| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Barefoot Andrew |
NetbeansI'm impressed. I've not used this software before and I'm now wondering why on earth not.As well as seeming to be a good IDE, I'm impressed with its code completion and code/args tips facilities. And Subversion support is available via a simple module download - excellent. I'm currently using v5.5.1 but a production release of v6.0 is scheduled for next month. That promises, amongst many things, SVN support by default, undockable windows for project, files, etc (ace on a dual-monitor machine) and better support for scripting languages. Its code completion for HTML is already very good, so if v6 supports PHP then Editpad Pro's days as a standalone editor could be numbered... A. Oh, and Netbeans is completely free of course. |
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| tahir |
What is it Andrew, just an editor? | ||||
| Barefoot Andrew |
No, it's a complete software development environment - editor (with frills), plus build tools & debugger. Primarily intended for Java applications development, but can (I think) be used for other langs.
A. |
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| jamanda |
I don't understand any of the above, except the completely free bit. Is there any free software available that you know of does the same job as Microsoft Publisher and is usable by ignoramuses? | ||||
| Fee |
What sort of thing are you using Publisher for? There are a few that do other bits of what it does out there (free  )
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| Fee |
Scribus might be worth a play with. | ||||
| jamanda |
Nothing very exciting. PTFA posters and news letters and the like. |
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| Fee |
That should do the trick then
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| jamanda |
Doesn't mention Vista in its list of platforms. I'll try it on my work laptop when I get it back from the techs (it crashed big time  )
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| joanne |
Back to the Netbeans discussion - Haven't used Netbeans for years so don't know what its like these days - Can't see them releasing PHP support for it though as its a Sun product isn't it ?
We are unfortunately tied into using Oracles's JDeveloper at work - which is a complete and utter pain in the backside - very clunky and temperamental My personal ide/editor of choice is Eclipse - I've a feeling that it came from the frustration of the limitations of NetBeans and over the years has evolved into a multi-platform development environment and I know it has PHP support because I've used it - It also has C/C++, Cobol and of course its native Java - I'm not certain but I think it may even have C# and .Net support It works on the basis of plugins as well and has a huge community using it with several Commercial platforms of it available as well - I think even Borland use Eclipse as the basis for their offerings these days It is however also free http://www.eclipse.org/ |
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| joanne |
Oh and it also has SVN, CVS and Clearcase support amongst others as well as lots of other nice toys such as Round Robin development and re-factoring | ||||
| jema |
Must give Eclipse another bash, I did try it, but it seemed very slow and buggy, total overkill for a lot of stuff where any old editor that shows line numbers does the trick. | ||||
| Fee |
I was just thinking the very same thing 
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| joanne |
For small projects I would say Eclipse is definitely overkill but for the big system integration projects I work on - its definitely a great IDE especially compared to stuff like JDeveloper which is absolutely pants but because we are working with Oracle stuff we have to use it - Company decision  although with any of these big applications you need a good amount of memory to run it properly because it can run so much within the container
For smaller stuff I've also used Aptana IDE - which seems nice and lightweight but is good for PHP coding and HTML work |
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| jema |
Just installed Eclipse again and it is opening files for edit in gedit, which is odd as I thought it had its own editor 
As such thus far I cannot see what it gives me? I currently use crossvc for CVS management and gedit from there. The only major peeve I have is that I would like to add my own commands to the crossvc menus, this seems like an obvious thing people would want to do and I can't see why it should not be there. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Ooh, that's worth knowing about. A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
A java techie friend of mine is a big Eclipse fan. I wasn't particularly familiar with either really so I've plumped for Netbeans for now - and if I continue with my current "ooh, quite like it" feeling I'll see no need to change. A. PS Updated Netbeans this morning to enable SVN support - hurrah! |
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| OP |
What runtime environment (if any) does Netbeans use? | ||||
| Barefoot Andrew |
Netbeans is a Java app, and requires a full JDK installation to be present in order to run. A. |
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| scoop |
I have used Netbeans 5.5 recently. Its really quite good. I'm not a Java expert but it looks a solid as the .Net IDE, has a good debug utility and its FREEEeeeeee!!!!
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Slightly disappointingly, the Netbeans app is an EXE file. I had hoped the shortcut would be something like 'java netbeans.jar'. The EXE is only small and this probably what it does anyway, but it would have been slightly more reassuring had Netbean's launcher been more explicitly JRE-esque.
A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Well the Swing GUI builder stuff in Netbeans is rather nifty
Has to be said though that usage of Netbeans isn't for a machine of meagre resources. I suppose this will be true of any major app written in Java. A. |
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| jema |
Isn't Java run with a virtual machine interpreting Java code that has been compiled to "pcode", e.g. still essentially an interpreter?
