)

      But seriously, compiling a class with 9 inner classes is definately a strange thing to do.. .. and why would you want to exclude individual files from the WAR? Surely, any none dependant files should be included/referenced from your dependant files in a separate package/directory.

      You're doing something conceptually wrong on both counts!

      • Re:Shame... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Both practices might not be ideal, but that doesn't mean that the IDE shouldn't handle them. IDE's get used in the real world where sometimes concessions are made when it comes to writing code the way that Sun wants it written.

        What if my job asks me to make changes to a file with 9 inner classes that was written 4 years ago by a developer who has long since left the company? I've had this happen with constructs much worse than 9 inner classes on quite a few occasions. Should I tell them that I need to t

      • But seriously, compiling a class with 9 inner classes is definately a strange thing to do

        I'm not sure what he means here. If he means 9 classes nested within each other then yeah, that's kind of weird (though I don't see why code completion should be any harder if the algorithms were done properly).

        But 9 inner classes all at the same level sounds fine. I don't understand why (without knowing the problem or looking at the code) that is "conceptually wrong."

  • I was writing a small java program in a text editor for a class project a week ago, and I got stuck conceptually at one point and so I desired to step through the code.
    Now not knowing anything about the java world, netbeans came to mind as an IDE that would let me step through the code.
    So I installed this netbeans thing and pasted my code in, and I got so confused, it said I needed to have a "project", I tried making a dummy project, then it said all of my class files were missing even though they were righ

    • Re:Random netbeans story (Score:3, Insightful)

      by plumpy ( 277 )
      "I can't debug a language that I know nothing about" is so idiotic that it doesn't deserve a response. But I'll give you one.

      Java has a lot of shortcomings, but you've demonstrated only one of them: you can't paste code into a window and expect it to run. So I guess Java programs aren't as easy to use as a short perl script. (Note that a longer perl script would be in several modules and have similar problems.)

      But you know what? Not every problem can be solved with a short perl script. You're basica
    • just create a project and paste your old code in. slowly youll discover the features that make it a killer. here is one type sout and it will spell out "System.out.println(" for you. There are many more and you can create your own. Look for a file called shortcuts.pdf. Oh and really the debugger is bar far the greatest tool in NetBeans. Really, give it a try.

      As another student I find most people hate Java (most of them only use what our M$ rep gives them) and I love it because it has a strict world view.

      I

      • For me CTRL+L/CTRL+K was such a killer feature. It cycles forward/backward through a list of words which start with the same chars as you just typed. it's just wonderfull.. completion for any word, be it in code or comments.
    • Instead of copying and pasting the source code from one window to another, try copying the _file_ to the projects src/ directory (I'm guessing your not using packages.) Try running through some of the tutorials on how to use netbeans. I started using Netbeans almost 4 years ago when I entered college and can honestly say it's the reason I know the language as well as I do. My favorite feature is code completion so I don't have to read through 200 pages of javadoc to find what I'm looking for. Why don't y
      • I find there is a big leap between coding java in my favorite text editor and running javac and learning to use an IDE -- I got flamed here on Slashdot for expressing the view that Eclipse is a little opaque on that score.

        IDEs can be "rigid" in their way of doing things in the way that I say a person is rigid in that tasks have to follow a certain complex ritual or they are not done. You kind of have to accept some of them on their own terms and employ their "wizards" or procedures for generating project

    • I am currently developing/maintating a POS system for my University. I have found that when I am working with a full-fledged application with more than 70K lines of code and using many third party libraries, anything short of an IDE is pure hell. Our entire project is managed using NetBeans. I do however, find that when I am doing projects for the CS classes(which runs at a few hundred lines of code and usually does not use other libraries), NetBeans a little bulky and slow. I guess what I am trying to s
    • You don't need an IDE to do a step through of your code, you just need a debugger. jdb could have done the job. Or JSwat [bluemarsh.com], if you want to go graphical.

      I personally use JSwat... jdb isn't as nice as gdb.
  • does NetBeans require the Sun JVM or can it run on any JVM of proper version? can you get it running on a Mac? (Yes I know about XCode). What makes me wonder this is the debugger. I wonder if they used a lot of reflection, just interpret the source or take advatange of sun.* packages. Anyone know?
    • I'm pretty sure you can use any JVM you like to run NetBeans. Apart from the JVM used to start and run NetBeans you can also specify which JVM to use to compile and run your code. As for whether they used reflection or not in creating NetBeans, I'm not sure, but it's open source so you can download and take a look at the code yourself. :-)

      Rich
    • I've run it fine with the last version of NetBeans. I never really gave XCode a chance, I liked NetBeans that much. Not that I've done all THAT much with it, it just kinda made more sense to me.

