What percent of Java developers use Eclipse?

[Oliver Wong]

In addition, Eclipse doesn't pick up that I am using Java 5, I have to
edit the properties manually.

You can set Java 5 compliance on a per-project level, and you can also
set it as the default so that newly created projects (whether via file->new
project, or imported from some external source) are considered to be Java 5
code.

- Oliver

 

[Daniel Dyer]

You can set Java 5 compliance on a per-project level, and you can
also
set it as the default so that newly created projects (whether via
file->new
project, or imported from some external source) are considered to be
Java 5
code.

That's not too unreasonable (though defaulting to Java 5.0 might be
better), I don't normally use Eclispe so I didn't have it configured.

However, if I import an existing project from an Ant script and, without
me doing anything else, it gives me a whole list of detailed errors about
not having Java 5.0 support turned on, well that just seems designed
specifically to irritate me. It "knows" exactly what the problem is, it
could fix it silently (or at least prompt with a yes/no option to fix it).

My issues with Eclipse are entirely about the half-arsed approach to
usability, I'm well aware of its well-regarded features and plug-in
support.

While I'm ranting about usability, what is it with Microsoft and hiding
menu items if they aren't used every day?

Dan.

 

[Oliver Wong]

You can set Java 5 compliance on a per-project level, and you can
also set it as the default so that newly created projects (whether
via file->new project, or imported from some external source) are
considered to be Java 5 code.

[snip]

However, if I import an existing project from an Ant script and, without
me doing anything else, it gives me a whole list of detailed errors about
not having Java 5.0 support turned on, well that just seems designed
specifically to irritate me. It "knows" exactly what the problem is, it
could fix it silently (or at least prompt with a yes/no option to fix it).

The prompt would probably be better than the silent fix (with a "don't ask
me again" checkbox). Imagine someone who has intentionally set the default
to 1.4 and getting furious everytime Eclipse silently changes it to 5.

[snip]

While I'm ranting about usability, what is it with Microsoft and hiding
menu items if they aren't used every day?

There's usually an option to disable that too, though it may be
obfuscated (E.g. a checkbox labeled "Enable smart menus").

Here's a usability gripe: I'm using an old Motorola C370 cell phone.
It's a "no moving parts" phone (e.g. not a fliptop). I can put the phone in
"locked" mode by pressing the menu button, and then the asterix button.
However, there are so many instances which can cause the phone to silently
unlock itself so as to cause the whole locking feature to be
worse-than-useless. Examples:

If I receive a phone call while the phone is locked, pressing the green
phone button will cause the call to be answered. So if the phone is in my
pockets, with random coins and keys and whatnot pushing it, and I receive a
call, the call will be immediately answered without any ringing or
vibrating, and I will not realize that a person is talking to the inside of
my pockets.

If I receive a voice mail or text message while the phone is locked,
pressing the red phone button will cause the message to be deleted. So I may
never be notified that I had ever received a message, and it will be
silently deleted.

If I don't accidentally answer the phone, and have "missed call", and
press the up or down scroll buttons, this cause the phone to jump into the
entry in my address book corresponding with the person who made the call.
The phone is subsequently considered unlock, so that pressing the red phone
button will delete entries from my phone book. My phone book thus
mysteriously loses entries, and has gibberish entries added to them.

Worst design ever.

- Oliver

 

[Daniel Dyer]

There's usually an option to disable that too, though it may be
obfuscated (E.g. a checkbox labeled "Enable smart menus").

I Know, I found it after Word decided to hide the "Exit" menu option.

Here's a usability gripe: I'm using an old Motorola C370 cell phone.
It's a "no moving parts" phone (e.g. not a fliptop). I can put the phone
in
"locked" mode by pressing the menu button, and then the asterix button.
However, there are so many instances which can cause the phone to
silently
unlock itself so as to cause the whole locking feature to be
worse-than-useless.

A Swing application I once had to maintain had a checkbox that for some
reason had to be disabled. A previous developer tasked with making this
checkbox unusable decided not to simply disable it but instead added a
mouse listener to it (actually it was probably a PropertyChangeListener,
he had a thing about them) so that the checkbox was enabled until you
moved the mouse over it to click on it, at which point it became greyed
out. The justification for this was that the ugly, non-standard colour
scheme in use made the disabled checkbox very difficult to see. How the
users loved their games of "click the checkbox if you can"...

That system however was Jakob Nielsen wet dream compared to a third-party
bespoke application that I had to use on a recent project. I will not
reveal the details but no doubt one day it will appear in all its glory on
the Daily WTF (http://www.thedailywtf.com).

Dan.

