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IBM releases VisualAge for Java for Linux 3.0
Quite a number of you have written in with the word that IBM has
released Visual Age for Linux v3.0. As well, a number of you noted that v3.0 came out for Linux before certain other OSes *grin*. As for obtaining it, you can't get it for free but you can come pretty darn close -
get on VADD for $50 to get VAJ for Linux. Happy Coding.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Is that available for Linux?
I'm looking at starting to play about with Java and being used to Visual Studio on Win32 (spit) I was wondering if this sort of thing would suit my needs. If anyone has experience with such environments I'd be interested in their comments.
Out of my mind, back in five minutes
A decent IDE. There goes NT as we speak. Bye bye, nice knowing you, now go away and never come back.
Name one product which doesn't suck under Windows NT. Around here we've used Visual Cafe, and it sucked much worse than the Visual Age that we use now
> I don't see any reason why version 3.0 should be any better under Linux.
I do see a reason: Linux. At least, under Linux, VA won't have to rebuild its workspace whenever we switch from summer time to winter time and vice versa.
Blah. I give up. But I will continue my war on the Transmeta thread. Stay tuned.
I don't think VAJ on Windows is any more bloated than JB, VC or Net Beans. It was, but they've caught up now ;-)
It is the best of the Java IDEs IMHO.
Tom
I've used VisualAge on NT too, and I didn't like it... too much of a feature bloat, with a clumsy interface. I suppose hardcore people like me are more comfortable with the command-line JDK compiler...
On the other hand, it's good that these "user-friendlier" apps are being developed for Linux. At least Linux is slowly making inroads to being a desktop environment for non-techs. This is good, and should be encouraged, because Linux is about choice, and there should be a wide range of different choices that suit different people, eg., command-line interface for techies like me, and "dumber" GUI apps for people who don't want to bother with learning arcane commands.
Adding more choice is always a good thing, because there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all when it comes to systems. (It's more of a one-size-fits-few.)
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I'm not too interested in these news at all. In ways, I think that these proprietary vendors harm the future development of our beloved system.
So why is this? Primarily because I see that the same problems that exists on other systems are now coming to ours. Soon enough, what we have won't be THAT much different. Perhaps the most harmful trend is when people make copies of these proprietary programs to share with their friends. Suddenly the industry will turn to them and call them pirates. In our community, we try to teach people that sharing software with your friends is the right thing to do. Now, we'll have hunters doing their best to enforce upon us the idea that this is as bad as murdering and robbing people on high seas.
I've always liked VisualAge better than VS. The amount of coding I've done for Windows is very limited, but VisualAge (for C++, haven't really used VAJ yet) was a lot more intuitive. At least for me. At any rate, I'm happy there's a decent JDE for Linux now.
numb
PS> Please feel free to correct me if there are and decent java development environments for Linux that I'm not aware of.
I'm not seeing linux there ;)
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
Does this mean I can create Browser apps that won't crash, finally?
I downloaded the BETAs and it was quite hard to get used to. Big ugly buttons, and I didn't like the way each method was edited in it's own window (didn't MS give that up after QB :P)...i didn't bother to check to see if it could change (you can actually do thatin VB).
:) Very fast compiler too.
:).
I much prefer J++ as an IDE, even if it's far far behind cause it has a very nice editor.
I've managed to get Swing and RMI working with J++ so it keeps me content
I think Microsoft might lose part (well more than is already lot) of me to Linux if they started porting Visual Studio & IE5 to linux
I used one of the beta's of VA and it was ok, but I just can't get over not being able to see all my code at once.
:) It lets me look at all the source code I want, is extremeley easy to dump a ton of java code into and just start using it, and the debugger actually works. (I'm not sure how well the debugger works in VA, as never got to do any serious testing with it)
I've been using CodeWarror java for Solaris at work, and it works fine (I still use emacs for editing though...
I'm happy to see that IBM decided to take the step and release VAJ 3.0 for Linux. However, the only benefit in this whole scenario is the recognition of Linux. I've worked with VAJ 2.0 NT for several months and this whole IDE concept is flawed. IBM has too many proprietary classes for it to be flexible. The IDE is bloated as hell, its slow and basically annoying.
I've used VisualAge under Win95 & NT, and it was a little sluggish (mind you, it was on a pentium 200, so the machine itself may be to blame). Does anyone know if the linux port is any zippier?
Kawa is a much better IDE for small projects, VisualAge is kind of intended for a team building a large project. I heard a rumour about linux Kawa port a few months ago, but nothing seems to have surfaced.
