Slashdot Mirror
Netbeans 4.1 Released
njcoder writes "Netbeans 4.1 was released a few days ago. Though it is only a short time since 4.0 was released and only a minor version number increase, the new Netbeans 4.1 contains a number of significant enhancements. New features include enhanced support for J2ME (mobile) projects, a new Navigator component, enhancements to the Ant based project system, ability to define multiple source roots, enhanced support for J2EE applications including EJB support for creating Session, Entity and Message Driven Beans, bundled J2EE application server, bundled Tomcat server upgraded to the 5.5 series, Web Services support, Eclipse project import tool, and more. The days of a slow and ugly Netbeans seem to be over. Using the new Metal look and feel in Java 5 brightens things up a bit as well. More information can be found in the release info and go here to download the new version. Java boutique has a review, with screenshots, of the new released titled IDE Wars: Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?."
The fact that Eclipse is built on SWT and NetBeans is based on AWT itself speaks volumes. From TFA "I have felt that Eclipse is getting slower over the versions, while, at least the word on the street is, NetBeans has evolved in the other direction." Maybe this is the author's perception, but again, I am not sure if NetBeans will perform faster than Eclipse with equal types of plug-ins loaded.
The UI is responsive and the controls are intuitive. Building web apps isn't too difficult either. So where is the love?
When I write Java in Eclipse that isn't a web app (believe it or not that exists), it's like there's no compiler at all. I save, things get compiled. This confused the heck out of me at first (it's apparently on by default), but I came to love it. Also, if I make a typo or braino, eclipse instantly shows it to me without having to wait for a compile cycle. Does NetBeans have this feature, or do I have to explicitly invoke the compiler all the time?
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I too am a fan of IntelliJ, but it's not always easy to convince the boss to stump up for a licence when the other Java guys are happy with Eclipse.
IntelliJ is kind of like Opera to Eclipse's FireFox. It's the commercial innovator with the smaller market share competing against a free alternative that is backed by big players in the IT arena. There's an interesting parallel in the way these applications have been developed. In both cases the open source projects have gone for a flexible platform enhanced by a huge array of plugins whereas the commercial players have opted for a more integrated approach with everything you need bundled and presented nicely out-of-the-box.
Suck figs.
I was a strong supporter of netbeans up through 3.6. When they went to 4.0, and their ant based architecture, they screwed things up.
If you have an ant-based project, the idea is that you can add some xml entries to the config files and your buildfiles to hook the gui commands to your targets. Sounds good, right?
Wrong. Netbeans takes the road that if you want to own the buildfile, you own everything. You have to write targets to run the program in the debugger, you have to manage the classpath, you have to write targets to run/compile/debug a single file, to run/compile/debug your whole project, etc etc and so on.
A few weeks ago I watched a coworker join my development project with eclipse. He took a copy of the source tree, pointed eclipse at the top level directory, and it promptly figured out the classpath. Running and debugging worked exactly as you expect. Adding support for the existing ant buildfile was also easy, and didn't interfere with what eclipse offered.
This impressed me, and my coworker convinced me to take it for a testdrive. I had previously spent about 3 weeks researching and arguing config files with netbeans, and I had eclipse ready to write production code in a few hours. (And that was my first time using the tool, now I can configure it much faster.)
Bottom line: eclipse is a tool which is much better thought out than netbeans. it offers alot more functionality to the debugger, alot less painfully. netbeans 4.1, whoopdeedoo. i'm sticking with eclipse.
11300.0/37000 * 100 = 30.5 %
155000.0/1400000 * 100 = 11.07 %
ergo 30 % of NetBeans users think NetBeans Suck
11.07 % of Eclipse users think Eclipse Suck
Gues that's why I'm gonna try Eclipse before NetBeans - but I will try both.
Problem is one can rarely decide without doing more than just poke arround - that's why I need to test the waters based on other's opinions.