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Captain Obvious strikes again?

The OS then would be the specific featureset. Stuff like this happens already. In professional web development it's almost academic which OS you use on your desktop for development. Apart from some neat platform specific tools like Kaleidoscope, CodeKit, etc. that might tender to specific preferences of certain developers it's just about of nil significance which OS you use.

macOS has a neat for-money FTP client called Transmit, Linux usually has it integrated into the Filemanager.

But Atom, Geany, NetBeans, PhpStorm and so forth including local AMP or other devstacks Stacks run just about the same on all desktop OSes. ... OK, BSD might have some trouble getting some to run.

The OS is all about what you prefer at certain fringes of your work. If that's the case, that is a good reason to move to a FOSS OS btw. Which is why I moved from macOS back to Linux after 12 years and got a new 300 Euro netbook rather than the new 2300 Euro MB Pro - although I do like the massive trackpad and the keyboard - neat hardware from apple once again - no doubt.

My 2 cents.

First, you do realize .Net is also garbage collected right? Secondly Elipse and Netbeans are excellent and mature IDEs that support dozens of languages and platforms.

The whole 'Java is slow' meme is at least a 15 years passe, try something new.

Both Eclipse and Netbeans do parse the code using gcc parser
https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/cnd/HowTos.html
http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/designs/Overview_of_Parsing#Scanning_and_Preprocessing

Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.

Fortunately, other cheap/free unlimited stacks are readily available:

Android

Java

Linux Mint

So long Microsoft, don't let the door hit you in your parity bits on the way out.

Seriously? When you start with NetBeans as your base platform, you've already got a word processor built in. You've already done most of the work, for the presentation and spreadsheet apps as well, controls built in for displaying database data.

Seriously, you're building word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation apps on ... a word processing, spreadsheet capable database app. It probably does presentations too.

Guess what I can do! In 20 minutes I can make a complete IDE. I'll just start off with NetBeans RCP! https://netbeans.org/features/platform/

Don't bother learning PHP it'll just slow you down learning the semantics of a new language and if you're used to dealing with Java PHP will feel like a joke. Java gets a bad wrap but I've found it to be faster than PHP in my tests.

I build most of my sites in Java using my own MVC framework. I've done some sites in PHP and have had to modify other PHP sites as well as looked into other languages. I still like Java the best and you can find a library to do almost anything you want. The only reason I'd pick something like PHP these days is if I don't want to build a site myself and want to use something prebuilt like wordpress or Joomla.

The only downside is that your servlet container (ie tomcat) is persistent and will take up a bit of memory. Not a huge amount but it makes it difficult to find cheap webhosting because providers can't throw thousands of websites on a server like they can with plain HTML and PHP. Try and find a good cheap VPS it's more secure and you won't have to worry about your site getting defaced because some other idiot didn't update their PHP software. That's happened to me.

Don't go with new frameworks. Go with popular ones that have been around for a while. I've been bitten in the ass when I built a website for a client and the framework I used was no longer around.

Spring is a good choice. I like to use NetBeans as my IDE. I've found it to work the best for me.

Almost all the sites I've built are written in Java. Stick with Java. I've written sites in PHP and I've also had to work on updates to some PHP sites. If you're already familiar with Java dealing with PHP will feel like a joke. PHP is great when you don't want to write your own software since there are so many publicly available stuff out there in PHP. Don't worry, you won't find a lack of Java libraries that will do anything you want to do.

Don't bother trying to learn a new language because you'll just slow yourself down trying to learn the semantics of the language instead of the details of the new libraries you'll be using. I know java gets a bad wrap in terms of performance but I've always found that Java kicks PHP's ass in terms of performance in the tests I've done.

The main issue with java is that when you're using a servlet container like Tomcat, the process runs constantly and takes up memory. It's not that much but it's hard to find Java hosting because the memory issues makes it hard for a webhost to put thousands of websites on the same server.

Your best bet is going to be to find a cheap VPN when you get started but check the big webhosts to. I remember LunarPages used to offer JSP support in the past.

There are a bunch of different frameworks. Stick to ones that are popular because you'd rather have some limited functionality now rather than an unsupported framework in the future. Which has happened to me.

I believe right now that's Spring but Struts is still pretty popular too.

I've found NetBeans to be a great IDE and it supports Spring.

Have a look at that :Netbeans, the platform that is the base for the renamed Sun Studio, now know as Oracle Solaris Studio, is a such a tool.

