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Eclipse is a great IDE. We have been using it in a large development project for close to a year now.

Eclipse has very good integration with CVS, has one of the best diff tools I have seen in an IDE, supports code hot plug in the debugger (you can change code while stopped at a breakpoint in the debugger, and when you save your changes, Eclipse will compile and use the newly written code) with JDK 1.4, has TomCat integration and a thriving community of plugin developers.

The only problem is, the MAC port is a work in progress, and is slated for release real soon now. Take a look at it here.

Eclipse is a great IDE. We have been using it in a large development project for close to a year now.

Eclipse has very good integration with CVS, has one of the best diff tools I have seen in an IDE, supports code hot plug in the debugger (you can change code while stopped at a breakpoint in the debugger, and when you save your changes, Eclipse will compile and use the newly written code) with JDK 1.4, has TomCat integration and a thriving community of plugin developers.

The only problem is, the MAC port is a work in progress, and is slated for release real soon now. Take a look at it here.

>My preferred solution would be a
>platform-independent API that
>implements its calls using native
>widgets.

Eclipse's SWT widget toolkit does this for Java (in theory at least). A small number of widgets were selected as the soft of "core set" which will be supported on all platforms, and any widget in this set which doesn't have a corresponding widget in the native OS (or WM) will has a custom version created from scratch by the SWT developers.

I haven't developed with SWT myself, so I can speak to that aspect of it, but I use an SWT based program and it handled Microsoft's change in wigets from windows NT to windows XP without any change to the code (looks like a native XP program after the OS "upgrade").

Developers who are looking at Mozilla as a platform for creating application interfaces should also take a look at another open source project which was designed to do just that, Eclipse.

Eclipse provides a fairly full featured set of APIs for for creating GUIs along with nice APIs for working with resources (files, directories, etc.), creating builders, compilers, etc. It's mostly suited for creating IDE type apps (as an example, WebSphere Studio Application Developer developed by IBM who developed the initial Eclipse code base is built on Eclipse), but I've seen some fairly nice "proof of concept" type projects for more standard issue apps like Word Processors, etc.

Eclipse is Java based, so the code is fairly "write once, run anywhere (debug everywhere (twice))" for whatever platforms the project's custom SWT widget toolkit works for (Linux and Windows included).

As a bonus, Eclipse on it's own if a fairly nice (free as in speech) Java IDE that runs on Linux (even includes a built-in CVS client).

IBM's SWT is the same thing (native back end/Java interface) for Java, and open source. A complete IDE (Eclipse) is written using SWT.

What IDE do you use? The only one I've come across that I think comes close to Eclipse is IDEA. Since Eclipse is free, it's at least worth a look. The refactoring support in release 2.0 is very nice. Download here. And anyway, it might make you realize how bad Swing really is. ;oP

This is the tool I swear by, and would actually pay some money if required.

IBM released this 40 million dollar project for free, and I believe it got to market just by a word of mouth mostly, and being free. This IDE does the job right, now other Java IDE comes even close. It is fast, great interface, and people behind it really listened to all the IDE complaints and tried fixing most of them.

C# does have one major feature that Java does not, meta data and reflection. Now those are not features that many programmers who have not used the Lisp machine are familiar with but it is a very powerful way to program.

Please check the java.lang.reflect package in the standard J2SDK and come back to this thread. And while you are doing so check the JPDA architecture and head up to the Eclipse Project to see a ass kicking implementation of meta data and reflection.

BTW, all this was in Java a lot of time ago, if you didn't know it, that's your fault.

I would like someone to explain us what's about the getter and setter structure in C#, it's like Minority Report: Spielberg couldn't get rid of the whole AI crap completely ... and MS can't get rid of the VB crap either.

Sounds like he is re-inventing C#.
But forgot the most for powerful feature of C# -
Attributes, which allows you to do things like XmlSerialization with no hand-written code. I think Attribs will improve the way we write DB clients.
If you want to see an example, go see Example4, listing one.

