Eclipse, sick, dying, dead, or am I missing something??

[James Kimble]

I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and language
neutral
development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.

Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool that
we can
use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
SWT)
development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
opinion). What
gives? Is this thing going anywhere or should I just go back to the
ever buggy
NetBeans??
I hope I'm just missing some major plugin that everyone's using.

 

[Aquila Deus]

I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and language
neutral
development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.

me too!

Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool that
we can
use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
SWT)
development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
opinion).

Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version control
and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
diagrams (UML).

What
gives? Is this thing going anywhere or should I just go back to the
ever buggy
NetBeans??
I hope I'm just missing some major plugin that everyone's using.

You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?

 

[James Kimble]

Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version control

and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
diagrams (UML).

No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
generally
in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
just gives
you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
interface as
they offer individually).

You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?

Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
generalized
way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that is
uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as possible
in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
doing it graphically. You're designing a graphical thing (a GUI) it's
best done graphically. Even very
experienced GUI creaters (and I am) prefer to work in a gaphical Vs
manual
environment.

 

[Aquila Deus]

No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
generally
in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
just gives
you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
interface as
they offer individually).

I think external command-line tools are fine, but not those GUI ones.
Just look at those diff apps - they can't even highlighten keywords and
parens when you view code, that's really a pain in ass (especially when
you're reading lisp).

Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
generalized
way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that is
uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as possible
in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
doing it graphically. You're designing a graphical thing (a GUI) it's
best done graphically. Even very
experienced GUI creaters (and I am) prefer to work in a gaphical Vs
manual
environment.

Not if you use Tcl/Tk and Python's Tkinter

Even if GUI designers are useful, most of them (including vs.net's) are
too lame. None of those which I have seen can let you preview the
possible look after resizing or color changing (on windows), or help
you to design custom widgets.

 

[Tony Morris]

No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
generally
in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
just gives
you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
interface as
they offer individually).



Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
generalized
way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that is
uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as possible
in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
doing it graphically.

I beg to differ.
I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than, more
maintainable than any "GUI builder" - even some of the best (i.e. not
Eclipse). This is not a special talent or anything - I know of others who
feel the same way, but one is inclined to question the experience that you
boldly claim to have given such remarks.

 

[j-marvin]

check out http://www.swt-designer.com/ possibly??

 

[Wald]

I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and language
neutral
development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.

Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool that
we can
use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
SWT)
development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
opinion).

Far from a reason for calling Eclipse a "sick, dying, dead" project

Nevertheless, have a look at these:

http://eclipse.org/ve/

= the official Eclipse Visual Editor project, which is working on just
what you describe. Try it out, AFAIK it is in a very usable state.

http://www.swtguibuilder.com/index.htm

= a commercial plugin to build SwT GUI's. According to the comments, the
freeware version is not all that good, but that says nothing about the
full-fledged version of course.

Anyway, I'm not into the GUI builder stuff, so I can't tell you what is
going to work for you and what not. Just try it out, and see

Regards
Wald

PS. If you can't find certain functionality in Eclipse, check out the
plugins archive at http://eclipse-plugins.info. You'll usually find
something useful there.

 

[javakilo via JavaKB.com]

I used jigloo for about a week but I didn;t like it. I had trouble getting consistent results. Now I've been using the IBM Visual Editor plugin for two weeks and so far it has been quite nice.

 

[Tom Dyess]

Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as

I beg to differ.
I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than,
more
maintainable than any "GUI builder"...
but one is inclined to question the experience that you
boldly claim to have given such remarks.

Tony, it's really a matter of preference. I don't think preferring to use a
GUI designer makes you any less of a coder. I think it's a left brain/right
brain thing. One of the best GUI designers I have ever seen can only use a
visual designer. He is better than me hands down; his GUI's are beautiful in
form and function. To compare extremes, I would rather have a glass enema
than create a GIF without a designer, but I prefer my HTML work with an HTML
aware text editor. Alternatively, I know way back when that VB 3.0's visual
designer came out, it was vast improvement in form, function and
productivity over creating ASCII "windows" under DOS.

Personally, I'd like to know what the upper echelon of GUI designers for
Eclipse are. I'm afraid I'm going to have to delve into AWT/Swing before too
long.

