IDE favorite

[ed collins]

I'm a college student and am in the process of learning Java and OOP. What
is the most popular IDE to create Java programs?

Any and all replies would certainly be appreciated.

ed.

 

[dada rara]

Agree on that, finding new useful features every day:

Wizards for creating many different types of files (java, jsp, xsl, xml, jar
etc etc)
Ant integration
CVS integration
XSL tag completion
XSLT
DB browser
WAR creation
JAR creation
"Automatic" JavaDoc
Internalisation help (property files)
Tag libraries support

much much more

One weak side when working with complex projects, no easy way of specifying
multiple build paths...

d.

 

[dada rara]

.... and no Refactoring support :-(

Agree on that, finding new useful features every day:

Wizards for creating many different types of files (java, jsp, xsl, xml, jar
etc etc)
Ant integration
CVS integration
XSL tag completion
XSLT
DB browser
WAR creation
JAR creation
"Automatic" JavaDoc
Internalisation help (property files)
Tag libraries support

much much more

One weak side when working with complex projects, no easy way of specifying
multiple build paths...

d.

 

[Paul Guermonprez]

i use an editor (vim, but xemacs works too, or any source code editor)
+ ant (ant.apache.org) for building/cvs/...
+ cvs (better, but will take some time to get used to)

free, multiplatform,
IMHO the best way to learn (no flame).

paul.

 

[kevinn]

I'm a college student and am in the process of learning

Java and OOP. What is the most popular IDE to create
Java programs?

I highly recommend JCreator.

 

[Steve]

I'd totaly agree - use a basic text editor for learning Java. If you
want nice colours for keywords etc then use something like EditPlus or
TextPad - search the web for free/shareware tools.

A good IDE will do a lot of the work for you, which totaly defeats the
object [no pun intended] of learning the language. I also do not think
you will see any productivity gain if you are working on small
projects and building simple classes to learn features of the
langauge. I don't think you even need source code control, but if you
do I'd go for CVS. Any may be useful if you build a complex project
with a lot of classes, but I don't recal a need for it when I was at
University.

Learn the language first, then when you want to build a production
system look for the most suitable IDE - you'll want different IDEs for
different environments (e.g. J2ME for a cell phone has completely
different needs to a J2EE application, and a J2SE Swing app will be
different again).

I develop Java and C++ enterprise applications for a living and I use
Notepad more than I use JBuilder and the like.

Steve

i use an editor (vim, but xemacs works too, or any source code editor)
+ ant (ant.apache.org) for building/cvs/...
+ cvs (better, but will take some time to get used to)

free, multiplatform,
IMHO the best way to learn (no flame).

paul.

~ If emailing, please use: Steve_A_Haigh
~ @
~ hotmail.com
~

 

[Drew Volpe]

I'm a college student and am in the process of learning Java and OOP. What
is the most popular IDE to create Java programs?

Eclipse is probably the most popular, as it's free and has a lot
nice features.


My personal favorite is IntelliJ's IDEA. It has a very well
thought out UI. It has a lot of great features like automatic
refactoring, imports optimization, popup javadocs, etc. but
it's all put together so that it never gets in your way and is
quick to use. One thing I love is you can right click any
class or method and either go to the declaration of that class/method
or find all usages of that class/method throughout your code.



dv

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.

Drew Volpe, mylastname at hcs o harvard o edu

 

[Dale King]

I'd totaly agree - use a basic text editor for learning Java. If you
want nice colours for keywords etc then use something like EditPlus or
TextPad - search the web for free/shareware tools.

I totally disagree. And what does the poor newbie do when his program
doesn't work since he doesn't have a debugger? Imagine the nightmare trying
to figure out how to correctly compile a larger program spanning multiple
packages from the command line.

A good IDE will do a lot of the work for you, which totaly defeats the
object [no pun intended] of learning the language.

Since when is the work of building the code, part of the language? That is
just learning a tool that is not part of the language.

I also do not think
you will see any productivity gain if you are working on small
projects and building simple classes to learn features of the
langauge. I don't think you even need source code control, but if you
do I'd go for CVS. Any may be useful if you build a complex project
with a lot of classes, but I don't recal a need for it when I was at
University.

That is why most IDE's are not a good fit for learning the language. There
is an IDE specifically designed for learning OOP and the language without
requiring you to learn arcane command line tools. It also has a good
debugger and facilities to help visualize the program.

That IDE is BlueJ (www.bluej.org).