It's also annoying he never mentions the term "boxing" and "unboxing" when he talks about turning 'ints' etc into objects. Sometimes you can borrow a page from your competitors' vocabulary.

Also - how about adding the following C# language features:
A) foreach(Type t in mylist){...} to prepare ground for templates
B) tailcall IL instruction to allow Prolog etc
C) System.Windows.Forms for a fast windows kit
(goodness, IBM had to invent their own AWT replacement to create eclipse IDE)
D) enums which can be flags, which can be or'd together
E) events + function pointers ("delegates" in msspeak)

go mono! /g

As for the Swing vs. AWT issue, that really is a toss up. The main reason for this is twofold:

• Swing now has access to native video accelleration throw Java 2D, eliminating most of the advantage native peers had over swing widgets
• VMs have matured greatly over the last several years, and continue to improve. The most noticable difference came when the Hotspot VM was introduced in JDK 1.2.

An interesting compromise between AWT and Swing has emerged in the form of Eclipse's SWT. For more info on that product, check out the eclipse home page.

* java IDE

Don't go netbeans - unless you have too much cpu + memory. Intellij IDEA is the far most kickass java IDE. The 3.0 beta builds are even better, available thru Early access program . On the other hand, it's not free, but well worth the price. For a free java IDE, people praise eclipse.

I used to think that Visual studio.net was the most intuitive and productive IDE around, but I was wrong. The only thing i miss from VS is it's speed - Sun really needs to fix the performance problems with java, especially the gui.

From my viewpoint, these links have served me well for both C++ and Java.
Java's Home
SourceForge - cannot live without
Apache - there is no other
JGuru
IBM DeveloperWorks
Eclipse OR NetBeans
Google is the main site I use
Cetus Links

I have been using the Eclipse Open Source IDE for a while and it integrates very well with CVS. It actually even adds some of the features many posts are looking for. And for you Java nerds (like me) check out the Easy Struts Plugin it will save you hours writing those action, form beans, etc. Happy coding.

That's part of what we're doing in Stellation. Our basic
view is that source files combine storage and organization
in unfortunate ways. So we want to break that linkage: code
lives in the database, stored as small pieces. Pseudo-files
are generated to give you organizational views of the system.
Because storage and organization are distinct, there's
no reason that a given chunk of code can't be viewed in multiple
pseudo-files.

The big catch is that there
are an awful lot of very useful tools out there, and they're
not going to give up their filesystems overnight. So you need
to be able to both discard the file notion when it's appropriate,
but at the same time to preserve the ability to use a filesystem
when necessary. Stellation pseudo files can always be exported
into a real filesystem to work with tools that don't understand
it's database storage model.

-Mark

Take a look at Stellation.
Our long-term goal is to fundamentally
change the way that programmers view and store thier code.

If you want to use a CVS lookalike, Stellation can do that. But
in its full-blown form, source files become an illusion. You can
still edit them, save them, etc... But the versioning is happening
at a finer grain. Refactor your code to move a method, and Stellation
preserves the full history of that method. Need to look at a bunch
of code that's scattered through many files? Issue a query to generate
a file containing exactly what you want to see. Edit it there,
and then when you commit the change, it shows up in all of the
other files where that code lives.

-Mark

I agree completely. One of the goals of the system that I'm
working on (Stellation) is the integration of pluggable
semantic components for particular programming languages.

Our basic idea is that if you don't know the language that
something is written in, you treat it as text, providing all
of the capabilities of a system like ClearCase. But if you
do know the language, take advantage of that support, and
provide extra, language specific capabilities.

-Mark

Just a minor correction: Stellation is now out, open-source. The
correct website for our open-source project is
http://www.eclipse.org/stellation.

I don't know how it's turning out, but this is one of the things that the Stellation people are (or were) trying to implement. You might check their home page for details: http://eclipse.org/stellation/index.html

If you're broke, try eclipse.org

There's hardly an MS shop out there that hasn't felt some misgivings about Microsoft and specifically .NET over the past couple of years - whether because of Microsoft tightening the licensing screws, dumping support for Java, radically changing VB for .NET, or pushing a brand new language (C#) for Microsoft's own benefit, or simply all the information that's come out in court which makes it clear that Microsoft has always been more than willing to screw their customers to make a buck.