Tom Dyess
OraclePower.com

 

[James Kimble]

Far from a reason for calling Eclipse a "sick, dying, dead" project


Well, I really wasn't calling it that, I was hoping that it wasn't. I
think the
philosophy of it (platform and language independant) is great! I've
always used a text editor to write code and never made the transition
to an IDE because I saw no advantage to having to learn an IDE
for every language I use (which are many) especially since each and
every one has quirks.
Thanks for your comments though. Gives me a place to start.

 

[James Kimble]

I beg to differ.

I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than, more
maintainable than any "GUI builder" - even some of the best (i.e. not
Eclipse). This is not a special talent or anything - I know of others who
feel the same way, but one is inclined to question the experience that you
boldly claim to have given such remarks.

It really comes back to what you get comfortable with. I've seen guys
do an
incredible job with a text editor but I've seen it go the other way
too. I've
always used a text editor for GUI work but I simply do better when I
can
see where I'm going rather than having to carry it in my head as I
code. Maybe
it's a sign of age ;<). On the other hand you can take my vi away when
you
can pry it from my cold dead hands. It's really what you get used to.

I think my biggest point is that GUI design can be done by neophyte
programmers (or non-programmers) if a good tool exists. Otherwise it
must be
done by someone with a fair amount of coding expertise. Why waste the
talent of a programmer doing graphical design, human interaction stuff.
It's
really a different area of interest.

My primary reason for this post, however, was to test the waters of
those that
are using an IDE for Java development and see where they stand on
Eclipse.
I like the idea but it doesn't seem ready for prime time. I could be
convinced
I'm wrong though. I just haven't used it enough to know.

 

[James Kimble]

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

 

[Chris Smith]

My primary reason for this post, however, was to test the waters of
those that are using an IDE for Java development and see where they
stand on Eclipse.

I like the idea but it doesn't seem ready for prime time. I could be
convinced I'm wrong though. I just haven't used it enough to know.

You may or may not be, but I'm certainly convinced that you're wrong.
Eclipse is, from my experience at least, the most single widely used IDE
for Java development (that's even more certainly true if you include
WSAD, which is Eclipse + more plugins). To call Eclipse not ready for
prime time is basically a matter of sticking your head in the sand and
ignoring reality.

If you are part of the minority of Java software developers who care
about a visual GUI designer, then certainly check out the options as
others have suggested. However, you should realize you're in a
minority. At least 80% of Java is run on systems that don't have a
monitor attached. Of the remaining 20%, I'd guess more than half is
written by people who don't care for GUI designers anyway -- a
phenomenon that's very common in Java because the high-level layout
mechanisms free you from having to line up pixels by hand.

You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying
that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is
sick or dying. That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am
guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Steve Sobol]

You may or may not be, but I'm certainly convinced that you're wrong.
Eclipse is, from my experience at least, the most single widely used IDE
for Java development (that's even more certainly true if you include
WSAD, which is Eclipse + more plugins). To call Eclipse not ready for
prime time is basically a matter of sticking your head in the sand and
ignoring reality.

If you are part of the minority of Java software developers who care
about a visual GUI designer, then certainly check out the options as
others have suggested. However, you should realize you're in a
minority. At least 80% of Java is run on systems that don't have a
monitor attached. Of the remaining 20%, I'd guess more than half is
written by people who don't care for GUI designers anyway -- a
phenomenon that's very common in Java because the high-level layout
mechanisms free you from having to line up pixels by hand.

NetBeans and SunONE Studio (that's the commercial version of NetBeans, right? I
forget what the name is) do exceedingly good jobs of handling GUI-related
stuff. They're also bloated, resource-hogging applications, in my opinion. (Not
to mention that the last NetBeans version I tried crashed often.)

Eclipse does much better. I like Eclipse as an IDE for much the same reason
that I like IBM's SWT as a widget toolbox over Sun's Swing. I respect and
appreciate - and admire! - Sun's desire to maintain total platform
independence. On the other hand, real-world application performance is
extremely important to me, and some people don't run their apps on a PC with a
half-gigabyte of RAM. Hell, even the laptop that serves as my development
machine only has 256MB!

You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying
that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is
sick or dying. That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am
guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.

There IS a good visual GUI designer available for Eclipse. It may not be free,
but it's under $100, and it works well. I don't know how well the built-in GUI
designer works in the newer versions of Eclipse, but Jigloo rocks. Especially
3.0, which has removed the few objections I had to using earlier versions of
Jigloo. http://www.cloudgarden.com/

And I am not employed by them, just a satisfied user.

