Hello All,
After two years, I'm *still* looking for a good
Java IDE. I'm sorry for the greenhorns who're trying to learn the ropes, and have perhaps migrated from the windows programming world. You'll spend countless hours wondering why the world of Java Programming is lost in the bronze ages of development tools.
I see many people on this forum promote Java development outside of an IDE. Too bad. People said that about C++ programming in Windows, before Visual C++ came around. Some people are still using VI Editor in Unix. More power to them, but please, give me my
Word 2000, thank you.
Promoting programming outside the IDE beyond the initial learning process, is simply trying to make one's job tougher, and to create higher barriers to entry into the programming world than there justifiably should be. Why spend more time formatting and debugging syntax than on the problem itself? Why spend more time re-doing donkey work? Isn't finding elegant and time-saving tools what our trade is all about, and yet, the best in the trade (at least in the Unix world), are often the ones who promote the most quaint tools available to programmers.
I don't suppose I'm the only one who has programmed a lot in Visual Studio, and has subsequently been spoiled by a VERY responsive, full featured IDE with excellent debugging.... etc.
If not for Microsoft's problem with speaking real Java, Visual J++ was truly an excellent IDE. I only wish it did real Java, and not J/Direct.
I'm tired of working with bloated, slow, and un-refined IDEs like JBuilder and Forte. It's time somebody realized that although Java may be cool, Swing/Java is definitely *far* too slow to cut it in an IDE, and NO ex-Visual Studio developer could possibly be satisfied with the current state of Java IDEs.
I laugh at the thought of $10,000 tools like Weblogic, that expect a developer to write/modify raw XML!! Ha ha! This, from an industry leader! How hard is it to build a GUI tool to write deployment descriptors? And how hard is it to provide all the flexibility one needs in that GUI tool? Certainly, for $10,000, I can rightly expect those tools. But no, I'm reduced to writing and debugging XML. I suppose that if BEA developed Word Processors, I'd be writing raw
RTF!!
Does Sun, Borland, IBM, etc. realize the pathetic state of IDEs in the Java world? What's up? It's been years since Java first made it's mark on the programming world, and I've yet to see and IDE meet the standard that Microsoft has set in the Windows world with Visual Studio.
Is it that Sun's legacy in Unix is affecting the quality of Java tools, and the fact that Command Line tools and vanilla text editors are generally the most prevalent of Java Development tools?
Regards,
Reuben Cleetus.