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Visual Studio Express is Microsoft's zero-cash programming environment. Why do you want a high-cost office suite with a lousy macro engine to be discounted to free when they already offer their actual development suite pro bono. It's upgradeable to more complete Visual Studio versions later. This will encourage Microsoft-centric code, but that can be avoided and it's less specific of a tie-in than VBA. C#, C, C++, and more are included.

If you don't want to be tied to Microsoft-specific tools even on Windows there are other options. Those include other office suites and other actual development tools.

LibreOffice/OpenOffice have OOBasic and can be scripted with Python and Java if you really want. These things are zero-cash and open source.

You can use Lazarus and FreePascal (Wikipedia article about FreePascal) or Eclipse and Java/C/C++ if you'd rather. Or you could use Eric and Python. Or Padre and Strawberry Perl, complete with MinGW. Some of the IDEs are more or less general and language agnostic, while others are mainly narrowly targeted.

Don't forget MsysGit (git for Windows) if you're not using Cygwin and haven't already chosen a version control system.

Really, you could be teaching with a good programmer's editor rather than specifically with IDEs too. vim, Emacs, jEdit, Gedit, and others are applicable. Some of them are powerful enough to make that line between editors and IDEs very fuzzy.

What, exactly, would a free copy of Word get you that isn't already available?

Not necessarily for you, but for anybody reading:

More info on jedit-

It's basically a heavy-duty editor. Say you need to set up a big table of constants. BLAH = "blah", or whatever. Or slice and dice some text into code, or rewrite/create a huge series of SQL statements. Very easy with it's BeanShell or regex replacement (multiline, too, if you want). The builtin text macro "Add Prefix and Suffix" is much used. Columnar cut and paste. You don't have to program a C++ library to extend the syntax highlighting, just set up some regexes into an XML config file. Abbreviations (code templates) per file type. Recommended plugins: FTP (edit files remotely), Sessions, XML (works for HTML, too).

Netbeans- great for Java, of course, but it's also very good for PHP, even better than the alternative$. What's nice about it: refactoring. When you're on a variable, it highlights other uses of that variable. It has Symfony support built in, but you can also get it to work to a significant extent with another library or your own. Ctrl+click goes to definition of symbol. Code templates are very handy. They've thought things out like a programmer. E.g., many editors nowadays insert two double quotes when you just type it once. Problem is, after that, you usually want to add a semicolon, and go to the next line. So they added that macro for you already. You can download just a base version with the PHP plugin if you want. The one thing missing is code folding.

I used to use jEdit. It's a decent text editor, but now I use Notepad++. I'm also trying Komodo Edit as a possible replacement to Notepad++. All three editors are open source, but Notepad++ is Windows only.

jEdit

It's a very nice full featured editor with a ton of plugins, including some Python specific ones.
Unfortunately I'm not sure if it will be able to dig into a library for autocomplete, but by default it has autocomplete for words in your current buffer.

Erics Python IDE

Wing IDE

Komodo

If you're hell-bent on using an Editor, I can warmly recommend jEdit for Python stuff. It's the best Editor in existance.

And one more thing: There is this think called 'Google', you may have heard of it. It usually answers this sort of question in under 10 seconds.

The idea is that it's very easy to switch from "Layout View" (WYSIWYG) to a nice color-coded HTML view, and from there to previewing it in your browser(s) of choice. I don't think the author in this case got the idea.

Agreed. Visual Studio, while having its faults (Windows only [duh, right?], pretty large footprint, and some rather unhelpful "help" features) is better than Eclipse. Visual Studio is quite nice if you just want to write Windows apps. C# is excellent. .NET is great. I just have too much cognitive dissonance when I totally ignore other operating systems, though. If MSFT would just provide .NET plugins for Linux / Mac they'd help themselves out a lot (and yes I know about MONO.) The annoying start page, and the MSDN search that returns nothing of use, and the !helpful code formatting notwithstanding, Visual Studio is pretty good.