--
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / (e-mail address removed) / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)

 

[Chris Smith]

There IS a good visual GUI designer available for Eclipse.

I didn't mean to suggest that there is not such a thing. I really
wouldn't know. I only said that the lack of such a thing would be no
indication at all of Eclipse being sick, dying, or dead -- for the
simple reason that 90% of Java developers probably don't care.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[James Kimble]

You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions

I'm used to getting an incredulous reaction on usenet no matter what I
post.
There's enough people reading these groups that SOMEONE is bound to
take SOMETHING the wrong way and get offended. Oh well....

I am glad to here that Eclipse seems to be going strong and that there
is
a good GUI development tool that can be used with it (even if it must
be
a commercial one). I am working on an application that uses JNI to
pass communications from a driver (LINUX) written in C to a JAVA GUI.
We're also using lots of PERL too (gotta use PERL ya know!!). So an IDE
that will allow us to work with all of these languages while only
having to
get to know the kinks of one IDE would be great.
Thanks to everyone for the information passed on here.

 

[quickcur]

I do not like Eclipse, except the very basic truth that it is free.

For java, it is OK but far behind JBuilder. I use it at home now.

For c++, it is a mess. For me, anything beyond a "Hello World" program
will be a pain to develop on Eclipse. Actually, "Hello World" is the
only program I have completed with Eclipse. Now I use it as a c++
source code viewer. For that, Eclipse does have good features.

The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
code compiles or not, the only way is to run it. For C++, it took me
days to figure out how to build and run my project. After I did figure
it out, I found the same routine did not work for another project since
some buttons were grayed out for reasons I never known. The second day,
however, buttons were grayed out even for my first project.

I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
why I am not good at Eclipse. But I have used Visual Studio and
JBuilder for many years. I learned very quickly without reading
documentation. Good IDE follows "human logic", not "technology logic".
Good IDE works the "normal" way, not the "expert" way.

 

[Chris Smith]

a commercial one). I am working on an application that uses JNI to
pass communications from a driver (LINUX) written in C to a JAVA GUI.
We're also using lots of PERL too (gotta use PERL ya know!!). So an IDE
that will allow us to work with all of these languages while only
having to get to know the kinks of one IDE would be great.

I'm not aware of a very stable Perl development environment for Eclipse.
Of course, there are the CDT and JDT for the other two languages, which
are both part of the Eclipse project itself and are quite stable.

EPIC appears to be the universal choice for Perl, but it currently
advertises version 0.3.0. Because of the wide variation in versioning
standards among open-source projects, that could mean anything from only
20% done, to practically stable. I don't know which it is.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Chris Smith]

For c++, it is a mess. For me, anything beyond a "Hello World" program
will be a pain to develop on Eclipse. Actually, "Hello World" is the
only program I have completed with Eclipse.

I don't know what to say about your C++ code problems with Eclipse. I
have not had similar problems with modern versions. I did run into
issues a long time ago when I tried to set up a first build of Eclipse
with CDT. These days, I don't consider it an issue at all.

The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
code compiles or not, the only way is to run it.

You've got that backwards. There is not a build function by default
because the incremental builder runs as you make changes. To see
errors, just open the "Problems" view, which appears by default as a tab
at the bottom of the Java perspective.

If you don't like the automatic incremental build, you can turn it off.
Then you can build the code with a button, just like in any other IDE.

I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
why I am not good at Eclipse.

Eclipse has the reputation that it has because it makes so many things
so much easier. It frequently allows you to think and work at a higher
level than other tools. All the little things -- like being able to
highlight an expression and hit Alt-Shift-L -- mean that programming is
less about typing than about working with the concepts of code. There
are definitely IDEs that are easier to set up and get accustomed to
using, but there are very few tools that do a better job at being a
development environment.

IMHO, of course.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Steve Sobol]

I didn't mean to suggest that there is not such a thing.

I didn't mean to suggest that you were suggesting there wasn't.

I really
wouldn't know. I only said that the lack of such a thing would be no
indication at all of Eclipse being sick, dying, or dead -- for the
simple reason that 90% of Java developers probably don't care.

I find the "I'll code the GUI by hand" concept somewhat amusing. Dragging and
dropping DOES seem (to me) to be a quicker way to design a GUI. As always, YMMV.

--
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / (e-mail address removed) / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)