And given how poorly Oracle has handled Java as a platform, it's future is becoming questionable.

That is so true, they shipped Java 7 with a shipload of bugs, I stumble upon one today. And I am pretty sure that i am not the only one as there was a guy in a Minecraft complaining about the same exception.

They have killed a lots of cool research project that I cared about, Microsoft would have funded them as they would have originated from there Microsoft Research Labs. I miss Sun; I might switch to the Microsoft completely and byte the C# apple. Almost all the good library from Java are ported. And it seems that since Windows 7 they have taken the conscious decision to stop sucking.

But that is not to say that Netbeans is bad. It's really good. It's just not Intellisense. It has it small problems and long-term problems. The small one is that it is too Java-centric. It attempts to use an AST for C++. Which is all fine and good except it doesn't know how to handle "friend".

According to this https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=179205 it is supposed to be fixed since 6.7 but I did not test it so... I hate Oracle so much that I would not be surprised that they reintroduce it on purpose.

netbeans is a quite powerful c++ IDE and contrary to VS it is multi-platform. Have a look at that http://netbeans.org/images_www/v7/screenshots/cnd.png

OK, I'll grant that webapps aren't the best for *everything*.

Specifically, mining or other industrial control or information apps where you have to have a highly customized user interface. Stuff like:
http://platform.netbeans.org/screenshots.html
or
Palantir

But for your average ho-hum corporate HR data-entry app? Web's it.

No installation. Stateless. Testable. Cross-platform. Copy-pastable. Font-resizable. Scriptable.
If it's written right, you can bookmark locations within the app with hypertext. Try that with a normal application. And also get/set information. See REST

I'll agree that many corporate web apps aren't written correctly. They're not written for heads-down data entry. But's that not to say they couldn't be.

After a 4-char field is filled up, use Javascript to move to the next field automatically. Associate labels to fields. Set keyboard mnemonics for fields (Alt+letter)--it's in the HTML spec. Order the fields for easy, logical tab order.

Don't force the user to use the mouse to save the record and move to the next one.

Can you name other problems you have with webapps vs. desktop?

I've had other issues with NetBeans not working properly at lower levels under OpenJDK. The best workaround I've seen for the GTK+ LaF sucking is to not use it. Activating the Nimus LaF is pretty easy and it provides a much more tolerable work environment, even if it doesn't fit the colour scheme of your desktop environment quite as nicely.

I use NetBeans 6.9 at work every day for practically everything in our projects (mainly PHP, Ruby and SQL). It's a fantastic and powerful IDE, and very fast compared to Eclipse. The removal of Ruby really hurts though, so I won't be upgrading to 7 straight away. I will consider it once the plugin is ready to be used again after being handled by external developers: http://wiki.netbeans.org/RubySupport

At any rate, the Python plugin has moved to community status (along with Ruby, and UML). The UML plugin has been struggling for quite a while, but hopefully the same fate won't happen with the Ruby and Python plugins.

From the forum, here's how to get the Python plugin into NetBeans 7.

Python on NetBeans 7

The last post in that topic shows what to do.

Thanks a lot ! Looks like the Python plugin is not a lost case after all ! :)

Concerning Netbeans vs other IDE systems - I have tried quite a few at least briefly (Eclipse, Idle, KDevelop) but I always went back to Netbeans in the end. Must be the superb editor and nice VCS integration :)

I haven't tried this yet, since I rarely program in Python. I won't start a language war, but I really seriously do not like Python (and I've tried several times). I'll try again when I have some free time.

At any rate, the Python plugin has moved to community status (along with Ruby, and UML). The UML plugin has been struggling for quite a while, but hopefully the same fate won't happen with the Ruby and Python plugins.

From the forum, here's how to get the Python plugin into NetBeans 7.

Python on NetBeans 7

The last post in that topic shows what to do.

On another note, I've used NetBeans 7 RC 2, and liked it OK. 6.9.1 seemed to be a bit faster, even with the huge amount of plugins I throw at it. I'll probably post a little more about my thoughts once I've installed it and run a few projects through it and Tomcat 7.

As far as Eclipse is concerned, I can never manage to create a stable and upgradeable Eclipse installation. Some plugin compatibility war always ends up making my environment unstable, and I just have to trash the installation and start over again. I like a lot of things about Eclipse, but keeping an Eclipse menagerie stable is not one of them.