IOW, Microsoft has provided us with an enormous amount of FUD ammunition, all we have to do is load up and start firing. Don't be too in-your-face about it, though. Instead, start by asking questions:

• Do you feel comfortable committing to .NET as a single-vendor standard? (Point out that open-source alternatives like Mono are still vaporware.)
• If you're not going to use C# because it's too new and unproven, which language are you going to use to target .NET?
• If you use VB.NET, aren't you concerned that the next version will leave you out in the cold, as just happened with the previous version of VB in the transition to .NET?
• Wouldn't it be beneficial to be able to run your server-side apps on any hardware and OS? What if you need to scale up substantially? Will you simply build a huge farm of Windows machines and pay for all those server licenses?

Don't get overly emphatic about any of this, you're just asking questions. Once the target has had a chance to think about this - maybe over a period of days, weeks, or even months, depending on the degree to which their brains are set in Microsoft concrete - you can slowly start pointing out the benefits of open platforms.

For example, running Java means using any hardware and OS as your server, today. The WORA creed actually does apply to Java on the server side - we regularly run our server apps on Windows, Linux and Solaris, without changing a line of code. Linux server farms are a heck of a lot cheaper than Windows farms, because of licensing. And if you need a single box that's bigger than any PC-class server, you can't beat the Unix-based hardware that's out there.

Running Java means wide support from multiple vendors, some of them very large and reliable, like IBM and Sun. There's competition amongst vendors in the form of multiple implementations of application servers, JVMs, and Java compilers - you can pick what you need, from open source to expensive enterprise-oriented products. The equivalents on .NET are all single-sourced - no competition, no openness.

The lack of competition within .NET has important implications: Microsoft can't fill all niches, and it doesn't even try. Its offerings are usually skewed towards the most lucrative markets, the biggest enterprises, and as a result smaller businesses that don't need all the features have unnecessary stuff pushed on them. In the Java world, if you want something small and light, you can just download an application server like Jetty, a lightweight but powerful persistence solution like Hibernate, and you've got a kick-ass application development and deployment solution. Powerful open and extensible IDEs abound, with Eclipse being a top contender.

What it comes down to is that companies have to be on some weird kind of crack to think that it makes sense to commit their development to .NET. Microsoft has upped the stakes in platform commitment required from their customers, but it's not offering anything in return. Meanwhile, there's a widely used, widely supported, competitive, successful, open, multi-platform alternative that's available today. The choice here is a no-brainer, folks.

[P.S. for those who object to the Java-centricness of all this, I'm talking about commercial scenarios where Perl, Python etc. are just not considered options. But once companies begin using open solutions, they tend to become more open to other such solutions - I had one IT manager who switched from IIS/ASP to Java/JSP recently ask me where he could download Perl for Windows.]

IBM's GUI library is called the Standard Widget Toolkit. It's being used in the Eclipse project.

You can find out more here. It's about halfway down the page.

-SS

IBM's GUI library is called the Standard Widget Toolkit. It's being used in the Eclipse project.

You can find out more here. It's about halfway down the page.

-SS

I'm sorry, but when you refer to some "IDE 2.0 Has Been Released" that sounds a lot more like it's a new standards version for the IDE disk drives than like an Integrated Development Environment. Here's the FAQ but you should still say what general category of thing you're talking about....

Alt-F does not work.

Don't uninstall Eclipse at this point, as I almost did, and let me save you some time of searching in the bug database to find bug 11912.

All you have to do is turn off numlock, and the keyboard shortcuts will work again!

I find it amazing that version 2 of a programming tool still has keyboard problems like this one. Am I the only one with numlock always on (you know, I only need one set of arrows on my keyboard, not two) - and who uses keyboard shortcuts when I am coding?

Ironically, they illustrate a C++ program.

I would steer you towards Eclipse. It's the basis for WebSphere's IDE, was written by IBM (Supposedly at a cost of 40million or something) and has been donated to the open source community under the GPL.

