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Tim Boudreau On The Future of NetBeans

Posted by timothy on from the soon-they-will-hatch dept.

maffstephens writes "With the release of NetBeans 4.0 set to reignite the open-source Java IDE war and all sorts of cool developments on the horizon, it seemed like a very good time to talk to one of the key senior NetBeans developers. In this interview, Tim Boudreau (co-author of NetBeans: The Definitive Guide) speaks candidly about his views on rival IDE Eclipse, the future of NetBeans, and the thinking behind its new Ant-based projects system."

43 comments

  1. Is election year mudslinging contagious? by weeksie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's so frustrating when you read an article about someone's product and they can't stop talking about what is wrong with their competitor. I'm sure Netbeans is much improved since the last time I tried it. I'm sure it has wonderful virtues as an extensible platform. But nothing about slamming my current IDE of choice makes me want to try it.

    I think the reason that a lot of developers get so religious about their platforms has to do with how much value we put on our intelligence. To insult our tools is a roundabout insult to our intellect. At least that's how some take it and I'm sure that it makes it all the much worse when the project/tools are also your baby. Still feelings aside if he wants to do Netbeans a favour he should probably lay off the Other Platform Bashing.

    1. Re:Is election year mudslinging contagious? by bsdbigot · · Score: 1

      Troll much? It's a good point about platform-bashing between, say, coworkers or classmates. You're talking about B2B criticism among competitors, however - it's part of the Free Market System. So, you don't want to try NetBeans (again) because their leader criticized the hype and marketing practices of Eclipse? So, what? Tim Boudreau was responding to the same thing that you're complaining about; bashing from the other side. And, in his case/from his perspective, it was warranted (re: the three questions about Eclipse and competition that were asked of him by the interviewer).

      You're too quick to jump on the hate-this-or-that bandwagon because you are sensitive to attacks on your intelligence. RTFA! The majority of it speaks to the strengths and features of NetBeans, not the weaknesses of the competition. The attack on your intelligence is actually a back-handed compliment about IBM's marketing; unless you are in IBM's marketing division, I don't think it applies to you. Besides, those comments follow a self-deprecation which acknowledges that NetBeans was a POS. I see no evidence in this article of anything remotely criticizing you or your IDE. Get a life, grow some skin.

      Disclaimer: for the little bit of Java I do write, I use gvim; I have used NetBeans before, and actually just downloaded the latest version to give it a shot. I'm not a NetBeans lover, however, and I would have said the same thing if the situation was reversed.

      --
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  2. Netbeans UI components by 12357bd · · Score: 1

    do you think there's much chance of Sun ever hosting a common UI components repository?

    It would be great, to have the graphical (componentable) behaviour in one layer, and the whole netbeans base as an extension, indeed,

    What strikes me badly is: why it's not already done? Wasn't Java and OOP in general all about encapsulation.?

    Don't take wrong I've been doing OOP and java for years, but I can't understand why such a conceptually simple question is not already resolved.

    --
    What's in a sig?
    1. Re:Netbeans UI components by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well Some thing wrong about Netbeans thats wasn't probably mentioned in the interview that is that it gives error about the fact that another insatnce of Netbeans is running when actualy its not. and gives parsing errors(by the parser running in forground thats gives errors while typing the source code) if u just delete a line declaring a package While using netbeans for GUI you get uneditbale code.
      Some thing more to it that it never deletes code that was generated automatically by adding the GUI(Swing) component graphically, when u delete the GUI component Visually. You Dont get thses errors with eclipse. Though I am a big fan of debugging facility by Netbeans.
      regards
      $Mustansar

  3. Drag Drop Swing Components in Netbeans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well Some thing wrong about Netbeans thats wasn't probably mentioned in the interview that is that it gives error about the fact that another insatnce of Netbeans is running when actualy its not. and gives parsing errors(by the parser running in forground thats gives errors while typing the source code) if u just delete a line declaring a package While using netbeans for GUI you get uneditbale code.
    Some thing more to it that it never deletes code that was generated automatically by adding the GUI(Swing) component graphically, when u delete the GUI component Visually. You Dont get thses errors with eclipse. Though I am a big fan of debugging facility by Netbeans.
    regards
    $Mustansar

  4. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have a lot to learn about IBM, young person.