Almost everything in Netbeans is a plugin. The problem is that it was born as a Java-only IDE (many years ago) while Eclipse has been always marketed as a meta IDE. Things have changed and thanks to the Netbeans Platform it can be easily extended. By the way, I'm a fanboy :)

May not make sense to some of you, but I am trying to go completely 64-bit here (may sound strange, but string processing seems faster on it, even notepad.exe itself, by far, vs. 32-bit in native 32-bit OS environs no less - very noticeable!)

I'm going to go off-topic for a second to address your post. Firstly, preliminary research (I mean that) suggests that NetBeans is pure Java, so it will run in whatever JVM you have. Both 32- and 64-bit JVMs are offered, so it sounds like NetBeans will run in 64-bit mode. However, there is also information that suggests the NetBeans installer only supports the 32-bit JVM, so you'll likely have to install it with a 32-bit application, but can run it as a 64-bit application.

Regardless, I feel that you're a bit misguided about the nature of 64-bit architectures. Let me list for you the big advantages that 64-bit has over 32-bit:

• (1): You can directly access a 64-bit virtual memory space. This means that individual applications aren't limited to 3 GB of virtual address space like they are in a 32-bit world.
• (2): You have access to some more modern architecture features over 32-bit systems.
• (3): A single register can hold 8 bytes instead of 4 bytes.

So let's break this down. (1) means that applications that use huge amounts of memory (over 3 GB) at the same time will likely run faster. Most applications come nowhere near this, and NetBeans is no exception. Unless you're running enterprise applications or database servers, you shouldn't notice any change from this strength, and even then, only those applications need to be 64-bit to gain the advantage. You can use 32-bit NetBeans to build a 64-bit GlassFish application.

(2) means that your system's paging layouts and execution environment can take advantage of some of the offerings of the modern architecture for both security and efficiency. This is almost entirely handled by the kernel, meaning that if you're running a 64-bit kernel, you're fine. Actually, modern 32-bit kernels can also take advantage of 64-bit architecture security features, so either way you're good. A 64-bit kernel can easily run 32-bit applications, so (2) alone isn't a reason to favor 64-bit applications.

Finally, (3) means that certain operations dealing with gigantic numbers will be more efficient. It also means that compilers can do some slight optimization tricks on non-huge values. Unless you're running a math-intensive application (MatLab, Mathematica, etc.) , you shouldn't notice any difference from this.

I suppose, in summary, that your claim that even Notepad runs faster in 64-bit seems unlikely. Most applications gain no noticeable advantage being 32-bit over 64-bit. If you care about efficiency, use a 64-bit kernel, and run whatever applications are most convenient. If you want to read up on 64-bit architectures, check out Wikipedia.

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.

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.

All true, and the trademark "NetBeans" is owned by Oracle. However in 2000, Sun released the software as open-source. You can still download it from Oracle, but their main website is http://netbeans.org/ (emphasis org).

Any questions related to the license can be found at http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansUserFAQ#License_and_Legal_Questions

All true, and the trademark "NetBeans" is owned by Oracle. However in 2000, Sun released the software as open-source. You can still download it from Oracle, but their main website is http://netbeans.org/ (emphasis org).

Any questions related to the license can be found at http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansUserFAQ#License_and_Legal_Questions

There's conflicting information out there:

They say it's just RoR:

  http://netbeans.org/community/news/show/1507.html

They say it's the Ruby language too:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/01/ruby-dropped-in-netbeans-7

Who's right?

Oracle has nearly nothing to do with Ruby, so in that sense it's not surprising. However it's surprising that only a couple developers complaint about that in the Netbeans testers mailing list given the community that had been growing lately around this extension. In other news, Aptana seems to be a good alternative too.

almost forgot: http://netbeans.org/community/sources/

Just a very little bit (how about you?). I've kind of been getting my toes wet with it with Netbeans Mobility Edition and Sun Wireless Toolkit.

There's a graphical editor to add controls. You set validation for fields. You can set the navigation graphically. Seems OK to me, but I'd love to hear your opinion on it (and other platforms) as well.

Also, it's hard to see what it is you can't do with J2ME.

Graphical games? If you can make Bubble Bash2 or Rally3D, you can probably make any game you want. Netbeans even has a game wizard with sprite editor.

You can access phone contacts, the file system, bluetooth, and so on with J2ME. You can use the camera, tuner, music/equalizer, GPS, the (inter)network, 3d graphics, video, crypto, SMS, and the touch screen.