Version 2.0 will be available in a week or two. One of the wonderful things about Eclipse, is how extensible it is. There are many plugin's available for EJB development.

Eclipse ships with plugins builtin for integration with Ant, JUnit, etc. If you're using Tomcat or JBoss, WebSphere (Or pretty much any mainstream J2EE App Server) there are plugins to integrate with them too.

"You're also forgetting that Java has limited control over the operating system it's running on. For security, this is great, but when it comes to making proper software, it's not so good."

Granted. But even .NET and now OpenBSD are copying the security features of Java.

"Java apps just don't look as good and don't work as well as regular apps."
"many Java apps have weird customized UIs, or use awful Motif style interfaces. Thta's not what we want, we want people using native interface libraries, and .NET encourages this."

Again, true. Then again, let's just see how "nice" .NET apps look on anything but Windows operating systems. Also, for reference, check out IBM's Simple Widget Toolkit (tutorial)which is a very thin layer on top of native widgets...applications using SWT are very fast and nice looking. I think you'll be surprised.

That said, it is true that Java isn't as good on the client as it is on the server. Take a wild guess as to why that is...

"You're also forgetting that Java has limited control over the operating system it's running on. For security, this is great, but when it comes to making proper software, it's not so good."

Granted. But even .NET and now OpenBSD are copying the security features of Java.

"Java apps just don't look as good and don't work as well as regular apps."
"many Java apps have weird customized UIs, or use awful Motif style interfaces. Thta's not what we want, we want people using native interface libraries, and .NET encourages this."

Again, true. Then again, let's just see how "nice" .NET apps look on anything but Windows operating systems. Also, for reference, check out IBM's Simple Widget Toolkit (tutorial)which is a very thin layer on top of native widgets...applications using SWT are very fast and nice looking. I think you'll be surprised.

That said, it is true that Java isn't as good on the client as it is on the server. Take a wild guess as to why that is...

Eclipse does use the SWT. However, the SWT is not all Java. The basic idea is that SWT provides a java interface to a set platform widgets, a la IBM's Smalltalk (both developed by OTI I beleive). Therefore when running eclipse you are using platform based widgets, usually written in C++, and hence the performance increase over the likes of Swing and the AWT.

There are most notably win32, motif, and GTK+ implementations, and I beleive there is a an OS X one on the way as well.

I think the licensing prevents you from deploying SWT based apps outside of the eclipse environment (which is not to say you can't do it) but this may change and it is still a very good system for developing eclipse plugins.

Go check out eclipse.org for the downloads, and eclipse-workbench for a community type page that has a good list of the plugins available.

I have been using the environment since november and I can't fault it.

CORRECTION: http://www.eclipse.ORG/

... if you are a Java developer, definitely check out the eclipse, it's better than looking at the sun.

Java does not necessarily target its own windowing system. Via JNI one can bind any native window system you like (in fact IBM just did this with SWT in eclipse).

As a language, what does C# (or any .NET language for that mattre) add? None of them have multiple inheritance. C++.NET has templates, but that is also in the works for Java (not for C# as far as I know, but as soon as Java has it C# shall probably follow).

Yes, there are differences in licensing. But as we all know, CLR's openness is mostly cosmetic. Key to real usage of CLR shall be the standard class libraries, which are not open and only available on Windows. Really, this licensing issue is so weird. People keep complaining about Sun, where Sun has learned the hard way that they have to play it hard to avoid perversion of the Java standard as a platform neutral technology that runs everywhere.

Microsoft tried to subvert this, they almost succeeded; only after years of legal battle and sharpening of licensing rules Sun could avoid fragmentation and MSFTs usual 'embrace and extend' way. After MSFT saw they could not do this with Java, they even completely dropped it and came up with .NET.

In practice, Java runs on almost any platform around. In practice (even though CLR is supposedly open) .NET shall run only on Windows.

I see nothing about open source anything.

Eclipse, which is supported by IBM, derived from Websphere Studio Workbench, for Java development.