    1. Re:Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. by weeksie · · Score: 1

      What other than the fact that they're a corporation out to make money? That they're known to be just as if not more ruthless than Microsoft? Nothing new there.

      I like Eclipse because it's a good IDE, not because of a political leaning. If I were bound by politics I'd be using Emacs ;)

    2. Re:Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm indifferent to both netbeans and eclipse, as I don't particularly like java and don't need to write it at my new job.

      But IBM Eclipse really annoyed me, not because they chose to write a different IDE with strong similarties to the already-existing but not IBM-controlled (eclipse, block out the sun, geddit? hur hur) netbeans, though that annoyed the Sun fanboys.

      No, what annoyed me was eclipse's complete disregard for existing open standard specifications for IDE plugins, helpers etc.. While they mostly came from netbeans, they were not tied to netbeans any more than some apache apis are tied to apache just because they have org.apache in their draft versions. They could have worked with sun and maybe borland to build a vendor-neutral plugin model for Eclipse/Websphere, NetBeans/Forte and Borland's thingy, but they had to re-invent wheels so that they could claim to own them...

    3. Re:Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. by Earlybird · · Score: 2, Informative
      Eclipse's plugin model is based on vendor-neutral, open standards. It's called OSGi.

      That's just the plugin model, mind you, which is not specific to Eclipse; it just specifies the way plugins are packaged, declare their metadata, are loaded, accessed etc.

      Eclipse's object model, which rests on top of this framework, is something else, and that's Eclipse-specific. Eclipse's object model is much more generic and vast in scope than NetBean's OpenIDE API.

      In case you don't know the Eclipse plugin system well, it's a modular design based on loose coupling of components all extending each other.

      There's no central plugin point to speak of; Eclipse is essentially a collection of loosely-coupled components, with some glue at the bottom to bootstrap the core plugins.

      Every extension can potentially extend another. For example, if I provide a view, then I can let anyone extend that view by, say, providing context menu items, toolbar buttons, visual overlays and the like.

      These extensions would all communicate using publicly declared APIs; hidden inter-component communication is discouraged.

      For example, if I were building a stock trading app, I might write a bunch of different views -- graph view, a table view, a ticker view, etc.; the table view would expose a mechanism to detect when the user has clicked on a specific stock symbol.

      The graph view would plug into this mechanism and change its view to show the currently selected stock. However, the graph view would not know anything about the view into which it was plugging into; it would only know about the interface contract of the extension point, which could be anything.

      You could potentially bundle each of these views separately and mix and match with other, third-party views: as long as they know the public interfaces, they can talk to each other. I could write a better graph view and plug it in without having to change any code in any other view.

      The reason Eclipse is so flexible, and is popularly touted as an "integrated anything environment", is precisely because it is so loosely defined.

      Eclipse would not be able to use the NetBeans APIs directly because they are, well, NetBeans. Eclipse could not do everything it does today if it adhered to the NetBeans API.

      Also, NetBeans/OpenIDE is tightly coupled to Swing, and while SWT can embed Swing, consistently and seamlessly adapting Swing-using components into the SWT environment would be a lost cause.

  5. stuff the client by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not sure about the rest of you, but 99% of the coding I do is server side. Once in a blue moon you see a swing app or applet, but compared to web apps, tags, beans, and ejb's.

    Been a while since I used netbeans, but the thing their 'free' version did not rad ejb's. To be fair, eclipse did not either (had to buy ibm's kit). With eclipse open, folks since have added the ejb support for multiple app servers today. Want to win me over? Give me more than the ant tools I use today...

  6. Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga by tod_miller · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I started using Netbeans waaay back in the day, I had a few problems, but I liked the interface. I made the arduous chance to Eclipse, and it took a while, but slowly I got used to Eclipse.

    I always wanted to go back to Netbeans to see what they had, but always Eclipse was good enough - now!

    And the refactoring blew me away, and speed, and SWeeTness.

    The CVS integration was quirky since the beginning (when I used it) then matured. I have been using a 2003 build until about month ago, and I was almost lost again using it.

    Well, I thought that was time ot check out Netbeans again, but I started developing some code out of office, and found myself using a twisted up machine at a local university - I smacked emacs and cygwin on, and after a couple of days hitting [End] instead of C^e I got into it...

    Now I use emacs at work... it is like having a colonic for your mind... it cleans out all those things you were thinking about, and gets you back to the code level.