Again, no disrespect, this is honest curiosity. Would you care to list the names of some of those JAVA GUI programs that you used that you thought were great and that were not compromising on performance?

Sure, but it depends on what you mean by "compromising on performance" which is an imprecise and marketing type phrase. I prefer applications that are fast enough to get the job for which it was designed to do done, with responsiveness being one of the factors.

The applications I use are in house, but I can refer you to some elements that form the basis of some of the apps I use. Unfortunately thats the nature of the business, but hopefully you may find the following illustrations of things similar to mine helpful:

NASA's WorldWind is a good example. It uses OpenGL and has a very responsive GUI, well at least on my Mac and on my Linux workstation at work. I play with it at times, but the data I must present has no GIS element to it at the moment (well the end user has no desire for it yet) so I haven't used it for a project. I've seen some neat plugins for it though.

Here's a showcase of some other specialized applications used in my industry: Netbeans showcase. I personally don't use the Netbeans platforms, but the showcase does illustrate programs similar to the ones I create and use. Needless to say that my showing this link in no way is an endorsement of the products or the netbeans platform.

Again, my afforementioned speed issues when trying to use Java IDES. Maybe your users don't have to interact with the GUI component as much as a programmer using a GUI IDE does.

If you are having issues running Eclipse or Netbeans on your machine, then maybe you need to look at your machine. What is this GUI IDE that you speak of? My users abuse the hell out of the strip charts, and other graphical presentation windows and tables that are provided by the GUI. The data arrives in large quantities and in realtime. Experiment command decisions are based on what is being presented on the screen. I think this surpasses any requirements a home user may have with something like Open Office.

For clarification, if I need to do a lot of data transformations it's done prior to being sent to a user workstation. That being said, my personal experience has been that when I needed to have the same data presented on both a Windows machine and a Unix machine, I'll use Java for the presentation layer. I hesitantly use the term "presentation layer" since the users will often treat the Java app as a stand alone application to edit and interpret data stored locally on their machine. But architecturally speaking when compared with the entire data path, it's the presentation layer.

As for Open Office, I think a lot of poor choices were made in its design. Why Sun kept them after they acquired StarOffice probably has more to do with the money and time required to make major changes than the language that the application runs on.

So what is your suggestion for GUI Apps? Keep in mind it needs to be able to run on different platforms, preferably without having to require the end user to install third party libraries or depend on a particular version of a library already being installed. Third party support for libraries outside the scope of GUI is a plus but not required. In my case, be able to run unchanged on a PowerPC based machine and a Intel based machine. Not having to cross compile for a machine you may not have on site is a huge advantage (some of my workstations are not at my office). Even better if you only have to compile once.

Now if I don't need to worry about the code running on different platforms, or don't mind recompiling the source on the target machine, then I use C/C++. Mainly because dealing with pack and unpack on structured data can be a pain in the arse at times. But usually in t

If you're writing an app that doesn't fit in the simple CRUD model best for webapps, and you want a large dev base plus a huge amount of pre-written cross-platform libraries, Java is probably your best bet.

http://netbeans.org/features/platform/showcase.html

Moneydance is a nice cross-platform Java app. Sun blew a huge opportunity to encourage more like that.

They now (after 2 decades) have a Java app store beta for download as opposed to 1) having a web-based app store as well, and 2) just including the app store program in Java Runtime Edition like Apple would have done.

Netbeans code completes a full word when you type the initials of a camel case symbol.

*Stands out of Chair*

YOU'VE INSPIRED ME.
I've got it. Imagine like... an environment... a virtual environment... thats integrated into the language you are developing in. Just the concept of it is groundbreaking. You could customize it however you want! Now, imagine this... right... the integrated development environment was capable of performing everything you just said!

Why, I don't think anyone has ever thought of this before. Not Microsoft, not even the open source community!

Seriously John, lets jump on this.

While it's true that Java's library is highly hierarchical, you don't type out whole namespace paths all the time. You just import namespaces.

Java 5 also features static imports:
import static java.lang.Math.PI;
import static java.lang.Math.*;

double r = cos(PI * theta);

Free Java IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans manage imports automatically. You don't have to type them out.

GlassFish competes directly with Oracle AS, and Weblogic (which Oracle acquired through BEA's acquisition a while back).

NetBeans competes directly with Oracle's JDeveloper.