Dana
My company uses VisualAge almost exclusively for Java development. I happen to like it a lot. Here are some pros and cons:
Pros:
1) Object Browser code viewer encourages good object-oriented development.
2) Powerful interactive compiler, which means new code you write is parsed directly into the running application vs haveing to edit-recompile-restart an application to see changes you have made in code.
3) Excellent runtime inspector and debugger - far more advanced than what I have seen from the competition.
4) Scrapbook to execute arbitrary snippets of code easily.
Cons:
1) Uses an old (1.1) JDK (unless this changed in the 3.0 version). Not a big issue for me because I want my Java code to be availible on many different platforms, and "Java 2" apps are restricted to Windows and Solaris (yes, I know there is a beta 1.2 for Linux but we can't require our customers to use beta software, and anyway we need to support Macintosh and several other UNIXes).
2) Object Browser interface will be unfarmiliar to someone who is used to other tools e.g. Visual Studio that present a file based vs object based view of the code. Everyone I know has complained about this at first, and later decided that it is really better this way (but maybe that is because only people who are inclined to liking it continue to use the tool).
3) Very big footprint; requires a fairly powerful computer to run it (I would say *at least* 64 megs of RAM, 96 for a comfortable experience).
4) GUI builder has some bugs in it.
hope this helps.
One poster likes VisualAge, another thinks it sucks.
One poster likes Visual Cafe, another thinks it sucks.
Some folks think emacs is a great IDE, some think these folks are on GnuCrack.
The point is, the more IDEs we have for Linux, the more of these people can work on Linux, and the better off Linux is.
Diversity of uses and users is Linux's strengh; diversity of apps is what we need to get even stronger. Even if you think that newest FooBar Visual Widget Toolkit +- sucks, it's making Linux that much more appealing to people who don't think that it sucks, and we all get a bit stronger.
Freedom of choice. It's that good thing, remember?
--G
Maybe you can suggest a good book to read about VAJ then. I just know at the place I worked at we had no support, no books and they just said "here is IBM's main help number for this, call them because we can't afford books." Between trying to get the Servlet builder to work properly ( as opposed to just writing out the 200 lines of code for the silly thing in the first place ) and inconsitancies between the IDE and what was actually being output I was near pulling my hair out.
As with most things though, it was probably the bad experience and that I'm used to having the control of coding everything by hand. It is more than likely I just didn't know how to use the tool, so if it is so good where should I look for information? I really would be willing to try it again, I just don't see the point in breaking my back to learn it.
Cheers...
This space for sale
I am assuming the requirements are thus because of the Kernel a distro Ships with - * Linux - RedHat 6.0, Caldera 2.2 or SuSE 6.1 * TCP/IP installed and configured * Pentium (R) processor or higher recommended * SVGA (800x600) display or higher * 120 MB disk space (minimum) * Frames-capable browser, such as Netscape Navigator Version 4.04 or higher. Recommend browser is Netscape Navigator 4.6 * Java Development Kit (JDK) (TM) 1.1.7 for deploying all applications
The link provided points to VA 2.0 for 50 bucks...
Proper link: VADD - How to buy it seems to be $149 minimum.
I am an IDE type of guy. I love class browsers, integrated debuggers and GUI designers. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a Java IDE that works well enough to replace my favorite editor (CodeWright or vi) and command line tools (make, javac and jdb) for daily use.
Why is this? I have tried most of the major Java IDEs out there including JBuilder, Visual Age, Visual Cafe, Netbeans and even Visual J++. Most of the IDEs have some nice features but all of them are bloated memory hogs. Maybe faster CPUs and cheaper memory will make them usable someday.
That said, I think it is great that IBM is supporting Java on Linux. To support the Visual Age and Websphere products, IBM is providing their fast and stable Java VM free-of-charge under Linux. Can't complain about that!
I think that VAJ is the best Java IDE, and I've tried the others. As for books on VAJ, there are many and you can get them for free in PDF format at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/rbol.html, on the Visual Age Developer's Domain site, and various other IBM websites. I have MANY binders at work filled with these manuals and most are well written and tell you what you need to know.
As for Servlet Builder, I don't recommend using it and IBM doesn't strongly recommend it either. It's one of those ideas that sounded good in theory but didn't work out in practice. VAJ is still a terrific tool for writing servlets by hand and has by far the best test environment for servlets going.
I think the $50 is for the competitive upgrade price, the $149 is the full retail price.
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
Then why isn't Linux listed in the system requirements section?