      In other words, go ahead, it'll work.

  • Alternative (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gninja ( 838984 )
    Actually, as far as Java IDEs go, i'm quite a fan of JCreator. NetBeans is a bit too large and slow in my opinion, though it is powerful.

  • Crimson (Score:3, Funny)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:58PM (#11100025) Homepage Journal
    Great! More NetBEANS bloat. Joy. Look, collapsing code is nice and all, but seriously, I really can't wait five minutes to spot check one app.

    Just use crimson editor. Set java compile to F5, java run to F6 then '56' it! Get it! F5,F6!... Never mind. Suffice to say that Crimson Editor is the closest thing to EMACS for Windows developers.(except for EMACS obviously, but windows minds tend to melt when faced with the Meta Paradigm)
  • NetBeans (Swing based) is from Sun. It is heavily challenged by Eclipse (SWT based) championed by IBM. Anybody knows of marketshare of user base on these 2 major IDE and alternative commercial IDE.

    • Re:market share ? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most java shops I've seen use IntelliJ Idea. It's the best IDE if you have the cash. Eclipse has a large group of followers among the OSS crowd but, in my experience, SWT's performance leaves a lot to be desired on !Windows environments.

  • Pure Java? Ant as an advantage? (Score:3, Informative)

    by chochos ( 700687 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @12:55AM (#11100816) Homepage Journal
    Is this a shameless plug of some kind? I mean, comparing NetBeans to Eclipse and saying that these two points give NetBeans an advantage, doesn't make sense to me.

    Eclipse is pure java, too. Oh, unless you don't consider SWT to be pure java, and you prefer to have pure java Swing rather than the much nicer and faster SWT... so what if it's using the native OS interface instead of its own? I see that as an advantage, in any case.

    Eclipse can use Ant to build a project. I don't know if it's the latest version, but for all basic purposes, the version included is good enough. I don't know if there's an Eclipse plugin that automatically updates build.xml or lets you handle it in a graphical way, but I think ant build files are meant to be hand edited, anyway. You can use XML buddy inside Eclipse to validate the XML.

    And that stuff about using the NetBeans platform, sounds like the stuff Eclipse includes now with 3.0, where you can build your SWT apps using the same objects that make up the Eclipse IDE.

    • Netbeans vs. Eclipse (Score:3, Informative)

      by fforw ( 116415 )

      Eclipse is pure java, too. Oh, unless you don't consider SWT to be pure java, [...]

      SWT uses platform specific libraries/DLLs, so the pure java claim for netbeans is not only technically correct but also in its meaning "running everywhere a VM is available".

      Eclipse can use Ant to build a project. I don't know if it's the latest version, but for all basic purposes, the version included is good enough. I don't know if there's an Eclipse plugin that automatically updates build.xml or lets you handle it

      • Re:Netbeans vs. Eclipse (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        • SWT uses platform specific libraries/DLLs, so the pure java claim for netbeans is not only technically correct but also in its meaning "running everywhere a VM is available".

        Gee, that sucks. I can only run SWT apps on Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Mac OSX? What am I going to do about Commodore 64 support!!?

        Seriously, I'd believe NetBeans support for Ant is better that Eclipse's in this new release (although Eclipse does support autocompletion for Ant tags). The built-in project builder in

        • SWT is multi-platform in the same way Swing/AWT is multi-platform. There is a software layer, somewhere, that does JNI calls to get access to the display. That SWT tends to use more the native widgets and Swing tends to use only a blit call from the native graphics to roll its own widgets and then do this "look and feel" dance to try to look like the native widgets on your system in the first place is just a difference in design and implementation.

          The deal is that SWT does not have the official stamp of

  • I couldn't even get the damn thing installed. It couldn't find my JDK 1.5.0 directory despite numerous attempts to locate it first with the mandatory command-line parameter (this is a Windows installer?) and later with an almost standard Windows file open dialog box.

    I suppose I could have reinstalled my existing JDK and tried NetBeans again but if this was a sign of NetBeans' ease of use then no thanks. My time is worth more to me than that.

  • I don't know if you can fairly compare NetBeans and Eclipse, because Eclipse is more of an IDE platform where you can get scores of plugins related to different languages and tasks. There are plugins for C++, perl, python, PHP, XML, ColdFusion, UML, and a slew of others.

    The java perspective in Eclipse is great, and runs much better on my SuSe laptop than NetBeans ever did. I ran NetBeans for a while but switched to Eclipse and never looked back. Plus, I only have to learn the eccentricities of one IDE for

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