Hi Andrus,
Hope our experience helps
We have evaluated four IDEs, Eclipse, IntelliJ, JBuilder and Netbeans. We have
chosen Netbeans as our default project IDE.
Our project is a multi-tier Cayenne, server/client Swing application. Our main
requirement was to have an IDE with an integrated GUI builder as one (or
more) of our GUI designers doesn't speak Java.
Here are the pro's and con's of each:
Netbeans:
We found Netbeans easy to use. It doesn't have a multitude of IDE preferences,
it's kept nice and simple, much like IntelliJ. It also appears to be fast,
much faster than Eclipse. The GUI Builder is brilliant, generating reasonable
non-editable code in corresponding Java classes (the IDE prevents you
physically from modifying the non-editable code, much like JBuilder). The GUI
Builder has many options for creating listeners and such, and allows you to
insert code into the Java classes without going back to the class editor. It
actually is very nice indeed. And their Swing Free Layout is targeted for
inclusion into JDK. Really nice layout to use too. And the other big plus is
that removing widgets in the GUI Builder removes references in code written
by the user, the IDE analyzes the code and attempts to actually remove all
references to the widget. We haven't tested more complex code dependencies
yet...
Autocompletion works as expected. The Java Profiler integration looks
impressive too. There are also many modules available, though not as many as
offered in Eclipse. Netbeans also integrates very well with ant, and
versioning systems such as CVS or SVN
The only weakness I found so far is that it doesn't give too many options for
automatic formatting of Java code. But it really is the only weakness we've
found so far, and that speaks a lot for this little IDE.
Eclipse:
In terms of flexibility I don't think there is an IDE that beats Eclipse. The
number of modules written for Eclipse is stagerring. However we found this
too much of a monster, it is still very slow on a Mac, and it can consume
enormous amounts of memory on my Linux laptop. I found it too finicky.
What disqualified it for us was the GUI Builder. It feels so much like work in
progress, the Netbeans one feels so tightly and nicely integrated in
comparison. Given that this was a major consideration, Eclipse lost.
IntelliJ:
There is so much to like about IntelliJ, it's simple Preferences,
autocompletion, code formatting and it's a pleasure to work with. It was
really sad to find that their GUI Builder is really weak when it comes to
designing anything slightly complex. It doesn't mould itself well into the
MVC design and trying to write abstract classes that deal with automatic
initialization of listeners, etc means fighting the GUI Builder. We had to
dump it because we ended up constantly coding around the way that IntelliJ
initializes GUI written in its Builder.
JBuilder:
We used it for a while. To begin with, the OS X installer managed to corrupt
everything in /usr/local/bin, not a good start. Next we found that all
sources and libraries in project files had absolute paths! And final straw
was when we found the GUI Builder presenting inconsistent options and just
generating ugly code in the GUI java classes.
We are really happy with choosing Netbeans so far and would strongly recommend
it.
On Thursday 09 February 2006 08:47, Andrus Adamchik wrote:
> When I recently discovered the progress NetBeans had made, first
> thought was of course - how can we use it in CayenneModeler development.
>
> At the moment Eclipse is still a superior IDE and I have no plans to
> switch from it personally, but NetBeans is also a Swing *platform*.
> Essentially they've created the same thing Eclipse did - a GUI plugin
> shell. So aside from using a GUI builder (which may or may not be
> good - this is still to be determined), the benefit would be an open
> pure java platform that other people can extend.
>
> My thinking is that CayenneModeler switching to NetBeans would be
> equivalent to changing our docs system from CVS/XML to Wiki - the
> rate of community contribution will grow up significantly.
>
> I have no plans to do it immediately (and don't yet have enough
> NetBeans knowledge to make such a decision), but I thought I'd bring
> it up.
>
> Andrus
-- - Marek W-- 2b | !2b
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