    I still love eclipse and have about a million templates that go az, azz, azzz, qaz, qazza, zxc, zxczxc for doing all sorts of wierd and wonderful shortcuts. I love the accessibility of the information I need about libraries and attaching source to a .jar you have on the classpath. [rather than *mounting* source in netbeans.]

    I have had about ~4 crashes in my workspace in one week when using some large projects (on a nightly I just happened to get):

    so my dir looks like:

    workspace
    workspace_
    workspace_backup
    workspa ce_bust
    workspace_working_ :-)

    I think using C^x-f and finding the source you need quickly, search the method name, read the method, is a bit more holistic then using the f3 all the time in eclipse...

    So in one sense I love Eclipse, and always will, I shed many a tear for Netbeans, and promise myself to reinstall it. I hate JDeveloper 9, JBuilder I only used at The Big U, and EditPlus never fails!

    For now I use emacs.

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  7. JFluid code profiler by Armhold · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Emacs and shell guy, but the feature that has me salivating over NetBeans 4.0 is the upcoming code profiler previously known as "JFluid". Have a look at http://profiler.netbeans.org/index.html.

    That, and the potential for using refactoring tools has me seriously considering an IDE for the first time in my life. The question is: can I make all of this work with Emacs?

    1. Re:JFluid code profiler by Khelder · · Score: 1

      I've used Netbeans (v3.6, I think) and emacs on the same project. Emacs always notices when I've changed something from NB (of course, it's emacs :) ), and as far as I can remember, NB never got confused about edits from emacs.

      I used NB mostly for GUI layout, and some for debugging, and used emacs for everything else.

      If you're doing a lot with GUIs, I think it's a lot easier to use an IDE like NB than emacs (speaking as someone with a .emacs of ~2200 lines).

      P.S. I use past tense because I'm coding in C++ and Python these days. Next time I use Java, I'll be keen to check out the improvements.

  8. Which is more useful? by Zach+Garner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the interview, it seems that they are saying that Sun's NetBeans came up with the great ideas first, but had a bad implementation. So bad, that many who tried NetBeans until after 3.5 (there on 4.0 right now) had such a bad user experience that they wouldn't consider using it again.

    Meanwhile, IBM properly funded eclipse, properly marketed it, attracted a strong user base that provides many plugins, and as a result has become the winner of the two.

    Trying not to sound like flamebait, but this sounds like a few other things Sun has done. For instance, Swing is not a bad idea, but long standing bugs, missing components and an initially buggy and slow product have led many to never consider Java for desktop development.

    So, a question for those that have used a recent version of NetBeans: Despite all of the flaws that were mentioned in the interview (many/most of them were mentioned only to say "it's been fixed in 4.0"), is NetBeans more useful than Eclipse?

    Are there plugins for Ant, Checkstyle, FindBugs, Bugzilla, etc, like there are for Eclipse? What about subversion support?

    Without that support, NetBeans will not be useful to me, unfortunately.

    1. Re:Which is more useful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Eclipse has clearly won. Permanently.

      Even if Sun threw their entire marketing department at NetBeans, it'd probably hurt more than it helps.

      And NetBeans is a very silly name. Eclipse sounds sophisticated by comparison.

      DISCLAIMER: I don't use either of them. I use vim

    2. Re:Which is more useful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      History shows that when the Sun marketing department in particular gets behind almost anything, it usually hurts more than it helps...

    3. Re:Which is more useful? by anomalous+cohort · · Score: 1
      is NetBeans more useful than Eclipse ... Are there plugins for ... What about subversion support?

      How do the two IDEs stack up when using such technologies as Struts, EJB, or Hibernate? They both seem to be just capable of building such projects once the ant file and/or classpath is correct. What about deeper integration?

    4. Re:Which is more useful? by Zach+Garner · · Score: 1

      While not as difficult to integrate, nor as important as those that you mention, supporting these tools as plugins instead of via ant is a great benefit and shouldn't be considered insignificant.

      In case anyone reading this doesn't know what I'm talking about: Checkstyle (ensures your code conforms to the defined coding standards) and findbugs (attempts to find common bug patterns in your code) have plugins that cause your code to be analyzed when you change your source (they are additional "builders", it is somewhat customizable). The result is that in your "Problems" view, you see these problems with your code.