Learn the language first, then when you want to build a production
system look for the most suitable IDE - you'll want different IDEs for
different environments (e.g. J2ME for a cell phone has completely
different needs to a J2EE application, and a J2SE Swing app will be
different again).

I agree. Learn the language first. That is why I recommend BlueJ. Your
approach requires learning a tool which is essentially just a really bad
IDE.

I develop Java and C++ enterprise applications for a living and I use
Notepad more than I use JBuilder and the like.

It's your loss.

 

[Marc Rochkind]

Most popular or favorite are irrelevant to you. You need the one that
will
best help you to learn the language and OOP. The best choice for that is
BlueJ (www.bluej.org).

Thanks for the tip. I downloaded BlueJ and indeed there is much to like.

One thing that's very irritating to me (although it would have no effect on
the real goals of BlueJ) is that it seems that ALL Java-based test editors
have very limited fine-grained editing features compared to native editors
on the two GUIs I'm most familiar with, Mac and Windows. Examples:
extending a selection by words after double-clicking a word, selecting a
line by clicking to its left, drag-and-drop editing.

Maybe someday someone will create a world-class editing object for Java.

So... I do my Java work on Solaris, but the editing with JCreator. (The
latter running on Windows. Shared files happen to be on a FreeBSD machine.)

--Marc

 

[Drew Volpe]

Thanks for the tip. I downloaded BlueJ and indeed there is much to like.

One thing that's very irritating to me (although it would have no effect on
the real goals of BlueJ) is that it seems that ALL Java-based test editors
have very limited fine-grained editing features compared to native editors
on the two GUIs I'm most familiar with, Mac and Windows. Examples:
extending a selection by words after double-clicking a word, selecting a
line by clicking to its left, drag-and-drop editing.

IDEA has of all of those and a lot of other niceties I've never
seen in other editors. That's one of the most important things
to me: how mature is the UI. The little things really add up
if you're working in an application all day.


I think JBuilder has the features you mention too, iirc.



dv

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.

Drew Volpe, mylastname at hcs o harvard o edu

 

[Ken]

I've been using Jedit for quite a while and I'm pretty happy with it.
Its free and open-source.

http://www.jedit.org

Ken

 

[Dale King]

vi and xemacs have wonderfull syntax highlighters and lot of features.

Vi or emacs for a NEWBIE??! You've got to be kidding! No IDE in the world
has as steep a learning curve as either one of them.

i always did that way ... and i'm rather quick, for large projects too.
the closer you are from the code, the less you have to debug,

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by being closer to the code. You are
working with source code either way.

We were talking about someone learning the language and OOP. They are very
far from understanding the code and they have lots to debug. The use of a
good debugger is very helpful for getting them to understand the code.

What I see when a newbie does not have a good debugger they will resort to
trial and error debugging. They will try things to see if it fixes it rather
than try to actually understand what is going on.

and the less you have to learn how to use an ide.

Nothing much to learn with the BlueJ IDE. Certainly much, much less than for
using javac.

vi and xemacs will last for ever, even if you use
different languages. your ide ... i'm not sure.

I'm sure they will last for at least a generation, until the old Unix
hackers die off.

of course use ant, without ant large projects are a nightmare.
he don't have to use command line, ant is a good enough practice.

For a Newbie!!?? Ant is certainly not something I would inflict on someone
just learning the language.

 

[Sudsy]

Dale King wrote:

Vi or emacs for a NEWBIE??! You've got to be kidding! No IDE in the world
has as steep a learning curve as either one of them.

Can I have some of those drugs you're taking?! vi has a steeper
learning curve than IDEs?
Seriously, most IDEs I've seen seen have multiple windows, all
manner of screen navigations, lots of hot-keys, multiple modes,
etc.
vi has just two modes: insert and command. WYSIWYG and you only
need to learn a handful of keystrokes to get started. There's
also no requirement for a mouse, something you generally can't
claim for those IDEs I've encountered.
The command-line along with a simple editor is still not a bad
way to learn Java if you have the javadocs available either in
a book or in a browser window.
YM obviously Vs.

 

[Steve]

Dale King wrote:


Can I have some of those drugs you're taking?! vi has a steeper
learning curve than IDEs?

Presumably, it's the Blue pill he took?

If vi has a steep learning curve then stick to notepad, you have no
hope of getting to grips with anything more complex. Better yet, go
back to the abacus.