I wonder if Oracle will keep these tools around. Personally, I think Oracle would be a fool not to. The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is by far the most productive way to develop server side Java Applications.

Netbeans with the Vi Vim for netbeans plugin.
 
Netbeans is FOSS, runs on Windows, Linux and OS X. It handles Java, C/C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and does a bunch of other stuff.
 
There is the viPlugin for Eclipse as well - I just happen to like Netbeans better.
 
The ActiveState folks list VI key bindings as a feature for their Komodo and Komodo Edit products. These are closed source though Komodo Edit is free as in beer. It is cross platform - covering the win/lin/mac world.
 
I'm sure there are other options but those are the largest projects I know of that do what you want.

Netbeans wont die. Not today, not tomorrow. If Netbeans would die tomorrow, it wouldnt move to a new infrastructure now ...

There is a Vi bindings plug-in for Netbeans
http://netbeans.org/kb/55/vi-integration.html

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there?
Well, apart from VisualVM which is a very nice profiling tool (and even included in the JDK these days) you also have the Java ME SDK (version 3.0).

But most of all, if you would have bothered to check the NetBeans website you would have found the platform showcase. So to answer your question about how many real applications: dozens, as you can see for yourself.

Not to flame; but your comments about Eclipse vs. NetBeans would have had much more impact if you would actually have done some real investigating of your own.

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there?
Well, apart from VisualVM which is a very nice profiling tool (and even included in the JDK these days) you also have the Java ME SDK (version 3.0).

But most of all, if you would have bothered to check the NetBeans website you would have found the platform showcase. So to answer your question about how many real applications: dozens, as you can see for yourself.

Not to flame; but your comments about Eclipse vs. NetBeans would have had much more impact if you would actually have done some real investigating of your own.

It happens on a lot of levels and with lots of software. It is IMO one of the key issues which might hinder OSS to be adopted in a more professional way. Do note that I'm not stating that this is the case for each and every open source application out there, but there are a lot..

I've experienced this same kind of situation myself.. I'm a fan of the Java language and utilize this both professionally and as a hobby. Do note that I'm not a full time programmer. I've started out with NetBeans version 4.1 and basically kept following the developments around the IDE, now a full platform. The somewhat counter part of NetBeans, Sun Studio, offered support for UML diagrams. And it didn't took the NB developers too long to port UML support into NetBeans. And I can tell from personal experience that they did a really nice job. It wasn't perfect, it was still rough on the edges so to speak, with a few bugs here and there. But as long as you were familiar with the product you could do a lot. And the same applied to NetBeans.

Now all went relatively well until version 6 of NetBeans was released. That version became quite controversial even though I'll be the first to admit that they have done a really fine job. They basically rewrote the entire thing in order to clean out the code. As a semi-professional developer I can recognize and admire the technical impact this must have had. Don't get me wrong here. But as an end user I was appalled to see that several big and important features were gone all of a sudden. No more support for Bean Patterns (an option which made it easier to add or remove fields from a JavaBean), no longer would it offer an overview for JavaDoc (a separate window which would immediately show you what methods and fields you commented, which ones weren't consistent with the actual method or field and which still needed to be commented), and so on.

SO although it also offered a lot of new features (more modular support, support for other languages, etc) one of the primary basics was slightly crippled. Naturally all of this was fixed eventually, right now I'm also a very happy NetBeans 6.7.1 user and it does everything I need. Everything but one thing...

With the full code rewrite many modules also needed to change in order to be compliant with the new standards. Many succeeded, and many didn't. One of those was the UML plugin. Ironically enough for me it was NetBeans / Studio One which somewhat aroused my interest for UML diagrams. And when NetBeans 6.5 got released it was this particular feature which got totally crippled. It was hardly possible to create any decent diagrams, and to make matters worse the plugin now suddenly stopped supporting some (for me) important diagram types (like deployment, sequence, object). And so I eventually stuck to NetBeans 6.1 because I really needed UML support.

Until I suddenly noticed an article on the UML plugin webpage which mentioned Visual Paradigm. Its a company which developes UML modelling software, and one of their key products is the so called Smart Development Environment. And in my opinion its brilliant! Commercial, but brilliant.

This is a plugin which can embed itself in all of the major (Java) IDE's currently available; From Microsofts Visual Studio .NET to IntelliJ IDEA right to Eclipse and naturally NetBeans. Although they do offer a free community license (free of charge with a few limitations when it comes to p

It happens on a lot of levels and with lots of software. It is IMO one of the key issues which might hinder OSS to be adopted in a more professional way. Do note that I'm not stating that this is the case for each and every open source application out there, but there are a lot..