      Eclipse can already do much of the functionality of checkstyle, but my company tries to avoid forcing everyone to use one IDE.

      The bugzilla plugin (based off of the current development branch, unfortunately) shows your bugzilla bugs in the "Tasks" view.

      Obviously none of those plugins are essential features. Taken as a sum, what you get is a much more pleasant working environment in your IDE. Also, support for these relatively cutting edge tools is an indication that you can stay ahead of the curve with Eclipse, while using other IDEs (not picking on NetBeans, I don't know what it supports) you're stuck with a less smooth process, having to switch back to the command line or a web page to access important information.

      Look at it this way, if a particular IDE can't even manage to support popular simple tools, how can you expect them to support more complex ones (that aren't backed by a deep-pocketed corporation)

    5. Re:Which is more useful? by JaniHalinen · · Score: 1
      Are there plugins for Ant, Checkstyle, FindBugs, Bugzilla, etc, like there are for Eclipse? What about subversion support?

      The project system of NetBeans 4.0 is based on Ant. NetBeans has a built in CVS client and I think it works with Subversion too.

      There is also a lot of extensions for Netbeans: http://www.netbeans.org/catalogue/index.html

      NetBeans 4.0 Release Plan: http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/40/inde x.html

  9. Re:Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if you want to "get back to the code level," have you tried vi?

  10. Newbies, all of you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Only newbie wannabe programmers use Java.

    1. Re:Newbies, all of you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only newbie wannabe programmers use Java.

      true, so true

  11. Re:Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga by lphuberdeau · · Score: 1

    Ever heard of CVS?

    --
    Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
    PHP Queb
  12. Re:Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga by tod_miller · · Score: 1

    -1 no point - for assuming the person reading it has any clue what you are insinuating, implying or conveying.

    OK - I have heard of CVS, what is your point?

    --
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  13. Re:Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga by tod_miller · · Score: 1

    Yes I like voddEscEsciddxi^H^H^H^H^H.

    damn.

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  14. NetBeans is NOT Open Source by maxgilead · · Score: 5, Informative

    NetBeans is NOT Open Source software. While parts of it may qualify as such, the IDE as distributed by http://www.netbeans.org/ is not.

    Below I cite sample parts of NetBeans license. There is "Binary Code License Agreement" which gives us no rights to redistribute and "Supplemental License Terms" for each part, which, basically, allows us to redistribute it in binary form only, unchanged. And such terms are repeated in almost exact same way for all other parts.

    As far as I can tell it's not even close to open source. However, if someone knows better I'd like to be proven wrong, but facts, please, not opinions.

    Here is first paragraph of NetBeans license:

    1. The following software products found in the NetBeans Build are governed by the Binary Code License Agreement including its applicable Supplemental Terms and Conditions ("BCL"):
    * XML Parser v.1.1 (jaxp and parser)
    * JavaHelp v.2.0
    * JavaC Compiler
    * J2EE Deployment APIs 1.1
    * J2EE Management 1.0
    * EJB Enterprise Java Beans 2.0
    * JMX 1.2
    * J2EE Editor
    * XML resolver 1.0
    * JMI 1.0

    Here are two first paragraphs of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement:

    1. LICENSE TO USE. Sun grants you a non-exclusive and non-
    transferable license for the internal use only of the
    accompanying software and documentation and any error
    corrections provided by Sun (collectively "Software"), by the
    number of users and the class of computer hardware for which the
    corresponding fee has been paid.

    2. RESTRICTIONS Software is confidential and copyrighted.
    Title to Software and all associated intellectual property
    rights is retained by Sun and/or its licensors. Except as
    specifically authorized in any Supplemental License Terms, you
    may not make copies of Software, other than a single copy of
    Software for archival purposes. Unless enforcement is
    prohibited by applicable law, you may not modify, decompile, or
    reverse engineer Software. You acknowledge that Software is not
    designed, licensed or intended for use in the design,
    construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.
    Sun disclaims any express or implied warranty of fitness for
    such uses. No right, title or interest in or to any trademark,
    service mark, logo or trade name of Sun or its licensors is
    granted under this Agreement.