~ If emailing, please use: Steve_A_Haigh
~ @
~ hotmail.com
~

 

[Steve]

A good IDE will do a lot of the work for you, which totaly defeats the
object [no pun intended] of learning the language.

Since when is the work of building the code, part of the language? That is
just learning a tool that is not part of the language.

Not true, if you mean learning the syntax, maybe, but to learn a
language you need to understand the interdependence between classes,
and in any sensible application that means multiple files, you need to
undertand how Javac picks up classes, I'd say that was part of the
language.

That is why most IDE's are not a good fit for learning the language. There
is an IDE specifically designed for learning OOP and the language without
requiring you to learn arcane command line tools. It also has a good
debugger and facilities to help visualize the program.

That IDE is BlueJ (www.bluej.org).

I'd agree, it looks nice.

I agree. Learn the language first. That is why I recommend BlueJ. Your
approach requires learning a tool which is essentially just a really bad
IDE.


It's your loss.

Not really. Unless BlueJ supports Perl, Unix scripts, C++, Java, C,
Ada, Pascal, Assembler, C#, text (OK, it probably does this one), XML,
HTML, JSP, ASP and SQL (T/SQL and PL/SQL) then I think I'll stick with
my text editor thanks. In the time it takes to learn the latest and
greatest IDE for each of these I think I will have died of boredom and
not written any code. I use IDEs when I work full time day in day out
in one langauge, but when I switch between langauges day to day I
don't have time.

By the way, I recently saw a presentation by Erich Gamma on the
Eclipse project. That is impresive, so I'm prepared to go back on
everything I just said when I get a chance to look at it.


~ If emailing, please use: Steve_A_Haigh
~ @
~ hotmail.com
~

 

[Tim Tyler]

: Another nice one is Eclipse, though that might be a bit hard to set up
: correctly for a newbie (who could quickly become frustrated by Eclipse
: 'features' like taking a JRE instead of JDK as the default Java environment
: (which can prevent compilation from working...).

Eclipse has its own built-in compiler.

Should we assume you are talking about the beginner who is calling the
com.sun.tools.javac package to compile his own code programatically?

I agree that Eclipse could be a PITA for a newcomer to set up, though ;-)

 

[Paul Guermonprez]

most beginners i know use xemacs and are
extremely happy with it. even for main text editing
like reports.

of course you have to tell them how to enable
syntax highlighting and that sort of things ...
xemacs is extremely user-friendly, you have a button
for every function you need.

 

[Jon Skeet]

Not really. Unless BlueJ supports Perl, Unix scripts, C++, Java, C,
Ada, Pascal, Assembler, C#, text (OK, it probably does this one), XML,
HTML, JSP, ASP and SQL (T/SQL and PL/SQL) then I think I'll stick with
my text editor thanks. In the time it takes to learn the latest and
greatest IDE for each of these I think I will have died of boredom and
not written any code. I use IDEs when I work full time day in day out
in one langauge, but when I switch between langauges day to day I
don't have time.

Even if you're not going to use an IDE which directly knows how to
compile/debug each of those languages, almost *any* editor is going to
be better than Notepad. For instance, just using Eclipse and setting
everything up as text files will give you version histories, CVS
access, multiple buffers, etc - far better than Notepad.

There is certainly a place for a powerful text editor in every
developer's toolbox - but Notepad is *not* a powerful text editor.

 

[Dale King]

Try putting someone who knows nothing about vi in front of it and ask them
to make a few simple edits. Don't give them any documentation and see how
long it takes them. I'm pretty sure it would be less time than doing the
same in an IDE.

Presumably, it's the Blue pill he took?

If vi has a steep learning curve

It does have a steep learning curve. If for no other reason than the fact
that it works totally different than any other editor out there. Your
experience from any other editor does not help you and actually works
against you.

I don't want to get into VI bashing. If it works for you use it. But the
notion that it is suitable for newbies is pure nonsense.

then stick to notepad,

Actually notepad is a not good for newbies because of the chances that it
might save your file as .java.text.

you have no
hope of getting to grips with anything more complex. Better yet, go
back to the abacus.

I think you have that backwards. You were the one advocating primitive tools
instead of an IDE sophisticated enough to help you learn the language.

 

[Tim Tyler]

: Eclipse lacks a GUI developer which means you have to lay out your user
: interface on paper instead of on the screen.

"Visual Builder for Eclipse"
http://www.assisiplugins.com/index_start.html