Slashdot Mirror


Google Donates Windowbuilder, Codepro To Eclipse

h00manist writes "Google is donating Windowbuilder Pro and Codepro Profiler to the Eclipse project. 'Google acquired the software when it bought Instantiations, relaunching the Java graphical user interface building tool Windowbuilder Pro shortly after. Now the outfit has decided to donate both Windowbuilder Pro and the code analysis tool Codepro to the open source Eclipse project. Although Google has announced its intention to donate the software, it needs go through a rigorous filtering process to ensure that no intellectual property rights will be breached. Once those formalities are dealt with, it is likely that both Windowbuilder Pro and Codepro will tip up in the Indigo release of Eclipse sometime in June 2011.'"

4 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does anybody still use Java? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't Java getting on in years and in need of being replaced by something more modern?

    no.

  2. Re:Does anybody still use Java? by deoxyribonucleose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Meanwhile, people doing real low-level or time-critical work use assembler/C/C++, and people doing real high-level work don't go for a primitive imperative language which looks like C/C++ with training wheels.

    Riiiiight. I wonder, where do people go who want to be able to find people to maintain their software for, say, a decade? Except for COBOL, of course... and that's going to get seriously expensive. (God, I really wish I was kidding about COBOL.)

    Wake me up when one of the 'real high level' languages (whichever is your personal poison) has found a significant market and mind share. Meanwhile, I'll stick with whatever language fits the problem, instead of fitting the problem to my favourite language.

  3. Re:Does anybody still use Java? by prionic6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's because Java is so much more verbose ;)

  4. Re:Does anybody still use Java? by west · · Score: 4, Insightful

    mention a single issue plaguing Java that C++ implements just fine: multiple inheritance

    I had a good chuckle at that statement because in my experience, the *lack* of MI and operator overloading features is one of Java's biggest selling features. (I've worked at companies that had to make it a firing offense to use either in order to stop programmers from using these features.)

    Both these features allow programmers to write elegant, stream-lined code... for themselves. Unfortunately, the guy maintaining the code who has neither the experience with the project nor the mental acuity of the original programmer to see the mental model that underlied the programmer's conception of the code then destroys everything.

    In their defense, MI and operator overloading have probably protected many a programmer's job. "We can't lay off Jeff, he's the only one who will ever understand the code he wrote."

    (Caveat: Of course it's *possible* to write maintainable code using these features, but it's like setting the speed limit to 120 mph - a lot more people *think* they can manage it than can actually manage it, and there's a lot of collateral damage along the way.)