I've experienced this same kind of situation myself.. I'm a fan of the Java language and utilize this both professionally and as a hobby. Do note that I'm not a full time programmer. I've started out with NetBeans version 4.1 and basically kept following the developments around the IDE, now a full platform. The somewhat counter part of NetBeans, Sun Studio, offered support for UML diagrams. And it didn't took the NB developers too long to port UML support into NetBeans. And I can tell from personal experience that they did a really nice job. It wasn't perfect, it was still rough on the edges so to speak, with a few bugs here and there. But as long as you were familiar with the product you could do a lot. And the same applied to NetBeans.

Now all went relatively well until version 6 of NetBeans was released. That version became quite controversial even though I'll be the first to admit that they have done a really fine job. They basically rewrote the entire thing in order to clean out the code. As a semi-professional developer I can recognize and admire the technical impact this must have had. Don't get me wrong here. But as an end user I was appalled to see that several big and important features were gone all of a sudden. No more support for Bean Patterns (an option which made it easier to add or remove fields from a JavaBean), no longer would it offer an overview for JavaDoc (a separate window which would immediately show you what methods and fields you commented, which ones weren't consistent with the actual method or field and which still needed to be commented), and so on.

SO although it also offered a lot of new features (more modular support, support for other languages, etc) one of the primary basics was slightly crippled. Naturally all of this was fixed eventually, right now I'm also a very happy NetBeans 6.7.1 user and it does everything I need. Everything but one thing...

With the full code rewrite many modules also needed to change in order to be compliant with the new standards. Many succeeded, and many didn't. One of those was the UML plugin. Ironically enough for me it was NetBeans / Studio One which somewhat aroused my interest for UML diagrams. And when NetBeans 6.5 got released it was this particular feature which got totally crippled. It was hardly possible to create any decent diagrams, and to make matters worse the plugin now suddenly stopped supporting some (for me) important diagram types (like deployment, sequence, object). And so I eventually stuck to NetBeans 6.1 because I really needed UML support.

Until I suddenly noticed an article on the UML plugin webpage which mentioned Visual Paradigm. Its a company which developes UML modelling software, and one of their key products is the so called Smart Development Environment. And in my opinion its brilliant! Commercial, but brilliant.

This is a plugin which can embed itself in all of the major (Java) IDE's currently available; From Microsofts Visual Studio .NET to IntelliJ IDEA right to Eclipse and naturally NetBeans. Although they do offer a free community license (free of charge with a few limitations when it comes to p

It happens on a lot of levels and with lots of software. It is IMO one of the key issues which might hinder OSS to be adopted in a more professional way. Do note that I'm not stating that this is the case for each and every open source application out there, but there are a lot..

I've experienced this same kind of situation myself.. I'm a fan of the Java language and utilize this both professionally and as a hobby. Do note that I'm not a full time programmer. I've started out with NetBeans version 4.1 and basically kept following the developments around the IDE, now a full platform. The somewhat counter part of NetBeans, Sun Studio, offered support for UML diagrams. And it didn't took the NB developers too long to port UML support into NetBeans. And I can tell from personal experience that they did a really nice job. It wasn't perfect, it was still rough on the edges so to speak, with a few bugs here and there. But as long as you were familiar with the product you could do a lot. And the same applied to NetBeans.

Now all went relatively well until version 6 of NetBeans was released. That version became quite controversial even though I'll be the first to admit that they have done a really fine job. They basically rewrote the entire thing in order to clean out the code. As a semi-professional developer I can recognize and admire the technical impact this must have had. Don't get me wrong here. But as an end user I was appalled to see that several big and important features were gone all of a sudden. No more support for Bean Patterns (an option which made it easier to add or remove fields from a JavaBean), no longer would it offer an overview for JavaDoc (a separate window which would immediately show you what methods and fields you commented, which ones weren't consistent with the actual method or field and which still needed to be commented), and so on.

SO although it also offered a lot of new features (more modular support, support for other languages, etc) one of the primary basics was slightly crippled. Naturally all of this was fixed eventually, right now I'm also a very happy NetBeans 6.7.1 user and it does everything I need. Everything but one thing...