I think I could rightly claim that my living over the last decade was founded on being the newbie in a project team that stuck his neck out and said "no way" to the embedded decision to write an application in that fashion. Interpreted code however done is a fraction on the speed of proper compiled code. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
That's correct. However, performance is fairly nippy on my ageing 1.4GHz Athlon so that's good enough for me. The platform independence makes it appealing for a forthcoming project. A. |
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| jema |
All depends on what the Java is doing of course! anyone remember the Visual Basic Ambulance debacle? | ||||
| OP |
Vaguely ... but only a poor workman blames his tools. Regarding scoop's comment, the .Net IDE is also free, as well as being a superb development environment. I'm talking about the free "Express" editions of course, which frankly are so good I wonder why anyone would use the full Visual Studio. Of course these are only any use for writing .Net apps so no cross platform capability (and like Java have a big runtime library). |
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| jema |
I don't think you can always blame the workman.
It was no doubt a higher level decision to use VB, and an interpreter can simply not be up to the task. That was my conundrum when I was faced with the issue, the old hands were complacent or pretty insistent that the interpreted language be used, but they were totally wrong. Over the next decade I actually become responsible for maintaining and improving the interpreted language, and optimised it quite a bit and I know full well just what was possible with the language and that the project would have been doomed, and I as the workman would not have had a chance in hell of making it work. The solution I pushed through was to write 90% of the code in "c" and use the Interpreters rather decent VB like facilities for non speed critical functions, and use its great internal cross platform API to develop an application that would work on both Unix and Windows
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| OP |
Responsibility for project success or failure lies with the project manager. If a decision was taken to use an interpreted language which had inadequate performance, ultimately that is down to the project manager. OK, perhaps he was mis-informed by an over-enthusiastic programmer, but that's what project management was about. So yes, I would blame the "manager", not the tools. | ||||
| Barefoot Andrew |
Ooh, Netbeans 6.0 (final) is released...
A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
And with a memory footprint of about 500Mbs, plus 500Mbs ish for VMware running Ubuntu, virtualisation isn't for ageing door-stop PCs... A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Hmm, Netbeans has a particularly annoying "feature".
If you press F11 to build the "main project", it will build your app along with any dependent libraries. You can then press F6 to run the app. If you press F6 instead, it will only build the app - and not any libraries, but will still go ahead and run the app anyway. Your app then misbehaves because a library change hasn't been rebuilt, and the debugger gives confusing/incorrect info*. The times I've done this now...
A. (* similar to trying to single-step through a heavily optimised bit of C - you know, debugger jumping around annoyingly all over the place). |
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| happytechie |
alot of modern exe code actually run in a virtual machine. Java does obviously, .NET is effectively a virtual machine running on the x86 architecture via windows. VB6 also runs inside the VB6 runtime environment that is effectively a virtual machine.
Unless you're writing C / C++ that compiles to native object code you're running in some sort of abstracted virtual machine. wrt development environments, the best ones in order and in my opinion are: netbeans < eclipse < Visual C++ 6 < Visual studio 2003 < VS 2005 < VS 2008 the swing development bits in netbeans are starting to get there though, I've just put it on this laptop (6.1 on ubuntu), I'll have a go at it soon perhaps, it's been a while. In other news, I looked at some source code from about 2003 and actually fixed a bug in it today! |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
IMHO the swing development tools in Netbeans are great for prototyping, but not so good for real development. Sprawlware!
A. |
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| vegplot |
Is that an adult website? |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Hmm. I'm a long-term user of this software (it's one of my main tools), but my loyalty is being sorely tested at the moment.
I've been having problems for a while now with 6.9.1 getting its knickers in a twist and going into a perpetual s-l-o-w mode - this is a powerful machine for heaven's sake. This weekend I upgraded to 7.1.2. The upgrade itself has been a painful experience with a raft of hiccups. And now the C/C++ editing environment is refusing to see any of the #defines or include paths I've configured into the project. And I've not tried the Java editing environment yet. There has been a great deal of cursing. A. |
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| vegplot |
Nightmare, and not at all amusing. | ||||
| jema |
So bloody sickening, what with the fear that it won't sort itself out, and you might have to spend hours/days before being able to do any productive work 
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| Barefoot Andrew |
it won't sort itself out |
An entirely justified fear.
Did I come to work at silly o'clock this morning and have a peaceful and productive couple of hours work before getting the kids up? No. I came to the newly upgraded NetBeans stuck in a high CPU load and totally unresponsive. Had to kill it off, and then waste time working out WTF was going on.
I'm about to update to the latest release candidate. Normally I wouldn't go near such cutting edge versions of tools I rely on, but frankly the current production version doesn't work.
A.
A.