Glenn Holmer wrote:
> It is with a heavy heart that I post this... IBM has just announced
> VisualAge Java 4.0 with availability in late July, and guess what?
> There is still no Linux version!
Thanks for all the responses, both public and private, to my somewhat
overwrought request for IDE advice. I was very upset with IBM, but
I'm feeling much better now :)
I was genuinely surprised by the number of people who responsded
by suggesting Emacs/vi/jEdit/<your-favorite-text-editor-here>.
We've been doing that for the last three years, and we know that
we'll never convert RPG programmers from the Dark Side unless we
make it so easy that they can just click and a component magically
appears. And yes, I see the paradox: haven't these folks already
been coding in a text-only environment for centuries? Yes, but
not developing GUIs. In our shop, there is a standing joke that
the true test of a Java programmer's mettle is how fast he can
type "GridBagConstraints".
NetBeans looks better every time I work with it. The problems I
mentioned with editor windows being abducted by aliens and so forth
disappeared when we switched to the Sun JDK (we're going to test
the Blackdown as well). This also solves the printing issues we
saw with the IBM JDK (incorrect capitalization), although the IBM
does have a reputation for faster performance, and its fonts are
prettier (that one's solvable with some work). But hey, we're mad
at IBM anyway!
The templates feature in NetBeans is very useful. With only a
couple hours' work, I created a GUI app that can easily connect to
either of our AS/400s. Then I made it a template, and if you want
to create a visually customizable program like that, you just start
from the template and it magically appears in the GUI editor (and
then you can use that neat GridBagLayout editor). How easy is that
for someone coming from RPG? And the CVS interface is very cool.
How much would you have to pay to get something like that in a
commercial product? And all of this works the same on both Linux
and that other operating system. All in all, NetBeans is shaping up
as the front runner in our shop.
--
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Glenn Holmer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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You can now flame me, I am full of love, and will ignore
any insults, because that is how good my Gnus filter is.
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-Miguel deIcaza
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