I have gone through periods of trying Eclipse. People are incredulous when I tell them I hate Eclipse, so I feel like I have to see what I am missing and install it. Every time, EVERY TIME, I uninstall it, totally disgusted with the amount of RAM it takes and how heavy it feels. It's just another example of why I hate Java apps. Java on the server is fine, but on the client it just falls flat. Clunky look and feel, slow performance, and weird UI quirks seem to be the hallmarks of Java apps (and when people start using terms like percieved slowness, I reach for my Browning). Doesn't anyone else get annoyed by how slow Eclipse feels? Anyone?

To me, an IDE shouldn't get in the way of development. It should like a good waiter -- there when you want but otherwise out of your face. That's where both Eclipse and Visual Studio fall short.

My IDE of choice is jEdit. Yes, I know it's Java based. I do hate the fact that it's Java and it looks like every other Java application: butt ugly (and even with the Look and Feel plugin that is supposed to give more of a native OS look and feel...stupid swing components). But most importantly, it's a mighty fine text editor which has IDE essentials like syntax highlighting, comprehensive searching, and lots of powerful text editing tools (like block select, which my coworkers who use Dreamweaver just drool over.)

If you use Eclipse but hate it for being so heavy, I'd recommend jEdit. It's just the right amount of IDE. Not so much IDE cruft that writing code is less writing code than it is learning how to use the IDE, yet it's got enough utility to facilitate the business of writing code. Any web development I do (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, html, css, javascript) is all done in jEdit and I can code a page in the time it takes Eclipse to open a file.

Appears the reason for using TCP is that Java has no (cross-platform, at least) support for POSIX local sockets or even named pipes.

So, um, because I'm too lazy to dig through JDK docs right now - is this jEdit developers' fault, or is the state of local IPC on Java really this worrisome? I'm sure local IPC that doesn't depend on TCP/IP ports would be really nice and would undoubtedly help Java's desktop application adoption.

If you're holding yourself out as a programmer, you definitely have to be able to write good code. But technology work is not made up solely of programmers. I work with programmers, *NIX administrators, graphic designers, UI designers, animators, illustrators, subject-matter experts (usually with PhDs in non-technical areas), clients who are not geeks, etc. There are a lot of jobs in technology that do not require you to write any code whatsoever.

It sounds like you are the alpha nerd on your development team, but you have been forced to work with programmers who were sub-par and now you're bitter. Why is that? Maybe the people you work with are new to the industry and fresh out of school. Maybe your company pays crappy wages and can only attract the code monkeys, people with zero interpersonal skills and other deficiencies that force them to only accept lower paying contracts. But, as an AC poster, we'll never know.

Everyone has a different skill set, not all are cut out for coding. There is a place for everyone though; the cubicle down the hall, your parents basement, or even at McDonalds. Some may have a knack for novel algorithms but have trouble attracting mates - not an uncommon affliction among programmers. Don't worry, there is a place for you! As my old Comp. Architecture prof once said: "If you can't get laid, you might as well write some good code."

BTW: My editor of choice is JEdit, and eugenics has been thoroughly discredited except by Nazis and others who are fond of brown shirts. You may want to rethink your affiliation in that regard.

Spreading the love for jEdit!

Try PyPE or jEdit.

If you use Nautilus (GNOME desktop file browser) or the KDE equivalent you can connect to remote servers graphically using SSH, WebDAV, whatever protocol you like if you find the command line not pretty enough. No need to open a terminal Nautilus->File->Connect to server->SSH

--Remote Desktop: Check. Not as slick as the Windows one, but doesn't lack for anything important.

Are you talking about Vino or Vncviewer or what? In what way is there slickness lacking?

example of where it doesn't is media production. The tools for Linux are sub par at best in my experience. In theory it might be possible to do what I need, but in practice I have never been able to figure out how and it is just too much effort. For Windows I just install Sony Vegas and go,

What do you do with Sony Vegas? I've never used it. Looking at it's bumf it looks like Audacity does a similar job. I hasten to add I don't do much besides basic chopping out segments of recordings for podcasts, fade-in/out at the edges of those segments and some adjustment of sound levels.

As far as the texteditors go I think they're one of the strongpoints of GNU/Linux. You might like JEdit

Let's add jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/) to the list... my current favorite editor.

Well, at least it's not as bad as trying to unscrew pages made by FrontPage + Extensions. Those are a nightmare.