Besides this, I don't have VA 2.0 for Microsoft 'platforms' (...) so, as probably most of you, I'm more interested in the retail price.
I kind of like VisualAge, though. Features like compilation-as-you-go, the respository and auto-versioning are kind of nice. Maintaining different versions has saved my life on projects in the past.
:)
I imagine you could probably makes Emacs do that, but having to learn elisp to add functionality to my java development environment just seems wrong somehow
Dana
FYI... a subscription is required to download the Professional version of VAJ 3.0 for Linux. A free entry version will be available in late November according to IBM's web site.
"An Entry Edition of Version 3.0 for Linux will be available at no charge from VADD late in November."
This continues IBM's tradition of offering entry-level versions of VisualAge (for Java and Smalltalk, anyway) at no charge (free beer).
Fascinating strategy. The traditional route is to sell your tools to schools, and get kids hooked there. IBM may be doing that, but they're also offering it to us who are picking up these technologies on our own.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
The following link outlines the requirements (RedHat 6.0, Caldera 2.2 or SuSE 6.1) http://www7.software.ibm.com/vad.nsf/FrameData/Mas ter?OpenDocument&Title=Requirements&FSet =1&Doc3=3744&Doc4=3747
unless the Linux version is of lower quality. That said, the more commercial tools that are released for Linux, the easier it is to sell to corporate suits as a viable alternative. The key here is assimilation through patience. Very few corporations will be willing to buy into the entire free software concept up front. But many would consider installing Linux if their favorite commercial tools were available for it. Once a free operating system is installed, that opens the door for free alternatives to commercial products. All you have to do is have a quality free alternative ready to offer when a commercial product has a show-stopper bug or an unacceptable timeline for a needed upgrade. One would hope, over time, an obvious pattern would emerge ;).
To a shark, you are just another food choice...
Is it just me, or is anyone else annoyed by the way that when a commercial product is released with "Linux support" the implicit assumption is "x86 Linux only"? Since I only run non-x86 Linux (primarily LinuxPPC, although also AlphaLinux), I'm more than a little irked at that bias. Given the fact that Linux is a multi-architecture operating system, I'm tempted to say it amounts to false advertising.
Will software vendors ever wise up and say "x86 Linux" when that's all they mean? Or are we doomed to be stuck with the assumtion the "Linux" means "x86 only" unless otherwise specified as long as x86 is the dominant CPU architecture?
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.
I evaluated VAJ when the first beta came out, and it was already darn good. OK, it takes about 15 secs to start up, but Visual Studio is no speed demon in that department either. Once it's up it's solid as a rock - it always has been, right from the first beta.
VAJ can do something that's worth the price of admission alone: you can recompile parts of a program while it's running and the changes take effect immediately. Cutting incremental development time down to practically nothing. This feature is very easy to get addicted to, believe me.
VAJ uses native UI components, so the UI's run fast. Well, there are a whole lot of things I like about it, too many to mention. There was a very noticable speed up between version 1 and 2. I haven't tried version 3 yet, but I'm looking forward to it. If I had an enterprise Java project to do, I'd feel comfortable using this tool, no doubt about it.
As far as using it to get your feet wet, it's not such a bad idea. The ramp-up time is pretty good - I got my first sample app running in about 10 mintutes, following the wizard-kind-of-thingy that comes up when you first start it. The nice thing about the initial tutorial is - it holds your hand, but not so much that you don't have to think. Very fast ramp-up.
Oh - another thing that is really cool - where's the compile option? There is none. To compile a program, or part of one, you just edit and save the file. Saving the file compiles it. Wow.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I also have a lot more trust in command-line tools than GUIs. There are few automated tools that don't make me shiver when I click on a button. But recently, I had to integrate an existing database schema with Container Managed EJBeans in WebSphere, and my opinion of VisualAge for Java changed totally. Without VAJava, the mapping would have been nearly impossible or would have taken hours for every single bean. Their persistency tool for EJBs, at least, does a wonderful job and I would not consider deploying complex Entity beans without VisualAge.
I however hate the way they split your object view into various method windows. In summary, I only use VAJava for deployment, not development.
Kk.
It's fine and dandy to use a command-line interface when you're building an application with a couple of hundred lines of code. Now move up to the big leagues where multiple programmers are working in tandem on a project with thousands of lines of code and the need for repository management- VAJava becomes a necessity. I hope you aren't insinuating that VAJava is a "dumb" GUI app. I've seen far dumber GUI IDE's. Also, being hardcore doesn't translate into being anti-GUI. GUI apps or OSs at their best mean better productivity for the user. Being "command-line" for the sake of feeling like a true techie is strange. Use the best tool for the job, GUI or command-line based. For large, enterprise Java applications, VAJava is that tool.
