"Project Rave" Beta Released

Glenn Holmer writes "The long-awaited beta of Sun Java Studio Creator (the IDE formerly known as Project Rave) has been released. This is the product that is supposed to make Java development easy (especially for web apps) by using drag and drop technology. It is based on NetBeans and uses JavaServer Faces technology."

Comments

As usual...

[Pahroza]

As usual, there is no Mac OS X installer available for the Sun Java[tm] Studio Creator. There do appear to be sources for SteadyState and JGraph. I'm downloading them now, we'll see what I can make of it.

Limited functionality, high price?

[bartok]

I fail to see how another non-free Java IDE is gonna make Java more attractive to VS.NET developers (since that's the stated target market). People are much more likely to download Eclipse for free and use that.

I see this IDE's market to be nothing more than a niche of people who already use Java at work to code Java Server Feces.

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[KDan]

roflmao @ java server feces...

:-P

Daniel

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[saden1]

No one I know uses Java Server Feces. Does anyone in here?

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[the eric conspiracy]

No one I know uses Java Server Feces. Does anyone in here?

JSF has just recently been released. It's an important new technology that brings J2EE UI development up to snuff with many of the ideas MS used in .Net. While it isn't in wide use right now, it will be integrated into frameworks like Struts etc. over the next year or so, making it part of the standard J2EE toolkit.

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[Arkham]

Is there a free .NET IDE that competes favorably with Eclipse?

If not, then I don't see why Sun should money developing a tool that will never be profitable to make Java more attractive on price. There are few if any commercial developers doing .NET development and not using expensive Microsoft tools to do it.

I saw a demo of Rave at a conference. It's pretty slick stuff and lets you design a site with a database backend using only the GUI and very little code. The real issue is that nobody I know uses an IDE of any kind for development. Most people seem to still use vi or emacs or a fancy text editor like BBEdit or SlickEdit.

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[zbaron]

... lets you design a site with a database backend using only the GUI and very little code.

WebObjects?

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[__aavhli5779]

WebObjects is not free software.

GNUstepWeb, however, is.

And yes, it's a complete clone of WebObjects and Enterprise Object Framework.

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[iroberts]

It's just a shame that JSF is, at least out of the box, built on top of JSP. There are some much nicer alternatives out there (Jamon and Tea come to mind), but the industry seems set on using a tepmlating language with no static type checking, and a poor ability to factor templates.

Re:Limited functionality, high price?

[Richard_at_work]

try sharpdevelop, (#develop). Tis a free eclipse like .net developers tool, written in c#.

Yay!

[Z0mb1eman]

Here come more clueless "developers" who drag&drop their way to software disasters... :)

In all seriousness though, this is most likely a good thing. It'll be interesting to see how this changes the corporate landscape. Although I have to cringe at any press release that uses the word "leverage"...

Re:Yay!

[Pahroza]

Drag and drop and wonder why things don't work the way you want them to, but rather how the IDE thinks you want them to.

They do serve their purpose in assisting people with spending less time working on the UI implementation of the code they write by hand. I think a good example of that is XCode.

Re:Yay!

[daem0n1x]

Don't be so narrow-minded. I had the bad luck of being transfered to a web development team, and all we use here is M$. Not the .NET, but that old ASP shit. (Sigh!)

I tried PHP, but it doesn't feel like an alternative. Web development is particularly painful. I hate writing the same HTML shit everytime I want to create a new form, and having to deal with all that request/response shit, validating arguments with totally unreliable client-side Javascript or, as an alternative, enter in the request/response state-maintaining inferno, being restricted only to strings as arguments, etc. The Wysiwyg tools we have here are even worse than coding by hand, and they can't deal server-active content, anyway. Nobody uses them. Add it to short deadlines and a boss breathing down your neck.

Now, a framework that abstracts me from that web crap would be reeeealy nice. A web application shouldn't be harder to design than a GUI one with Delphi, or VBeuh.

My boss is considering upgrading our skills. I'm actively lobbying J2EE, which I love, but I don't think it has any chance against the "Evil Empire" .NET Studio. My boss is gonna drool all over when he sees M$ WebForms in action, even if it only works with IE! How can I avoid M$ lock-in if any kiddy can build an entire site right away, while I'm trying to get some JSPs to work? Even if the kiddie does a horrendous job, management guys don't give shit about technical issues. All they care about is "it was fast to create and looks nice".

That "true machos only need vi" attitude is part responsible for the Evil Empire world domination. I mean, I already know how to make web pages! Now, what I need is a good tool that allows me to do that without re-inventing the wheel everyday! Any development tool that doesn't treat me like I'm braindead (VBeuh) and isn't awkward and kludgy (MSVC++) is welcome.

I'm downloading Sun Studio right away and start trying it. If I can make the M$ zealots here like it, it will be a great victory. If I don't, my future probably is become another Evil Empire zombie, or live from unemployment checks.

OS X

[melquiades]

I wonder, is this IDE written in pure Java?

If not, why not?

If so, why is Sun dorking around with platform-specific installers?

Either way, it seems tantamount to an admission of the failure of Java portability ... which is funny, because Java is, by and large, extraordinarily portable, and there are plenty of platform-neutral installers around coming from people with far fewer resources than Sun.

Re:OS X

[jilles]

It is pure Java. However, platform specific installers are nice for properly integrating with the native platform (icons, menu items, file associations, paths, shortcuts).