And as to the GGP's question, yes, here's one more that hand codes. jEdit rocks...

My favorite programming edit, JEdit, recenty started offering DEB packages. So when I put Ubuntu on a new computer, I downloaded the DEB directly from JEdit's website. No adding a repository, just a .deb file. I double click on it in nautilus, and it asks if I want to install it. I say "yes" and it tells me there are some dependencies not in the DEB package, but available in the Ubuntu repos, and asks if I want to download and install them too. Again, I say "yes", and it goes and does everything for me. When it's done, I've got JEdit installed, with menu items and everything. As far as I know, JEdit is maintaned by one guy, so this can't be all that difficult.

May I suggest JEdit? It supports XML out-of-the-box and is open source and runs anywhere and is a great* editor by any measure. If after having your XML closing tags auto-completed, indented, and validated effortlessly in this editor leaves XML still too much work for you, then I hope you never use anything beyond Vi, APL, and LaTex.**

*I said "great" not "perfect". Lets keep this civilised.

**Nothing wrong with any of these: just examples of the tersest things of which I could think.

http://www.jedit.org/

I love it - all the features listed above, plus a plugin framework that supports sftp, ftp, and a zillion other tools. (Only complaint is no seamless svn checkin/checkout)

Java - so it runs exactly the same on Windows, Mac, Linux - makes platfor transitions quite smooth.

Not dinging any other tools - just saying that this is an essential tool in my (expanded) toolkit.

I've been using jEdit for a few years now. I've used almost every text editor out there, from Crimson to UltraEdit, and I still think jEdit is the best. When combined with the WebDeveloper extension and DOM inspector for Firefox, it can't be beat.

http://www.jedit.org/

jEdit FTW or for a full IDE KDevelop is pretty good too.

Have you tried jEdit?

A few folks mentioned Java and NetBeans, but of course the whole J2EE suite runs on OSX.
 
I enjoy using JEdit. It does syntax highlighting and all the indention things programmers need. I usually find myself going back and forth between vi and JEdit, depending on what I'm doing.
 
Of course, you can use MySQL with Java these days too, using the connector. But I don't of a better tool than the commandline mysql tool, with which you can write queries and format them to make sure your code is working.

Not only does eclipse have a much, much larger feature set, JCreator costs 70 bucks

If they want something a little more lightweight with a similar feature set to jcreator, jedit is free and will run on a mac.

As far as I've come into contact with developers there never has been the slightest doupt what the right thing is. Tabs where introduced as the solution to this very problem. The only problem is that ancient vi and emacs aparently can't deal with them properly. Or their users sometimes are to lazy to set them up properly. The big problem is when experienced professionals follow suit with some blockheads and a few years later themselves insist on everybody using spaces at any time.
Why should everybody degrade the sourcecode because some dick on the team insists on using a 25 year old editor? Why should we be forced to use spaces in interpreted webapp languages because some webserver is to crappy to deal with tabs in the right manner? Unless there's some exotic situation - which I can't think of right now - that requires spaces to be used the stored source should be tabs. Then everyone can decide by himself how wide his indents are without bugging anybody else with his habbits. And if you're to fucking lazy to set up your vi or emacs properly to deal with the problem (either by back and forth conversion of tabs2spaces/spaces2tabs or by altering the display of code) and thus insist on the team following your whim you're nothing but a fucking assh*le. Get with the 3 millenium allready and get yourself a proper editor. There are enough around allready.

This whole discussion reminds me of 5 Million mindless dumb and stubborn outlook idiots establishing fullquote bloat and degrading email to something worse than AOL chat for everybody else, just because their mailer is so crappy.

Bottom line: The solution linked is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist because in a professional enviroment everyone can decide for themselves how their code is displayed, how large tabs are and if they're automatically converted into spaces if I want to use edlin.

P.S.: In the recent years, so I've heard, we even got a new problem popping up: People mixing spaces and tabs in the same sourcefile. Now there's a bunch that deserves to be shot at sight.

My 2 cents.

