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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.
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 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...
Pretty darn good, if you ask me.
I've never tried Symantec's offerings, but VisualAge for Java is head and shoulders better than Sybase's PowerJ.
By rights this ought to be a VB and PowerBuilder killer. Both VB an PB have very cluttered IDE's and languages, whereas the Visual Age IDE is smaller and more logical. Java is also truly object oriented as opposed to VB, and it takes care of garbage collection which has to be done manually by PB.
The only reason I'm not more excited by this is that I'm getting really sick of relying on tools vendors for support and upgrades. If there's a bug that affects you, you end up twisting slowly, slowly in the wind while some PHB decides on new "features" to put into the product. If IBM open sourced this, I'd be in heaven.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
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 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
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.
Perhaps the development wouldn't stop on the Gimp if adobe released photoshop but it would cause most of its more serious users to abandon it. 100$ is nothing for a tool you use to make a living on.
The main motivation for creating the Gimp was because there wasn't a good pixel editing program on Linux. If that reason is taken away, what exactly is the motivation for creating it? Providing a free alternative?
Propietary software won't damage linux but will establish it as a mainstream OS. I don't see that as a wrong thing.
In fact the coming of/need for propietary software signals an important thing: the partial failure of OSS. Apparently OSS can't serve the need of normal users in providing programs to run on the OS (wordprocessors, programming environments, spreadsheets, browsers). Though there are OSS variants of all the things I mentioned they all have propietary counterparts that are better.
If you want to create documents you can use TeX, if you want a handy tool to use to create your document you'll need to obtain a propietary one.
I realize I'm pissing of a lot of people here by claiming that OSS partially failed. But I fail to see its success on the desktop (I'm not talking about server applications). Sure there are a lot of projects (the gimp, K office, mozilla) but they are all unproven (unlike linux itself and the lower level stuff that runs on it).
Jilles
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
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
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.
"By saying they are "unproven", you're admitting they have yet to fail. "
:) What I was trying to say is that so far OSS seems to be succesfull in other areas than the desktop. I have a strong feeling that the commercial software software industry wants to move on to making higher level software. By that I mean they are starting to realize that the market for lower level software like operating systems or simple mail servers is satisfied. Microsoft, apple or sun is not going to win any customers by rewriting the kernels of their operating system (though arguably that would be a good thing in some cases) because most users simply don't care about what powers their wordprocessors and webbrowsers. What is a profitable area is the stuff that runs ontop of an operating system though even there you see that some applications are so common that they no longer offer the fat profit margins they used to have.
You got me here
Software is subject to inflation, it gets less profitable over time. Nobody is willing to spend 100s of dollars on an OS that just runs your system, it needs to have something extra to be worth that amount of money. The same applies to a lot of other programs. Take development tools for instance. Nobody is paying money for just a compiler, in many cases you get the compiler for free. What brings in the money for development tool producing companies is the stuff that runs on top of the compiler (i.e. the IDE, debugger and prefab components).
The trend I'm seeing is that the stuff that has dropped below a certain profit level is open sourced. In a way OSS has increased the inflation speed by 'attacking' products that are still profitable.
This view I presented here sort of contradicts the accepted view on this site that OSS software is going to dominate everything. From where I'm standing, OSS gets to implement and reinvent the stuff that is no longer profitable enough. In many cases the reinvented version is better than the original so I see it as a good thing.
Jilles