It's java-based application which can be running on many platforms including Linux.

You really need to click few more buttons, the link is near to where you download websphere. :)

You didn't look closely enough at that WebSphere Studio did you? Its based on Eclipse which is open source!

the new websphere studio application developer 4.0 is indeed based on open source components. Its base on eclipse which IBM released as open source.

WAS uses several open source components in addition to Apache, such as the previously mention Xerces, Xalan, etc, and parts of Tomcat (the Jasper JSP compiler).

it exists and is called SWT. it is part of the Eclipse platform.
This is IMO a killer GUI API for java.

That is a matter of preference. You can easily provide very similar appearance for Java applications as well. Try to check Eclipse (the first example that came to mind, possibly because I use it every day :) - it uses a "launcher" which is seen by people as eclipse.exe file. The rest are plug-ins, which are .jars, though as an IDE user you couldn't care less about it. In other words, this Java application has the same appearance, as any .NET application. And though Java's method to achieve this is different from .NET's, "people percieving a platform" will not notice anything.

PS: to see it in action - download (I would recommend the latest stable build - not 1.0 release) and try Eclipse IDE.

PS: to see it in action - download (I would recommend the latest stable build - not 1.0 release) and try Eclipse IDE.

Eclipse is built on SWT. You can get all the source and the API that eclipse is built with. SWT is a very thin layer (one-to-one by design) to the underlying windowing toolkit. So far, Win32, Motif, and gtk are supported although I had some problems with the gtk one. Qt is sadly missing, but I suspect once SWT catches people attention, a Qt binding will be created.

Try SWT, it run circles around AWT/Swing. Sure it breaks platform independence to a degree; you'll have to distribute the appropriate dll/so along with your app, but who cares? That is a very small price to pay for a good java GUI.

API javadoc

-tim

I'm not going to say Sun should open source Java, but for heaven's sake, make a GUI toolkit that doesn't suck. You can't cite Java's 'newness' as an excuse anymore.

If you are interested, try Eclipse. It is IBM's open source Java IDE and it is very, very solid. It is much faster than Forte, and isn't bloatware, either.

Plus I love the fact that Ctrl-S not only saves but compiles. RaH.

IBM has done a LOT more for Java GUIs than Sun ever has IMO.

I installed the latest version of Eclipse and I was amazed at how fast the GUI ran. It is the first Java application that I've ran that didn't frustrate the hell out of me by running slowly. Sun should incorporate whatever GUI widgets IBM made into the next JDK.

Do stripped versions of Windows support ActiveX? As far as I know, it's part of IE.

Many applications use it and probably break without it, for example Eclipse. Also, som apps even use IE for rendering HTML, for example Winamp's minibrowser and Gnucleus. If these programs will break with a stripped version of Windows, then IE & ActiveX really are part of the OS.

". . .the J2EE community can't ignore the need for tools that create powerful and efficient applications in a timely manner."

Indeed. Perhaps that tool could be (to Mr. Gosling's dissapointment) Eclipse or one of the IBM Websphere Studio products based on it, like WS Application Developer.

Eclipse has already been mentioned as a Java IDE, but I thought I should add that Eclipse has plugins available for other languages. Initially starting with C and C++, the plans are to extend it to other languages.

Eclipse has already been mentioned as a Java IDE, but I thought I should add that Eclipse has plugins available for other languages. Initially starting with C and C++, the plans are to extend it to other languages.

How about IBM's SWT library on GTK? Dig in the Eclipse site to find it.

cheers
alex

Borland is a member of the eclipse.org Consortium. Perhaps their new IDE is Eclipse. I hope so. The more I work with Eclipse, the more I like it. There's room for improvement, but those improvements are being made. Eclipse is the only open-source software my company has committed to. It's becoming a core part of our flagship product. No other open-source product can say that.

Hopefully, this means that future versions of OptimizeIt will be released on top of Eclipse. After all, Borland is an Eclipse board member.

I'm a big fan of OptimizeIt's functionality, but I'd like to see it lose that ugly Swing interface in favor of SWT.