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

[Steve Sobol]

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.

I've never used JBuilder. What do you like the most about it?

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.

Good programmers read the directions for their programming tools.

--
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]

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.

I'll certainly not argue that it can be quicker and easier. My primary
concern would be finding a way to eliminate the human psychological
tendency to perfect what actually appears on the screen in the GUI
designer, at the expense of the actual application, which will appear on
several screens, potentially with different operating systems and/or
different languages, and almost certainly with different window sizes.
I've just seen too many applications where things coincidentally lined
up in the GUI designer, but stuff is screwed up if you resize the window
and the application is borderline unusable.

It would take a certain discipline to ensure that you've actually
specified everything that's important, rather than things appearing a
certian way by chance. I don't know that this attention to detail is
necessarily lost in a GUI designer, but there are a lot more
opportunities to forget about something because it looks fine for you.

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

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Brill2]

Hands down EDITPLUS 2.

 

[opalpa]

Try JBuilder for Java gui building. It is the best java gui builder
I've played with.

I personally use vi and unix as my preferred dev environment.

I have downloaded Eclipse and I have downloaded Netbeans multiple
times, (I try every few months), but I always get them to crash within
about 15 minutes and then it is back to vi and unix.

Back to point, JBuilder has a gui gui builder. Also javasoft.com has
lots of code for gui pieces and putting those together in a text editor
is not that much of a disease:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/components.html
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/

 

[Alan Krueger]

Good programmers read the directions for their programming tools.

Good, intuitive UIs (IDEs included) shouldn't need a user to read
documentation to use in most cases, especially if you're familiar with
the task domain. Shortcuts should be provided for experts, but that
shouldn't be the only obvious way to do things.

That said, I've used various IDEs over the years, Visual Studio
included, and I haven't found Eclipse to be any harder to learn to use
effecively than any other IDE. YMMV, of course.

 

[James Kimble]

I've been trying some of the tools people are suggesting here and
I do like jigloo but I'd like to try the IBM VE. Does it work with
Eclipse
3.0? It appears to want you to download the GEF and EMF plugins
(that don't appear to be valid links from the IBM VE page) in addition
to the VE itself. The page itself looks to be over a year old which
makes me a little leary of trying it with the latest Eclipse.
Any suggestions, pointers or links much appreciated.

 

[Tom Dyess]

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.

I actually prefer Eclipse to JBuilder, but I am not currently doing any GUI
work. I've used JBuilderX and JBuilder 2005 for a few months. I was pretty
happy with X, but 2005 seemed buggy, so I dropped it for Eclipse and I like
it better. I just wish there was a way to use bookmarks with keyboard
shortcuts, other than that, it's peachy.. Currently I'm strictly doing
Servlets though.

 

[Steve Sobol]

I'll certainly not argue that it can be quicker and easier. My primary
concern would be finding a way to eliminate the human psychological
tendency to perfect what actually appears on the screen in the GUI
designer, at the expense of the actual application, which will appear on
several screens, potentially with different operating systems and/or
different languages, and almost certainly with different window sizes.

Well, isn't that why Java uses layout managers? Coming from a GUI environment
that doesn't have them (Visual Studio), I used to cheat by using
AbsoluteLayout, but I've finally weaned myself off of it.

--
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)

 

[opalpa]

Note: I've crashed JBuilder and once in a way that it needed a
reinstall.

Note 2: If you download a JBuilder release choose the download that
describes the task you are interested in sampling because the various
trial versions delineate functionality.

 

[Chris Smith]

Well, isn't that why Java uses layout managers? Coming from a GUI environment
that doesn't have them (Visual Studio), I used to cheat by using
AbsoluteLayout, but I've finally weaned myself off of it.

Yes, that is exactly why Java uses layout managers. However, if your
approach to using layout managers is to tweak them until things look
right on *your* screen, then you've only come halfway toward
understanding the problem.

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

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Ge Cong]

Good programmers write program, not read docs.

 

[Alex Molochnikov]

Good programmers write program, not read docs.

Reading docs, tutorials and studying other programmers' code is what makes
good programmers. Writing programs by trial and error is what differentiates
hackers from programmers.

AM

 

[Aquila Deus]

Hands down EDITPLUS 2.

And vim!

 

[James Kimble]

So can anyone comment on the advantages and disadvantages of Jigloo
Vs the IBM Visual Editor? I'd prefer to use the IBM VE but I'm not
sure it will work with Eclipse 3.0. Jigloo looks professional and I
like the way it works. Seems pretty intuitive and it's inexpensive.
I prefer to stay open-source with I can though so the IBM VE would
be better if it will work.

Any comments......??

 

[Erik Danielsson]

I have not seen anyone else comment on this so:

- For Java it's very simple (C++ I don´t know at all). You just save
the code and it compiles automatically. You'll see any compilation
errors in your workspace immediately when you save (depending a bit on
the options you've set for the 'Problems' tab of course). Also you'll
get compilation errors in the class you're editing marked with red as
soon as you make them. I just can´t see where your problem is.

Erik D

 

[Aquila Deus]

So can anyone comment on the advantages and disadvantages of Jigloo
Vs the IBM Visual Editor? I'd prefer to use the IBM VE but I'm not
sure it will work with Eclipse 3.0. Jigloo looks professional and I
like the way it works. Seems pretty intuitive and it's inexpensive.
I prefer to stay open-source with I can though so the IBM VE would
be better if it will work.

Any comments......??

No

 

[unbending]

I've used Eclipse 3.1(M4) SDK with many plugins added (free from the
mirrors). I've used the VE and it seems to work quite well. It allows
you to drag and drop the widgets and edit many of their properties. I
didn't use it too much because I needed a simpler interface and didn't
want to spend too much time learning how to use VE.

I've also used the UML plugin. In my opinion, it's very hard to use (I
don't think it's at the release/production stage yet).
Try Eclipse's new download page, it's better (although in beta).