I gave up on it as of version 2.something because it kept crashing on me. They always promised that the next version would be stable but it never was. I know, I bought the original Cafe 1.0 and upgraded many times.
say these things....but, you know what? You are right. You are brave; wear nonflammable clothing.
1.0 Prerequisites
This edition of VisualAge for Java, has the following hardware and software prerequisites:
* Linux - RedHat 6.0, Caldera 2.2 or SuSE 6.1
* TCP/IP installed and configured
* Pentium (R) processor or higher recommended
* SVGA (800x600) display or higher
* 120 MB disk space (minimum)
* Frames-capable browser, such as Netscape Navigator Version 4.04 or higher. Recommend browser is Netscape Navigator 4.6
* Java Development Kit (JDK) (TM) 1.1.7 for deploying all applications
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
You're contradicting yourself here. By saying they are "unproven", you're admitting they have yet to fail. Your point, at best, can be summarized as "OSS has yet to succeed." You would need to go much further to establish that it has failed or will fail.
For that matter, it makes no sense whatsoever to describe OSS has being a success or a failure without defining "successful at what" or "failed to do what". I find it funny to hear people talk about what Linux has to do to become successful when it is already wildly successful (a far greater success than I ever imagined it to be when I first started using it).
If by failed you mean "OSS failed to replace all proprietary software on the majority of computers by Nov 1, 1999" you are indeed correct, and your statement is undeniably true. But it's not a very significant truth.
If you mean to suggest "OSS will fail to replace all propriety software on the majority of ordinary users' desktop computers, ever" that's debateable, but I believe you're correct. However, I've never thought the point was to replace 100% of all proprietary software on all people's computer. Rather, it's to give people the option to run that way if they so choose. I don't want to be forced to buy a $100 imaging program because I have no alternatives. I do want to be able to buy a $100 imaging program is I decide I want to! If your vision of OSS is to drive such proprietary alternatives out of existence, I must say I oppose your vision of OSS. I still want to have that choice, I just want make sure it is a choice and not a necessity.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It also has one very cool feature: it can actually execute your program while your editing it - the running program gets updated in real time as you type it in! It's freakin' amazing! If your app displays a dialog box with some text in, and you edit the corresponding line of code, the dialog box changes while your editing that code, character by character!
Not only that, but the company really likes alternate computing platforms. They had a booth at Warpstock a few weeks ago, and they had a PC running OS/2 and an iMac, both running Simplicity.
I've been programming for over 20 years, and very little surprises me these days. But when I saw the Simplicity demo last year, my jaw dropped. It is that cool!.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Then again, the only reason why I can still use it is because we're doing 1.1 development. As we all know, the chances of J++ coming up with a 1.2 version is quite slim. I can also get Swing to work with it, but it does not work the same as Sun's or IBM's.
I know that other IDE's exist that have some of these features, but I have yet to see one that does it as well. JBulder comes in a close second, but it still feels a little more bloated than J++.
I'd have to tend to agree with you on this. I'm not familiar with this latest VAJ, because of all the bad things that were in previous versions i stopped using it.
There have been some people making comments in threads on this that VAJ is the way to go for large projects, i'd have to argue against this. VAJ generates code that is damn near unreadable by anything other than VAJ, so if you really are making a LARGE piece of software, something that is going to be around for years, you better make sure you keep an old copy of VAJ around if you ever need to edit anything. This generated code also makes a real hassle if you plan to try and make the software open source--the only way to read your open source software is with a propietary IDE.
VisualAge seems to be The One for the beginner programmers. It seems to help you to organize all your stuff, and do half of the work for you, and keep it neat and clean all the time.
But, as you start having a clue, or even worse, see it first time when you do have a clue, unpleasant surprises await you down the road.
Disclaimer: all the facts below are based on my experience with not the latest version of VA, your mileage may vary.
1. VA doesn't let you control your source code. It enforces its own understanding of how it should look like, specifically:
- Own indentation conventions. It does let you specify the tab size, but all effect of that option is how the code *looks* within VA. If you export your code, it reformats it according to its own preferences, and the version I used didn't care about Javasoft coding standard and just blindly set the indentation to one tab (8 characters), even if you specified the tab size to be 4.
- Method ordering. Sorted alphabetically, which is incredibly stupid. My own preference is to group the methods by relevance. Worse than that, when I imported my code into VA, it rearranged everything.
