Sun May Join Eclipse Project

Very good news for Eclipse by chochos · 2003-09-02 11:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

This is very good news for Eclipse itself and for Eclipse users as well... Eclipse is way ahead of NetBeans, some would say even ahead of any other Java IDE... it has been ported to Mono (although I don't know if the Mono developers are using it to develop or if it was just a test), there are Eclipse plugins so you can use it with .NET, WebObjects, etc.

Perhaps this means Eclipse will get a GUI builder soon?

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Go hug some trees.

Re:Very good news for Eclipse by The+Cydonian · 2003-09-02 12:30 · Score: 2, Informative

If I remember correctly, #develop is the "official" Mono IDE, although you're right; /. did report some time back (with choice quotes from Miguel) that Eclipse has been successfully ported to Mono (or vice versa).

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More than mere navel gazing.
Re:Very good news for Eclipse by chochos · 2003-09-02 12:49 · Score: 3, Informative

I wouldn't be so sure about #develop being the official Mono IDE because it was only fairly recently that it became Mono-compatible (and I'm not even sure if it's already mono-compatible).

And about Eclipse being ported to mono, it's on the mono homepage, it was ported on May 10th, there's even a screenshot.

I'm not aware of the details, but they probably ported the whole SWT to Mono using their java compiler and then they could build the whole thing.

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Go hug some trees.
Re:Very good news for Eclipse by aluminum+boy · 2003-09-02 13:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

I agree on the GUI... I use eclipse for 90% of my development, but I often have Forte/Netbeans installed for Swing GUI editing. They do have SWT editors, I think.
Re:Very good news for Eclipse by Rich+Dougherty · 2003-09-02 13:55 · Score: 3, Informative

Eclipse is running inside IKVM.NET, a JVM for .NET/Mono. The idea of IKVM is to allow Java bytecodes to run inside a .NET VM. It's pretty cool, check out the FAQ.
Re:Very good news for Eclipse by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2003-09-02 17:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

i'm not sure eclipse is really practical for daily use under mono just yet. its useful mainly to demonstrate these two things: the maturity of the IKVM JITer and the maturity of the Mono runtime as it is able to host this technologically advanced VM to run a large and complex application.

IKVM also helps bridge the two worlds: Java and CIL. Your Java code can then be loaded and used by CIL applications (C#, VB, etc) all running together.

personally i don't rate Eclipse much as a development environment compared to Visual Studio.NET. But i am a big fan of the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT)

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Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
Re:Very good news for Eclipse by sdwr98 · 2003-09-03 06:16 · Score: 2, Informative

I don't know, I've been doing some VB.NET work in VS.NET lately, and I am feeling exceedingly unproductive without features like built-in refactoring, smart renaming, smarter code completion, and similar things that exist in Eclipse (and IntelliJ).

VS.NET may be the Holy Grail for GUI development, but for just plain old writing code, Eclipse is light-years ahead. I mean, VS.NET doesn't even add your import statements, and it won't code complete something if it's not in an import statement.

Sun already integral part of eclipse by Dahan · 2003-09-02 11:43 · Score: 4, Funny

Seeing that an eclipse is when the shadow of the {moon,earth} falls on the {earth,moon}, I don't think the sun needs to join eclipses--it's already a key player.

The aim of the Eclipse project by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-02 11:58 · Score: 2, Funny

The project itself was begun so as to "block out the Sun". This isn't friendly territory for SUNW to be getting into.

Re:The aim of the Eclipse project by gerddie · 2003-09-02 19:07 · Score: 2, Funny

You're right: In the ancient text of "Nostr^H^H^H^H^HPink Floyd" I found this verse:

All that you touch. All that you see
All that you taste. All you feel
All that you love. All that you hate
All you distruct. All you save
All that you give. All that you deal
All that you buy. Beg, borrow or steal
All you create. All you destroy
All that you do. All that you say
All that you eat. Everyone you meet
All that you slight. Everyone you fight
All that is now. All that is gone
All that's to come. And everything under the sun
Is in tune. But the sun is eclipse by the moon

Now I really wonder who this moon is.

GUI Builder by toga98 · 2003-09-02 12:38 · Score: 3, Informative

There are plugins available right now that allow you to create forms via drag-n-drop. I don't know if any are open source. You can check out eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/plugins.jsp for more info.