I needed an easy to use C source code browser because I'm porting an old bbs game to Java. JEdit fit the bill perfectly. Out of the box it's not much more then a text editor with syntax highlighting(130+ languages). It has a feature call HyperSearch that can be used for search through single files or multiple files and have a little box of hyperlinked results. It has lots of plugins to extend it's funtionality but nothing extra to get in the way when you first install it. Check it out at jedit.org. The only thing some people might take issue with is that it requires Java.

JEdit, a free, open source text editor does folding. http://www.jedit.org/

Java there are. JEdit, JCreator, Eclipse. JCreator is my favourite (of the three I mentioned), it does have a "pro" version that offers automatic syntax completion and what-not. JEdit is the most stuited for beginner programmers because its a fancy text editor, not a gigantic automatic-everything IDE like Visual Studio or JBuilder.

I like vi(vim) and while it does have syntax high-lighting it also has a learning curve to it. The goal here is to teach the students a language, not an editor. If you don't want to go for a full IDE I'd suggest using JEdit, it's free and has syntax highlighting for just about every language. It'll also help match up curly braces but that's about it without any plugins.

The thing I like about using JEdit instead of an IDE is that it does NOT do auto-completion by default. It makes the students memorize Java syntax a little better but they'll also have issues running the command line compiler.

Beginning Java students will have trouble understanding the error message of the command-line compiler. With a little introduction an IDE will provide a much less frustrating experience for students. Another positive of an IDE is a standardized project structure which will make your life easier when students turn in work.

I've trained several college instructors and had this discussion a couple of times and they usually end up using JEdit, Eclipse, or Netbeans. Myself, I lean a little bit towards JEdit but I typically get to hover over my students and help them with any problems.

Are you aware that Sun is allowing the Apache Software Foundation to create a 100% open source build of java that complies with the official Sun spec?.

This is the best of both worlds and gives those who want a "Free Software" VM their own VM, while allowing Sun to continue shaping the future of the platform according to outside comments (JCP - Java Community Process, a process where IBM, Nokia, Intel, etc. have a say), but preserving the right to prevent "pollution" of the platform like Microsoft attempted years ago with their windows-only win32 hooks in their Java implementation.

I think some slashdotters need to read The Inquirer more often... ;-)

Sun-approved Open Source Java making progress
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30688
MAR 31, 2006

Argentina students help Apache's Open Source Java effort
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30689
MAR 31, 2006

Apache Foundation to create clearn-room Java
with Sun's blessing
Compatible open source J2SE in the works
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23127
MAY 10, 2005

About Java based apps, the "Java is a failure on the desktop" is an old MYTH. Java has been getting really nice on the desktop lately, starting with J2SE 5.0 just at the time most systems above 1Ghz are now (finally!) the norm and at a time when 512MB ram is the average.

There's a lot of java based apps that I run on my linux AND windows desktop and whic I've learned to love:

  http://phex.kouk.de/ http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ http://www.artofillusion.org/index
http://www.evermoresw.com/weben/product/productOve rview.jsp - http://www.jedit.org/ - http://sourceforge.net/projects/frinika
http://sourceforge.net/projects/javaamp - http://sourceforge.net/projects/humaitrader - http://sourceforge.net/projects/jgnash/
http://megamek.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main ...Editors, Music, Office Suites, P2P clients, 3D design, financial apps, games.... you name it, there is one best-of-breed app written in Java. And without having to chase a Microsoft API from behind like it happens with Mono...

https://mustang.dev.java.net/
"Sun is releasing weekly early access snapshots of the complete
source, binaries and documentation for Java SE 6 ("Mustang"). These raw snapshot releases let you review and contribute to Mustang as it is being developed."

What part of "Source" don't you understand??

I rest my case.

Finally about Desktop apps and Swing. Swing is MUCH faster in Java 6.0 (aka 1.6.0), because a lot of stuff is maped to native windows and gnome widgets.

I like to use Notepad2 when I'm doing lightweight editing tasks. Line numbering (the original reason I switched away from Notepad so many years ago), synatx highlighting, regex, and more.

No, it's not tabbed, but when I want tabs I open up my heavy-hitter editor JEdit. It's fast, it's OSS, it's simple, it's got a clean interface and did I say it was fast?

I have no idea why MS doesn't update their #1 (non-solitare) used utility. Anti-Monopoly measure for 3rd party editors? Maybe. That didn't stop them from putting out MS Defender. Anyway, are there any articles outlining the new/improved utilities for Vista?