- Autogenerated javadoc comments for the method signatures. Like, @param p java.lang.String, as if I'm blind and don't see it myself. If I want comments, I put them there, if I don't, I might rely on the fact that javadoc makes a reference to the parent method.
Consequence: the code you produce is not standard, which makes cooperative development difficult. Someone else's code you modify gets screwed up, see below why it's bad.
2. VA provides a poor cooperation with the version control systems. It may be possible, but within a time I could afford to dedicate to that task, it wasn't possible to make it work with CVS, which is a de-facto standard for UNIX. Plus, the abovementioned source code management completely screws up the diffs. And God forbid if your team has some people working with VA, and some other who don't - VA forces everyone to behave as it wants. Classical "Vendor Lock-Up" antipattern.
3. VA provides poor runtime support. The version I used didn't even produce the line numbers in the exception trace. The reason is understandable - it doesn't have the line number concept as such due to its way of maintaining the code, but how do I care? I want to know where it happened. And don't tell me I can use the debugger, because there's no intelligent way to use it in the servlet development in particular and any heavy multithreaded system development in general.
I could ramble on and on, but these facts alone made me deeply despise the VA and I recommended my company to ban it completely.
Of cource, IDE is great for the completely clueless because it allows to replace the "educated decision" pattern to be replaced by "educated guessing", but there's a danger of locking up the mindset to the extent that whomever affected will not be able to even *see* the limitations, save to overcome them.
The JVM is written in Java? The IDE runs on a JVM running on a JVM? Real-time code interpretation? Yikes. You must have an overclocked Athlon running at 1000Mhz to run this thing.
I tried to convince Symantec to port VisualAge for Linux. I been one of early users of this product up to version 2.something on Windows NT, but since then I have been using only Linux and the Java tools that come or available for it. I guess they want to provide only products for Winx and Mac. Or they have some sort of agreement with Microsoft Corporation in order to prevent it coming to Linux or other Unixes.
Does the professional version have database and RMI support now, or do you still have to pay out the butt for that?
Last time I tried VAJ, it was version 1.1 on OS/2. It was pretty cool, but had some annoyances. Like the fact that it just happily pasted error messages right into your code! Of all crappy ideas..... hopefully that's been changed since then.
So where can i get Linux v3.0? I didn't find it on kernel.org. :-(
And where's the promised Linux v2.4 ?
Oh...
You meant VisualAge for Java 3.0 for Linux?
*snif*
Hi.
Just to clarify, this is a fantastic IDE that supports Java2. Now, if they'd just release a fast jdk2, we'd be all set!
Seriously though, VAjava makes programming in Java seem truly Object Oriented. It reminds me of Smalltalk Express, my first IDE, it had incremental compile (as does VAJ) and stored an "Image" leaving messy file management and bizarre symantics (FILE.java has to be FILE class) out of the eyes of the developer.
Very cool stuff when you're just learning. I don't know why VAJ isn't used in every university, as it is free to them.
Ben
If you set a breakpoint in your debugger, you can edit code while debugging in VisualAge. Quite cool.
-Stu
While most of your points are good ones, here's my response to some of them:
- Enforced indentation & generated JavaDoc. I think this is somewhat of a nitpick - VA gives you lots of options for the different indentation conventions in Java. If you want to use a non-conventional indentation, you're being stubborn.
- Method ordering: I can see the benefit of this, but what's important to YOU may not be important to someone else. A better tradeoff is just what VA chose: alphabetical ordering, since you can select which method you want to look at.
- Poor cooperation wtih Version control: Sorry, I don't agree. The pro version integrates directly with PVCS & ClearCase, and I'm using it with CVS very easily. (though it's not integrated in this case)
- Poor runtime support: Line numbers are irrelevant in VA. And yes, it actually is fairly useable with multithreaded systems. The enterprise version hooks in with servlets very easily (we're doing this now on one of my projects).
Most experienced (10+ years) OO designers that I know prefer VisualAge for Java/C++/SmallTalk because it's the most expressive and flexible environment to program in... yes, it does tend to encourage ALL developers on a team to use VisualAge as well since it's not as file-based of an approach, but who the hell wants to use files anyway? Your job is to program, not to fudge with your source files.
Furthermore, the packages/classes/methods metaphor is a proven Smalltalk ui concept that is the most efficient way for learning a system through its source code.
In fact, most beginners do not use VisualAge because they find it too hard to use!
anyway, this is my opinion.
-Stu