Re:GUI Builder by chochos · 2003-09-02 12:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, but as the article says, there are many features that Eclipse doesn't have out-of-the-box. A default GUI Builder would be something very good to have without having to install a plugin. The problem is usually with the issue of having the GUI with SWT, swing, AWT, etc, although SWT seems to be the way to go.

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Go hug some trees.

Swing RIP by ignatzMouse · 2003-09-02 13:52 · Score: 4, Interesting

The key to Eclipse eclipsing other tools is it being built with the Standard Widget Toolkit. Swing is a failure like the AWT before it. Any IDE that is built with Swing will be blown out of the water by Eclipse.

Soon it will be down to VisualStudio.NET, Eclipse and Emacs for developing things. Borland's only man left on the island marriage with BEA ain't gonna save it.

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No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche

Re:Swing RIP by jilles · 2003-09-02 22:47 · Score: 4, Informative

I've yet to see any swing problems that are inherent to the technology. Swing looks and feels great on my machine. I use both eclipse and swing applications and I can't notice a difference in responsiveness, look & feel, etc. I have yet to see a single swt UI for which no swing equivalent can be made. Also eclipse is not noticably faster than e.g. JEdit. It could be that your judgement is affected by the lack of hardware acceleration of swing (or 2d graphics in general) under linux. Under windows and mac os x, this is not an issue.

Admittedly it took until version 1.4.2 of the jdk for swing to catch up. I'd say swt is close to irrelevant in eclipse since it does not even include a GUI builder. Eclipse is mostly used for server side development. I think most eclipse users couldn't care less what particular toolkit is used. They just need a responsive UI and swt/eclipse happens to offer it for them.

So far the only major application to use SWT that I am aware of (no doubt there are some prototypes somewhere) is eclipse itself. I am aware of a substantial amount of mature swing apps. So to call swing a failure because swt supposedly blows swing out of the water based on a sample of one (1) application seems a bit premature. IMHO IBM wasted time and resources by developing swt. I'm sure it's a decent toolkit but I can't seem to find out what problem with swing it is trying to address or what the added value of swt is for serverside development.

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Jilles
Re:Swing RIP by ignatzMouse · 2003-09-03 02:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've used every version of JBuilder since version one. Version one was slow. Version two was slow. Version four running on a dual processor 400mhz Pentium NT4 box was slow. Version 7 running with the latest Pentium processors and over 1GB on RAM was slow. Every time I've tried the latest version and every time it's as slow as molasses.

How sluggishness Swing IDEs are is the reason I switched to developing Java with Emacs... that was until I tried Eclipse. Why should I keep convincing people to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a product that is slow and doesn't have the community support of Eclipse?

This is coming from a long time lover of Borland products. While building Jbuilder in Java was a very ballsy move at the time it was also a fundamental design flaw that will be very hard to overcome.

Obviously the gang over at IBM must have seen something wrong with Swing if they were willing to invest in a totally different API. It sure as heck bares out in the performance of their products.

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No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche

Re:what about netbeans by primus_sucks · 2003-09-02 15:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think that would be like trying to merge Linux and Windows. One is fast, flexble, and powerful, while the other is slow, inflexible, and bloated. If they could merge in the GUI builder and add SWT support to it, that would be cool.

Sun Needs an IDE by fm6 · 2003-09-02 15:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Sun has always needed an IDE to go with Java. First they tried to develop one in-house, which was a disaster. Then it seemed like they would surely buy either Symantec or Borland just for the sake of the IDE. But the Symantec IDE turned out to be a bomb. And I suspect that the thought of trying to digest Borland gave the Sun people nightmares. They finally ended up buying Forte, but that doesn't seem to have worked out.

Meanwhile, IBM has quietly pushed Eclipse. I keep getting the impression that IBM understands both the two relevent cultures (Java developers and open-source people) a lot better than Sun.

SWT in JFC by cloudless.net · 2003-09-02 18:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

Will Sun eventually include SWT into the Java class library? Just about everyone knows Swing is bloated and slow.

Re:SWT in JFC by DrEasy · 2003-09-03 04:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

I know I should RTFAs, but how different are the Swing and SWT APIs anyway? Would it make sense for JDK to make SWT comply to the Swing API and quietly remove the Swing implementation? This way older applications wouldn't break, and Sun would save face to a certain point. I for one don't want to see 3 different GUI APIs in the same JDK...

