Useful IDE and Compilers for JDK1.3(Java 2)

[Angela D'souza]

Hi,
I want to use good and useful IDE and compiler tool for JDK1.3. Would please let me know which one I should use?
Thanks,
Angela

[John Dale]

I like Eclipse. But it depends on what you want to do. Do you need a GUI builder? team support or version control? Something easy to learn?
Eclipse has been easy to learn, but with powerful features when needed. It currently does not have a GUI builder. The on-line documents quickly got me up to speed, perhaps because they don't have to deal with the complexity of a GUI builder or other forms of programming without programming. I find the team support useful for version management even when I'm working by myself, although you need CVS to make that work.
I agree with those who recommend a simple text editor (capable of showing line numbers) and JDK when starting with Java, but Eclipse looks like a good place to go from there.

[Angela D'souza]

Hi John,
Thanks for response. The programming I am going to do will include GUI also. So I don't think so I can use Eclipse though it's good compiler.
Do you know other Tools where I can use GUI as well as functionality of Java ? Would you please send the link of downloading of those tools?
Thanks a lot,
Angela

[Jason Kretzer]

Goto to the following address:
http://alia.iwarp.com
This site has a long list of different IDE's. If you are going to do GUI building try Netbeans or Forte.

HTH,

[Angela D'souza]

Jason,
Thanks for your response. I got little confused. The website has list of Java IDE's. I am very new to Java. I don't know out of that list, which one will be the best for me. I am going to use GUI and other funtionalities.
Please help me out.
Thanks
Angela

[Axel Janssen]

http://www.Netbeans.org is quite handy for Gui-building.
http://www.textpad.com is a popular editor for starters.
I like eclipse more than Netbeans. So I use Netbeans just for Gui-building.
I think u n d e r s t a n d i n g Java is more important than the tool.
The tool is just for doing things you have understood faster.
And a good tool to understand Java is www.javaranch.com. So you allready have found the tool.
Axel
[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]

[John Dale]

Some Java programmers I know build GUIs without using a graphical GUI builder. They say it results in better GUIs. I'm inclined to agree, although I'm just a beginner with GUIs. I suspect you'll understand a lot more if you build the GUI manually instead of relying on a graphical GUI builder to start. The layout managers of AWT (and Swing) make this more practical than for a system that forces you to use absolute positioning.
I think the best argument for mastering a graphical GUI builder is that you can be more productive with one. But if you don't understand what you are doing, what you produce might become a nightmare the first time the specs change.
That's part of why I'm doing GUI work Eclipse, at least for now.

[Paul Stevens]

John,
I am one who will say that. Most GUI builders I have used have put really strange code together. I prefer coding them by hand. Starting out I believe it is always better to do it by hand to learn what is happening. Play around with small apps and see what the layouts do. After you understand what and how the components work then if you prefer you could use a GUI tool.

[jason adam]

I agree with Paul. I never use IDE's that have GUI builders, and if they do, I don't use that functionality. You won't learn squat about the AWT/Swing API's if you let the IDE handle everything, and then where will you be if you have to go and debug someone elses GUI code? Learn to do it by hand first, then if you feel the need to, move to a GUI builder (I still prefer the old fashion way).
Visual Cafe is a perfect example of what Paul is talking about. It writes the code in a way that, to me, isn't very "clean". And if you start putting in event listeners, it becomes very unreadable. That's my opinion of course, best thing to do with IDE's is just check several out and see which one jives with your own style.
Jason
[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: jason adam ]

[Ashik Uzzaman]

Hei Guys, i agree with u that GUI buil;iding should be done hand-coded. I still use JDK with Notepad and only sometimes JBuilder!
But now i wanna switch to Forte For Java, Community Edition as its free! Tell me what are the differences between Forte Community Edition & Enterprise Edition (accept that the later is not free )....and yah, a quick link to Forte communityb edition is appreciated....

[Reuben Cleetus]

I use Netbeans extensively for my Java development. It's great for GUIs, and v. 3.3 has some great new features and performance improvements, which make Java coding much easier and more productive.
I agree that there's no better way to learn Java than to start with hand-coding everything. However, I'd disagree with anyone who suggests that hand-coding everything is the best there-after.
Productivity is the key, and I think Java IDE tools are finally good enough to use for GUI building. Previously, they lagged behind Windows development tools, but the gap has closed a lot recently.
Hopefully Eclipse, Netbeans 3.4 and JBuilder will further increase the productivity of Java Developers, and get us all out of our Unix-vi editor mind-set. After all, users demand great GUIs, and managers demand great productivity.
Regards,
Reuben.