    Of course there are supplemental license terms for each part mentioned above, let's see what rights they give us for "JAVA(TM) DEVELOPMENT TOOLS JAXP.JAR AND PARSER.JAR ARCHIVE FILES FROM JAVA API FOR XML PARSING, VERSION 1.0":

    1. Internal Use and Development License Grant. Subject to the
    terms and conditions of this Agreement, including, but not
    limited to, Section 3 (JavaTM Technology Restrictions) of these
    Supplemental Terms, Sun grants you a non-exclusive, non-
    transferable, limited license to reproduce internally and use
    internally the binary form of the XML JAR Files Software for the
    sole purpose of designing, developing and testing your JavaTM
    API for XML Parsing compatible parsers (the "Programs").

    2. License to Distribute Software. In addition to the license
    granted in Section 1 (Internal Use and Development License
    Grant) of these Supplemental Terms, subject to the terms and
    conditions of this Agreement, Sun grants you a non-exclusive,
    non- transferable, limited license to reproduce and distribute
    the XML JAR Files Software in binary code form only, provided
    that you: (i) (a) either distribute the XML JAR Files Software
    complete and unmodified in their original Java Archive file, but
    only bundled as part of your Programs into which the XML JAR
    Files Software is incorporated, and do not distribute additional
    software intended to replace any components of the XML JAR Files
    Software; or

    1. Re:NetBeans is NOT Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Those licenses are for libraries NetBeans uses, not NetBeans itself. The NetBeans source code is open source. It does use some libraries that are freely redistributable (like the java compiler), but not open source. That's all this is.

  15. Intellij and don't look back. by clambake · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have test driven just about every Java IDE out ther, and so far, hands down, Intellij Idea is the way to go. It isn't free, but it's quite cheap. It's had Java 5.0 support since Java 5.0 was java 1.5 beta and generic support even before that. It's got refactoring capabilities out the whoozow and integrated amazingly well with cvs. It can even do codeanalysis and find duplicated code across your entire project (and of course help you refactor it out). Except for JBuilder's GUI building, I can't think of another IDE that can do anything that it does better.

    1. Re:Intellij and don't look back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone who's just starting to get into Java programming, this is the advice I've heard from just about everyone (and most comparative IDE reviews). It's $500, which isn't cheap if you're a hobbyist but is very reasonable if you're making money from it (ie. it's your job), and I must say it does look very impressive.

      Think I'll stick with jEdit for the moment, though; it's probably a good idea to write code without having your hand held while learning, otherwise it'd get too easy to rely on the IDE. I'd be interested in seeing what Apple do with XCode 2.0, I've tried XCode 1.5 and wasn't that impressed; most reports I've heard say that it sucks somewhat for Java development.

    2. Re:Intellij and don't look back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eclipse.

  16. MOD PARENT UP by fforw · · Score: 1

    Netbeans is an open source IDE with an open source permissive license (not GPL compatible).

    --
    while (!asleep()) sheep++
  17. Eclipse isn't just an IDE by acomj · · Score: 1

    Eclipse also binds to native gui widgets using SWT as its windowing library (ie it calls native window/ mac or Linux (Qt?)) widgets which makes java faster.

    eclipse also allows "plug ins" that enhance functionality.

    1. Re:Eclipse isn't just an IDE by madth3 · · Score: 1
      > eclipse also allows "plug ins" that enhance functionality.

      Just for the record: NetBeans also allows plugins.

      Although it's true that there ain't many...

  18. I like both eclipse and netbeans by jilles · · Score: 3, Informative

    Before eclipse, netbeans was the only free IDE that could compete with its commercial counterparts. The 1.x and 2.x versions were pretty OK compared to other free IDEs. The 1.x generation was the first time I preferred an IDE over an editor/compiler combination. Especially the GUI editor was one of my favorites (and having done swing programming manually, I am very critical of such tools).

    Then eclipse came and especially in its 2.x version and 3.x version showed the weaknesses in netbeans (usability & GUI performance). Fast forward to 2004. I'm using eclipse 3.0.1 on a daily basis with some plugins and I'm reasonably happy with it. Performance is a bit sluggish on my (soon to be replaced) 1Ghz pIII but acceptable on smaller projects.