If you just look at their respective web page "mission statements", that seems to be the case. However, with all of the plugins available for jEdit, the gap between the two narrows considerably. Granted, Eclipse has a lot going for it, and tons of community support, and a million plugins - But for my uses jEdit seems to be a better balance of power and agility. Eclipse has power, emacs is agile, and jEdit seems to have just enough of both qualities to make it my "go to" environment.

Let's not leave jEdit off of that list. ... Yeah, I've tried Eclipse, and not to get into an IDE war, but it just seemed too heavyweight for me.

There is no war: Eclipse is an IDE and jEdit is an editor. Just look at the sites.

jEdit: "jEdit is a mature and well-designed programmer's text editor with 7 years of development behind it."

Eclipse: "Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software."

See? Two completely different beasts. (Disclaimer: I use both on a daily basis :)

Let's not leave jEdit off of that list. It was the only thing I found cool enough to make me move on from my umpty-skiddle year relationship with Emacs. (Yeah, I've tried Eclipse, and not to get into an IDE war, but it just seemed too heavyweight for me.)

Because unfortunately there is an extremely large number of web developers that wouldn't have the slightest clue where to begin without Dreamweaver, Frontpage, Flash etc. Perhaps something like Bluefish would help them make the transition (I've never used it so I can't really offer much of an opinion there). For the small amount of HTML/CSS that I do I've always found jEdit to be quite nice and it's supported on multiple platforms.

jEdit with Python-related plugins, or Eclipse with PyDev or TruStudio

How could someone who is so right about SWT (Swing, like democracy, isn't perfect but it is better than the alternatives) be so wrong about IDEs :-) Eclipse is free, cross-platform, and much better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

Now that's damning by faint praise. "Better than JBuilder"? Joy.

If you've never tried jEdit, perhaps you can see your way clear to forgiving me for avoiding such sharp sticks in the eye. If you can see past the stick, that is. :-)

I don't mind feauture bloat so much if it stays out of my way. But in Eclipse it doesn't--IMHO Eclipse lacks the "conceptual integrity" we've known is important since before Brooks gave it a name in "The Mythical Man-Month". "It's free" isn't a reason to turn a blind eye (maybe the one with the stick) to its flaws. Also, Eclipse *is* an SWT app, and inherits all *those* problems.

My own toolset is: jEdit for tactical use, with IntelliJ IDEA as a strategic WMD, suitable for surgical strikes on large legacy code bases while causing limited collateral damage. Add to this SQuirreL for mucking about in the DBMS. yEd is handy for diagramming things. All kinds of things.

In fact I usually keep a copy of jEdit running *alongside* IDEA to use as a lightweight file system browser, Beanshell framework, and GUI tool for the grepping of things ungrokable by IDEA. All these tools will run in any Java GUI environment without sweating how SWT will run on Platform X. And they're all free, (except for IDEA...if you're willing to run beta code, you can get that free too).

"Grepping the ungrokable"... I like the sound of that. :-)

As big a fan as I am of open source software, Eclipsoids drive me batty. Some software is worth buying if you have the cash available, and I think IDEA is a perfect example.

But the original poster specified "programming as a hobby", and jEdit should be perfect for that.

How could someone who is so right about SWT (Swing, like democracy, isn't perfect but it is better than the alternatives) be so wrong about IDEs :-) Eclipse is free, cross-platform, and much better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

Now that's damning by faint praise. "Better than JBuilder"? Joy.

If you've never tried jEdit, perhaps you can see your way clear to forgiving me for avoiding such sharp sticks in the eye. If you can see past the stick, that is. :-)

I don't mind feauture bloat so much if it stays out of my way. But in Eclipse it doesn't--IMHO Eclipse lacks the "conceptual integrity" we've known is important since before Brooks gave it a name in "The Mythical Man-Month". "It's free" isn't a reason to turn a blind eye (maybe the one with the stick) to its flaws. Also, Eclipse *is* an SWT app, and inherits all *those* problems.