[Axel Janssen]

In the Netbeans - Eclipse contest on this computer with me as lab rat, Eclipse won. Found Netbeans clumpsy. I make very little gui programming. To get a quick prototype Netbeans is a good tool.
Because now I started to code JSP/Servlet code I like that Eclipse-feature to include your favourite html editor. (in my case homesite which also supports JSP). Will give the now free JBuilder community edition a try.
The suprising thing: It was really easy to start with these IDEs. There were good half-an-hour tutorials to get started.
Think I will never go back to Textpad, although I like the more easier and faster Eclipse.
Axel
[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]

[Steve MacGill]

JBuilder is pretty cool for J2EE 1.2.
If you are particular about J2EE 1.3, have a look at Pramati Studio (at www.pramati.com web page )
Their J2EE 1.3 stuff is pretty good, and upto JBuilder, we feel.
HTH
Steve

[Matt O'Toole]

Perhaps GUIs should be coded by hand. I disagree- they probably should be built by the IDE. However, like many other people, I find generated hard to follow. In the end, it's easier for me to just do it all by hand!

[Roy Ben Ami]

the best IDE for java in my opinion is JCreator.
its found at http://www.jcreator.com
its like textpad or ultraedit but with extra features like giving the functions and fields of an object and class view like in JBuilder.
really excellent.

[Anonymous]

For someone who wants to get into Java, and is reasonable new to Java or OO programming, I agree with the sentiment to avoid GUI builders. They don't really teach you a great deal of underlying structures, and can be confusing for beginners.
But concluding from that that you should not use an IDE, but a simple text editor, is a step in the wrong direction.
Many people seem to mix up IDE with GUI builder. There are IDEs that offer other tools than GUI builders.
The BlueJ IDE, for example, has no GUI builder, but it has tools to visualise class structures (in an automatically generated UML-like diagram), to interactively create objects, to interactively execute any public method from any object, and so on (in addition to the usual editor, compiler and debugger).
See www.bluej.org (It's free.)
Regards,
Michael

[Mike Jones]

Angela,
I recently evaluated Forte CE and Eclipse. Eclipse won hands down for me. The Eclipse help / tutorial is straight forward, and a fairly quick learning curve. I ran into constant bugs with Forte (java exceptions and crash to blue screen). I've heard others claim they did not have the same problems with Forte, but that was my experience, FWIW. If I needed GUI support, I would be inclined to use something like Forte just for that, and take the hit of copying the generated code over to Eclipse. Eclipse is suppose to be providing GUI support in the future. I did work thru a Swing tutorial with Forte, and I will play devil's advocate on the idea of slinging the UI code by hand. I'm generally not a fan of code generation, but Swing seems to require a significant learning curve. I would think the fastest way to pick it up, would be to use a tool like Forte to generate the code, and then take the time to study what was generated (i.e. learn by example). At some point in your learning curve, you may very well make the call that you do not like the code base generated by the tool, and build your own code templates for production code. JMO.
Mike

[John Dale]

Some of the Swing developers next to whom I work learned Java largely by studying the code generated by a Swing GUI building tool, VisualAge for Java in this case. I've taken the opposite aproach, but from what I've seen, what they did has worked very well for them. As they've filled in their knowledge of the language, they've become pretty good with Java and Swing.

[Gerry Giese]

Maybe things have changed, but I seem to remember really liking JBuilder for doing GUI development. The awesome thing was that it let you change the code and when you go back to the builder the GUI is updated properly. And when you add GUI stuff they don't put strange code in the classes that are either write-protected or have comments around them saying "**DON'T EDIT THIS OR YOU'LL BREAK IT!!!***.
I would have to recommend the free JBuilder for what you're wanting, Angela. Once Forte community edition and Netbeans are properly updated for JDK 1.4, they should be fast enough to be worthy contenders as well.

[Ashik Uzzaman]

Forte For Java Community Edition 3.0 has made my life as a gui developer a lot easier!