    I disliked all of the netbeans 3.x stuff, including 3.6 which I only gave a brief glance. But I tried netbeans 4.0 beta the other day and I liked what I saw. Out of the box it supports a lot of stuff that eclipse simply does not support (basically all the j2ee stuff, ant integration, xml, html). You can get most of these things in eclipse by installing commercial plugins but if you want everything for free it's pretty hard to find e.g. jsp support, good servlet container integration (more than the pathetic tomcat start/stop support in some eclipse plugins), etc. The netbeans people already had most of this in the 2.x and 3.x generations and the functionality has been much improved since then. Also the features are well integrated: you can create a jsp file from a template, use autocompletion to hook it up to your java stuff and deploy it to tomcat with the debugger attached. Doing the same in eclipse requires a lot of manual intervention since eclipse 3.0.1 doesn't understand tomcat, jsp, deployment descriptors and debugging a running tomcat server. It resorts to plaintext editors for most of these things.

    Also, to my surprise, netbeans was very fast on my old pc at work. It effortlessly handled large projects which eclipse is having problems with on the same machine. This is definately progress from 3.x. Browsing in 3000+ loc java files in eclipse is a pain but netbeans seems to handle this much better. IMHO the whole swing vs swt performance debate is over, neither party won. Eclipse is not faster for the same tasks in netbeans and both are resource hogs.

    Not all is well though. Eclipse has much better refactoring support and seems to have the better java editor. In the end, a java programmer spends lots of time editing java code and that is what eclipse is very good at. All the other stuff is nice to have but not essential for powerusers like me.

    In addition, some interesting tools are under development at eclipse which will again level the playing field for eclipse. The webtools project for instance intends to bring lots of j2ee goodies to eclipse.

    --

    Jilles
    1. Re:I like both eclipse and netbeans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of the things you are looking for are included in the myEclipse plugin. They have a free 30 day evauluation copy. The full version is only $30 per year. It isn't free, but what is a few bucks a month. I am also using 3.0.1 daily with the latest myEclipse plugin. Very nice. Sometimes it is sluggish though. And I have a 2.4mhz p4 with 512+ ram. I don't work for myEclipse, just an avid user.

      --coward

    2. Re:I like both eclipse and netbeans by Earlybird · · Score: 2, Informative
      • But I tried netbeans 4.0 beta the other day and I liked what I saw. Out of the box it supports a lot of stuff that eclipse simply does not support (basically all the j2ee stuff, ant integration, xml, html). You can get most of these things in eclipse by installing commercial plugins but if you want everything for free it's pretty hard to find e.g. jsp support, good servlet container integration (more than the pathetic tomcat start/stop support in some eclipse plugins), etc.
      A nice thing about Eclipse is that it's modular, and distributed as such.

      If you want everything in one box, you can download Yoxos, an Eclipse distro that comes with a ton of open-source plugins.

      As for J2EE, if you're not into bleeding-edge software, until the Web Tools project is ready for production use you might want to check out Lomboz, an extremely popular plugin that provides JSP support, J2EE wizards, app server launching/debugging, web services support and much else.

      What's missing from Eclipse's Ant support?

  19. Java based by cuteseal · · Score: 0

    I have a loathing for IDEs written in Java itself, for an obvious reason - they're big, clunky and slow, compared to their natively-compiled counterparts. For me, something lightweight like Gel does it for me because it's blazingly fast for a download under 4 megs.

    --

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    1. Re:Java based by turgid · · Score: 1
      I have a loathing for IDEs written in Java itself...For me, something lightweight like Gel does it

      From that website "Gel, a freeware Java and JSP IDE that runs natively on Windows"

      I have a loathing for Windows. Gel is no use to anyone but Windows people. Windows people use .NET anyway, so why would they care about Gel?

      --
      Stick Men
    2. Re:Java based by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gel is no use to anyone but Windows people. Windows people use .NET anyway, so why would they care about Gel?

      Intentional flamebait, or just an idiot?

      My first choice is IntelliJ, but while waiting for my new employer to cough up for it, I've been using Gel, doing servlets and utility classes for web apps. Nothing to do with Windows, other than the irrelevent fact that that what my desktop's OS is.

      Gel http://www.gexperts.com/ works great - nice project management, code completion, easy access to source and docs. Quite alot of functionality, but still a clean uncluttered interface when you want it. Fast, too.

      I hope the developer continues to refine it.

  20. Thank You NetBeans by militiaMan · · Score: 0

    I think NetBeans is great.

  21. Eclipse good++ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and it's based on IBM's Visual Age for Java, although greatly improved, and we all know that Sun are in talks with IBM, and may adopt SWT to replace AWT/Swing sometime soon.

    Use it - it's free.