My own toolset is: jEdit for tactical use, with IntelliJ IDEA as a strategic WMD, suitable for surgical strikes on large legacy code bases while causing limited collateral damage. Add to this SQuirreL for mucking about in the DBMS. yEd is handy for diagramming things. All kinds of things.

In fact I usually keep a copy of jEdit running *alongside* IDEA to use as a lightweight file system browser, Beanshell framework, and GUI tool for the grepping of things ungrokable by IDEA. All these tools will run in any Java GUI environment without sweating how SWT will run on Platform X. And they're all free, (except for IDEA...if you're willing to run beta code, you can get that free too).

"Grepping the ungrokable"... I like the sound of that. :-)

As big a fan as I am of open source software, Eclipsoids drive me batty. Some software is worth buying if you have the cash available, and I think IDEA is a perfect example.

But the original poster specified "programming as a hobby", and jEdit should be perfect for that.

Sad to hear an obvious Browncoat say SWT is "shiny".

It is no such thing.

SWT is a non-solution to a non-problem. If you can't figure out how to use Swing properly, you won't be any better off with SWT, which a non-platform-portable portation of an old Smalltalk API.

Eclipse is almost mostly harmless if you're only coding Java as a hobby. It is rather resource-intensive. But if your involvement is that casual, consider jEdit: small, lightweight, very functional, with plug-ins available for most common tasks. And free.

On a happier note, the Serenity DVD came out today. Talk about shiny....;-)

A lot of people have already mentioned the PyDev plugin for Eclipse. You may also like to know about TruStudio (another Eclipse-based IDE) which supports Python and PHP amongst other "scripting languages", and perhaps something like Stani's Python Editor. I've got all three, plus a couple of other generic editors like Vim, Notepad++, NewEdit, JEdit, also PythonWin (which comes with ActivePython, but you can get it separately for vanilla Python.org).

Despite the trollish title of this post, I'm essentially an emacs fan. I am a writer, not a coder, and prefer the command line over GUI. I am the author of the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers (HTML) (PDF Version) and a bunch of books and papers..

But I find myself using emacs less and less frequently. My first complaint is getting emacs and my Linux console to work correctly with diacritical marks. I know that's a function not only of emacs but also the packagers of my distribution, plus a deplorable lack of easily-installed console fonts that contain those glyphs. But regardless of whose fault it is, this problem makes it hard for me to get my work done the way I want to.

I also need to program lots of small macros for very specific text editing features while writing a book that requires a silly markup format unique to the industry. Emacs was simply too hard to program for me to be able to implement it. Instead, I found Jedit, which easily facilitated things like switching between soft and hard wrap, keystroke macros, and some features I now find indispensable, like search and replace across all documents in a directory.

It's not that emacs doesn't or can't implement these features, it's that it doesn't do so easily. I wrote up a little page about the macros and jedit features I use most frequently. It would be extremely difficult to publish similar instructions for emacs because of the greater difficult inherent in installing, using, and sharing macros.

I still use emacs, but I use it for emailing, in conjunction with Mutt, the world's best email client. And for writing, I tend to stick to Jedit. Best of luck to emacs, which I still like, but I think for people like me the world has progressed and emacs is of limited use.

Oh yes... Something good can come of it...

Feeling now empowered with a sense of ownership, code gurus everywhere (but mostly at fortune 500 companies) will actually improve the code, make java smaller, faster, and more easily deployable. Then they will really recommend it instead of pointing to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html, and the adoption rate will increase even more.

Then, of course, the Sun version will become obsolete (too slow, too buggy, etc) and everybody will use GNUJava and the world will be a Much Happier Place.

Of course, at that point, a plethora of existing software will start getting into the language. Java will support XML-RPC, REST, and SOAP out-of-the-box. It will support a whole bunch of things that now Sun won't put in.

But best of all, the bugs will be cleaned out. Slava Pestov, the lead developer on jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/, which I use daily as my primary editor), will be able to write applications without feeling like this: http://www.jroller.com/page/slava?entry=java_1_5_w indow_focus.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just find out what real java programmers are saying. Also, take a look at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beyondjava/.

Sun is not currently able to maintain the level of language development to compete against python, ruby, smalltalk and a veritable army of smaller, nimbler tools. Java is fast becoming the COBOL of the internet age: yes, lots of companies use it for mission critical stuff, but newer technologies have gobbled up the geeks. It's only a matter of time before it's obsolete. See http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html.

