Tim Boudreau On The Future of NetBeans

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."

Comments

Is election year mudslinging contagious?

[weeksie]

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.

Re:Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Netbeans Eclipse Emacs - the saga

[tod_miller]

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.

JFluid code profiler

[Armhold]

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?

Which is more useful?

[Zach Garner]

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.

Re:Which is more useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Which is more useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

NetBeans is NOT Open Source

[maxgilead]

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

Re:NetBeans is NOT Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Intellij and don't look back.

[clambake]

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.

I like both eclipse and netbeans

[jilles]

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.

Re:I like both eclipse and netbeans

[Earlybird]

• 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?

Re:Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

[Earlybird]

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.