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"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."

Re:what about netbeans by fforw · 2003-09-02 18:56 · Score: 3, Informative

I think that would be like trying to merge Linux and Windows. One is fast, flexble, and powerful, while the other is slow, inflexible, and bloated. If they could merge in the GUI builder and add SWT support to it, that would be cool.

Have you even looked at Netbeans in the last releases? Especially Netbeans 3.5 with J2SDK1.4.2 got much faster.

And I totally fail to see why Netbeans should be inflexible. It's one the most flexible applications I ever had the joy to work with.
It's not only highly modular it's also branding-enabled.

And if you think it's bloated - well it's modular - just deactivate the modules you don't need.

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while (!asleep()) sheep++

Sun's IDE (Parent not insightfull) by fforw · 2003-09-02 19:58 · Score: 4, Informative

NetBeans started as a student project in the Czech Republic (originally called Xelfi), in 1996. The goal was to write a Delphi-like Java IDE in Java. A company was formed around this project, called NetBeans. There were two commercial versions of NetBeans, called Developer 2.0 and 2.1. Around May of 1999, NetBeans released a beta of what was to be Developer 3.0 - some months later, in October '99, NetBeans was acquired by Sun Microsystems. After some additional development time, Sun released the Forte for Java Community Edition IDE - the same IDE that had been in beta as NetBeans Developer 3.0.

There had always been interest in going Open Source at NetBeans. In June 2000, Sun open-sourced the NetBeans IDE [...]

(from http://www.netbeans.org/about/history.html)

Yeah.. Forte didn't work out. It fell in the hands of evil open source communists =)

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while (!asleep()) sheep++

Re:Political reason not to ... by KDan · 2003-09-02 20:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you can't beat'em, join'em...

Daniel

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Carpe Diem

SWT vs Swing vs AWT and Sun by ebresie · 2003-09-03 11:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

In the beginning...Sun made AWT and it was very low level hardward/OS linked.

Then came Swing, which was more abstract, higher level, and less hardware specific, with more functionality in some areas and less in others.

Then came SWT, which came about to increase speed by moving closer to the lower level APIs, to avoid lots of bloat, to be closer to host OS look and feel, and once again more hardware/OS specific and this was good..

There are always differences, and more differences

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Sun doesn't plan on abandoning its development all together (see Project Rave) I beleive it is suppose to be a new IDE implementation, but still based on Netbean foundation.

New Java Specification Request also include a common java ide plugin standardization, so this may be another reason they are doing some of this.

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Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com

Swing, NetBeans and the anti-hype by bruckner · 2003-09-04 19:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

I can't really thing of any technology more un-hyped than Swing. NetBeans would be a close second to this. But the reality is both are at least good enough, and in most cases excellent, to address the needs of cross platform Java client developers.

My personal experience in the building of a huge client, Swing based applications suite for near-real-time railway traffic monitoring, control, planning and simulation, currently being deployed the Spain's second high speed railway (Madrid-Lleida, and Barcelona and on to France in the coming years), speaks volumes about the ability of Swing to give out the needed performance, and NetBeans as a high productivity environment for Swing applications development.

Just imagine: a whole bunch of applications featuring autodeployment (via Java Web Start), interactive geographical and chart specialized data displays (with the help of ILOG JViews), and lots of 'plain-Swing' apps with customized components like tables supporting 1000's of rows at any moment, and keeping everything up-to-date thanks to a Tibco-based Message Oriented Middleware that broadcasts near-real-time data to every client, be it Swing or web-based... And everything performs exceedingly well in custom quadruple-headed displays (virtual screens of 6400x1024 pixels) under Windows 2000! (The server big iron is HP-UX, so no need to worry about a 350 km/h train blue-screening... And despite everything being IP connected and XML enabled, the control networks are fully isolated -not just firewalled- from the outer Internet; no script-kiddies sending to Huesca a Zaragoza-bound train).

So please think twice before dismissing Swing and NetBeans as 'dead tech'. I myself did a test-drive with Eclipse (there wasn't a stable version, so it was some time ago) and I wasn't even able to compile HelloWorld.java; and despite that I don't run around in circles, screaming how terrible Eclipse is, as I assume it must have got better with time. Just as Swing has.

Ivan

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An eye for an eye anD%$"%R:=\D\q[NO SIG]

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