With the full code rewrite many modules also needed to change in order to be compliant with the new standards. Many succeeded, and many didn't. One of those was the UML plugin. Ironically enough for me it was NetBeans / Studio One which somewhat aroused my interest for UML diagrams. And when NetBeans 6.5 got released it was this particular feature which got totally crippled. It was hardly possible to create any decent diagrams, and to make matters worse the plugin now suddenly stopped supporting some (for me) important diagram types (like deployment, sequence, object). And so I eventually stuck to NetBeans 6.1 because I really needed UML support.

Until I suddenly noticed an article on the UML plugin webpage which mentioned Visual Paradigm. Its a company which developes UML modelling software, and one of their key products is the so called Smart Development Environment. And in my opinion its brilliant! Commercial, but brilliant.

This is a plugin which can embed itself in all of the major (Java) IDE's currently available; From Microsofts Visual Studio .NET to IntelliJ IDEA right to Eclipse and naturally NetBeans. Although they do offer a free community license (free of charge with a few limitations when it comes to p

While I think Eclipse is great, I believe NetBeans is even better these days, at least for someone just picking up Java. The advanced features don't get in your way as much as with Eclipse.

http://collab.netbeans.org/files/documents/186/522/NB-Collab-Code-Review-for-JavaOne-v2.swf

This is a flash video of the collaboration stuff in Netbeans. It sounds like this might be what you're looking for.

GNU Screen is, of course, always an option if you can use a command line text editor like vim or emacs.

Gobby is pretty decent, although it's a bit more limited as an IDE.

I've always preferred NetBeans for this sort of thing, although nothing yet satisfies all of my peer programming requirements. I need an editor that lets one person follow another, and take turns editing, not something that just lets two people edit the same file at the same time. I'd argue whether the latter is of any use at all.

--- SER

You're teaching Java and need pair programming...

Sounds like you need netbeans... http://collab.netbeans.org/http://collab.netbeans.org

I think it sounds tedious, but you did ask...

Frankly I'd rather wear a cowboy hat and drink out of a toilet than program in C++. Scala under Netbeans -- now that is the good stuff!

Netbeans [1] and Eclipse [2] provide a fully functional C++ Integrated Development environment - and work on Windows too. Sure they might not work for *everyone* but they might both very well be on par with Dev-C++ and you know they are continuously extending the functionality of both projects. If you tried it in the past, it might be worth checking it out again:

[1] http://www.netbeans.org/features/cpp/
[2] http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/

This exact issue is being addressed in the next release of netbeans (6.7). http://wiki.netbeans.org/FitnessForever

For PHP work, Eclipse with the PHP Development Tools (PDT) package is quite nice. Though from what I hear Netbeans may be a bit ahead for PHP these days -- the latest version has complete PHP support built in.

I use NetBeans for all of my Drupal coding. Granted it doesn't have word wrap, but there is a Drupal plugin that may help with your situation. Check it out at http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=10859. I also keep all of my lines below 80 chars so that it doesn't go past the print margin, even if it means having to separate part of a string with the concat operator (.). This makes it easier for me to read and maintain, and gets rid of the word wrapping issue.

The "problem", as you pointed out, is that Java has a lot of options while Ruby has Rails and Python has Django and that's about it. You could build a similar tool set with Java/stack with Java to increase productivity. There are Java MVC frameworks, CRUD application generators, persistence strategies, code generators, and so on. A good Java IDE helps peice them together.

It could/should be better though but with the right set of tools/frameworks/libraries you can be very productive in Java.

While Sun may not be the strongest FOSS advocate, they've made many adjustments over the past few years to open up several products.

Stop right there. Sun is one of the biggest corporate contributors to open source. Go ahead, count lines of code. I'm betting Sun will be in the top two if not #1.

Here's a brief list of things Sun has open sourced:
Solaris - Their entire OS, including ZFS and Dtrace
SPARC - Their CPU line
Java - Maybe you've heard of it.
OpenOffice - The office suite that ships with every desktop Linux distribution.
VirtualBox - A GPL desktop virtual machine.
NetBeans IDE - A multi-platform IDE.
OpenDS - LDAP Directory Server
High Availability Cluster

Honorable mention:
NFS - The Network File System
vi - developed by Sun founder Bill Joy
MySQL - Now owned and maintained by Sun-paid engineers

So, next time you say Sun hadn't done much for open source, look again. It would be a shame if Sun was bought by Oracle and all of their valuable contributions were abandoned.