I am not against Java. I am against Java staying the way it is today. I want java to grow. The hacker community at large will do a better job than Sun Microsystems. Period. Besides, Sun is going down. Larger companies have completely disappeared. I just went to their web site, priced a workstation, and priced an equivalent workstation at hp.com for $1K less. You tell me. They will probably remain at about 1/3 of their size today as a provider of high-end hardware. Like Cray.

Rather than railing against the Java-haters, why not point out some useful, slick, fast Java-based applications?

I've had a pretty good experience with jEdit, a Java-based programmer's editor on both Linux and OS X. It's mostly replaced emacs for me now. Although I've only tinkered with Eclipse so far, it's been pretty responsive for everything I've tried. On the Mac, NeoOffice/J (the OS X port of OpenOffice.org, which relies on Java for access to the Cocoa API) seesm to run pretty well. Granted, these are all editing apps, but they're all produced by different dev teams, and all seem to work well.

Pfffttt! Eclipse is lame. I use jEdit. I have used Eclipse quite a bit, but it is just way too fat IMHO. jEdit can work for just about any language (including Ruby) and it is just a lot leaner. Try it! You'll like it!

...a Ruby plugin, that is; this one done by Rob McKinnon. It's a good piece of work, although of course all the "code completion is hard for dynamic languages" applies here as well.

For what it's worth, enscript works fine for doing Ruby syntax highlighting if that's all you need.

As far as I'm concerned, Nedit and Jedit have replaced Vi and Emacs as the top two rivaling editors. Both are among the best editors available today. Check them out : http://www.nedit.org/ http://www.jedit.org./

Man, isn't that the truth?!?

I read the article and was amused that it focused on how much work (i.e. system processes) memory allocation required in C and Java. Maybe Java doesn't have to work as hard to allocate memory. Looking solely at memory allocation is not a true indicator. Maybe it is a problem with the people developing Java apps. Maybe development methodologies are at fault. In the end it doesn't matter. People hate slow apps and nobody cares why an app is slow. And Java apps are slower. That certainly has been my experience. And not just my experience, but that of most people, else the article would have never been written. How come every Java application I have ever used (even the fabulous jEdit) is considerably slower?

Don't even get me started on how you can always tell a Java app by it's clunky look and feel!

Having said all of that, I have been hearing a lot about Python these days. I wonder how long it will be until we start seeing Python apps where Java apps formerly were? It could happen!

Java is *not* slow and has a very comparable average execution to C/C++ code.

Don't know if anyone has already mentioned Jedit (haven't had a chance to read the replies)
It's a great Java based editor that can handle multiple languages, and because it's Java, you can run it on any OS.

The thing I love about it, is that you can turn it into an IDE, as long as you're prepared to fiddle with the command lines (hey, you're a programmer, no complaining! :) It's also the most configurable editor I've seen, you can set it up exactly the way you want it.. it has a multitude of useful plugins, but the best thing about it, is that it's open source.

The biggest downside to it, is that being Java based, it will chug on slower systems, particularly during file access, and you also need to install J2SE first. Anyway, you can get it here:
http://www.jedit.org/

Productivity:

Graphics:

Media:

Internet:

Survival Kit:

Development:

SubEtha's collaborative editing is cool, but I like other editors. Fortunately, you can also have collaborative editing in many other text editors.

DocSynch is a plugin for jEdit which used IRC for collaborative editing.

SangamPlugin adds collaborative editing to Eclipse.

Old school? Use VimSynch or Emacs or any text-mode editor with screen.

Will word wrap make an appearance in Eclipse anytime soon? I've heard that it would require a core rewrite of Eclipse in order to implement it...anyone know otherwise?

My co-workers keep trying to push Eclipse on me, but with such a simple feature as word wrap missing, I've just got to stick with jEdit.

Is this feature in Eclipse, and he's just missed it somewhere? I mean, c'mon: what text editor doesn't have word wrap? (Not that Eclipse is a plain ol' text editor, I didn't mean any offense to the Eclipse hot-heads. ;-)