I can imagine there is little market demand for Mac OS X support and so little incentive for sun to invest time in it. In addition, Apple is a big competitor in the workstation market so SUN will likely prefer that developers use something else. Preferably something where SUN delivers the JVM (linux, solaris & win32) so they can hook into the compiler and sun specific JVM optimizations.

Probably, it is rather easy to get the thing going on a mac if you know what you are doing so I don't really see the problem.

Re:OS X

[pdlnhrd]

it is running just fine on my powerbook right now. it is 100% java so it works on any platform. it was easy to install. it only take a clue to do it.

Re:OS X

[Arkham]

I recently asked James Gosling ("father of Java" and head of Sun's tools development group) about this very issue when I attended a speech he gave in Atlanta. He was demoing on a Powerbook so I thought it was an apt question.

He said all of Sun's tools run on Macs, and indeed many of their developers used Macs on a daily basis. He said that they really need to work on Mac installers, and hopefully the situation would improve over time.

If anyone has influence over this, it's Gosling. If you're interested in seeing Mac tools, email him and let him know.

Re:OS X

[zbaron]

Its a self-extracting zip for those still wondering. This package seems to be suffering from the include-yet-another-jre problem, so removing the included JRE and linking the system included one (or setting JDK_HOME) will get it to run -- and strip nearly 100Mb off the installation. The installer fell over trying to install pointbase though.

Re:OS X

[Bricklets]

Yes, let us all /. Dr. James Gosling's email to hell and back. :-)

Rave - what's up with the awful marketing blather?

[joelparker]

Rave is great, well worth trying for Java apps--
but the homepage introduction is horrendous.

• powerful technologies that can be
  used productively and effectively.
  
  leverage the power of the Java platform

Can someone at Sun get a clue about this?
I'm a Java developer (and former Sun employee)
and I don't need to read words like "leverage"
and "powerful technologies" and buzzwords.

Instead: tell me what the tool is,
what it does-- ideally with screenshots--
and how it fits with my other Java tools.

Cheers, Joel

Move along...

[Hamster Of Death]

Lets see the responses.

I dosen't work on platform $FOO

Real developers use language $BAR

Java is proprietary therefore it sucks $FOO is much better because it's $OS LICENSED

I tried it but it didn't do $OBSCURE THING properly so I went back to $POPULAR THING

I heard that MS is discontinuing support for it so why bother.

It's just another incarnation of $FOO why do we need so many ways to do $BAR why can't there be one standard?

$FOO is so much better at $BAR than this everyone should use $FOO.

$FOO dosen't make coffee

etc..

I'm sure you'll point out the spelling errors and missed points.

Re:Move along...

[Pahroza]

One more -

Why are you whining about people whining ?

Re:Move along...

[BigGerman]

you forgot:
Java is slow
Real men do not need memory management

Java Server Feces

[Earlybird]

• No one I know uses Java Server Feces. Does anyone in here?

With a name like that, I bet it's kinda crap.

Buzzword enabled

[Latent Heat]

Cocoa, IMHO, has the best buzzwords -- check out Apple's Web site.

Re:Can we say "TO LITTLE TOO LATE"

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool. Sun had a Java IDE out before. And I don't know of any real developers who want IDEs.

Did any one of you try it out

[Anonymous Coward]

I did on XP (yeah not linux) and the installer fails. Seems like they bundled their crappy, trashy sunone app server with it. They never seem to stop trying to promote their appserver which incidentally has been trashed and dumped in the garbage by the market. Oh yep!,they do mention the issue with the installer - it is the first item in the FAQ and of course offer no solution to fix it.

Eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried the software and I won't use it.

It's not because the software doesn't work well (it seems to work pretty well), it's because it alienates me from my code. It's like if I were losing control, my creativity, my freedom ...

If you just drag and drop stuff you are inherently limited (when you want to do something that the programme does not allow).

Re:Eye candy

[njcoder]

I've been messing around with JSC for a little bit. While it's not something I can use for any real project yet it does have a lot of potenntial. The one thing I did like was that you can easily go between the gui and the source code and a change in one will automatically reflect a change in the other. So I don't understand your argument.

Also remember this isn't a production release and it has some features missing as well as some bugs. Over all I think it's pretty cool. Definately the kind of tool that would work perfectly for corporate intranet developers.

I've recently started using an ide instead of a regular text editor. I have to say I really like Netbeans. It does a lot more out of the box than eclipse. With eclipse I had to download a bunch of different tools. THe ones that actually seemed like they would be useful weren't free. Netbeans gets you up and running with everything you need to develop web applications.

Speed isn't that much of a problem anymore with Tiber beta and the 3.6 beta netbeans. When 4.0 NB comes out things will be even better with the ant based project system.

JSC is based on the Netbeans platform. It doesn't look much like netbeans at first but that's the point of the Netbeans paltform. It's very customizable.

Re:Can we say "TO LITTLE TOO LATE"

[Nykon]

then the "real developers" you know probably don't have "real deadlines" wjere they don't have time to retype everything and re invent the wheel. Auto-complete alone proably saves me a good hour or more a day.

Hrmmmm... Looks familiar....

[fuali]

...where have I seen this IDE before... Hrrrmmm

• Server navigator
• Tool box of drag and drop components
• The exact default lay-out of...

...VS.NET!!!