 

[Oliver Wong]

A Swing application I once had to maintain had a checkbox that for some
reason had to be disabled. A previous developer tasked with making this
checkbox unusable decided not to simply disable it but instead added a
mouse listener to it (actually it was probably a PropertyChangeListener,
he had a thing about them) so that the checkbox was enabled until you
moved the mouse over it to click on it, at which point it became greyed
out. The justification for this was that the ugly, non-standard colour
scheme in use made the disabled checkbox very difficult to see. How the
users loved their games of "click the checkbox if you can"...

Wow. That's a first for me.

I had to convert a COBOL dumb-terminal program to ASP.NET dynamic web
pages. And the new version had to behave "exactly" like the old one. That
meant some simple stuff, like using fix-width font everywhere and monochrome
colours, but it also meant pressing F12, for example, to submit the form. Or
using the up and down arrow keys to navigate through text fields. Or
swapping the foreground and background colour to indicate which line the
cursor was on.

Luckily I only had to work on the backend logic stuff. Someone else was
responsible for the for the GUI side. But when I went in to debug and test
my implementation, the rule of "least surprise" was violated with every
widget on every page. I can't imagine anyone, having ever been exposed to a
web browser, being comfortable with this application.

- Oliver

 

[P.Hill]

My point wasn't that it doesn't exist in Eclipse, it was that it
doesn't work very well in Eclipse. In IDEA and NetBeans, it just
works, with Eclipse you have to mess around with workspaces and files.

Hmm, in 3.1 I just visited a screen in the New project dialog
(not any import screen flow) which says:
"Create a new Java project based on the specification of a javac task in
the Ant buildfile. This does not copy the source contents to the workspace."

If I import my build.xml into Eclipse, it copies this into the
workspace folder but doesn't copy the other files.

Yup, to use anything as complicated as an IDE which helps you
build J2EE projects and aids with refactoring, XML parsing,
code completion, formating etc. and the usual selection of debugging,
editing and file management, one does have to understand how
one product, be it NetBeans, IntelliJ or Eclipse uses a term
like 'import'. In Eclipse NOT moving files into its special
directory structure does NOT come under any use case identified
by the term "import".

No doubt the new project wizard in each IDE is also different.

Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like what Eclipse does.

Like I said before, I'm glad there are three; it keeps them all
on their toes. Having one would be the saddest situation of
all.

-Paul

 

[Chris Uppal]

[...] How the
users loved their games of "click the checkbox if you can"...

Lovely !

My all-time favourite UI weirdness is in hardware rather than software. A
video recorder I bought some years back had a large remote controller. As is
fairly common practice, the controller had a flap behind which the less
frequently used buttons were hidden. One of the unusual features of the
controller was that it included a clock[*]. Like most clocks, it has the
disadvantage that it has to be adjusted for DST; since that's a nuisance, the
designers included a dedicated button[**] on the controller that advanced the
clock by an hour (or put it back).

So they put the DST button -- which you have to press exactly twice in any
one year -- on the /front/ of the controller, not behind the flap.

Another favourite is a text editor that I once heard about. It was a
command-based editor (like Unix ed/ex -- this was a long time ago). If you
just typed the number of a line, without specifying an action, then it
/deleted/ that line. Obviously designed according to the Principle of Maximal
Astonishment.

-- chris

[*] "Why?", you ask. So that you could program the /controller/ to activate
the video at certain times, independently of the video's own programming. I am
still unable to fathom the workings of the mind(s) which came up with that
idea...

[**] This controller has /lots/ of buttons -- 24 on the front (plus a jog-dial)
and a further 35 behind the flap.

 

[Daniel Dyer]

Hmm, in 3.1 I just visited a screen in the New project dialog
(not any import screen flow) which says:
"Create a new Java project based on the specification of a javac task in
the Ant buildfile. This does not copy the source contents to the
workspace."

The last Eclipse version I used was 3.1. I don't remember reading the
"This does not copy the source contents to the workspace" bit. Is it
prominent (I could just have not been paying attention)?

Out of interest, is there some aspect of Eclipse that makes the workspace
concept necessary? Is it something to do with the continuous compilation
or some other feature?

Yup, to use anything as complicated as an IDE which helps you
build J2EE projects and aids with refactoring, XML parsing,
code completion, formating etc. and the usual selection of debugging,
editing and file management, one does have to understand how
one product, be it NetBeans, IntelliJ or Eclipse uses a term
like 'import'.

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at with listing those features.
If you just mean "you don't understand the word import", you can just say
it, I won't be offended

In Eclipse NOT moving files into its special
directory structure does NOT come under any use case identified
by the term "import".

Fair enough, I didn't intend to make any distinction between "import" by
copying files across and some other interpretation of "import". I just
wanted to be able to take my existing project, and open it in an IDE
without lots of configuration effort. Eclipse failed me at that.
IntelliJ made it easy, and NetBeans made it ridiculously simple (probably
because of its focus on Ant).

Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like what Eclipse does.

OK, I already adressed that point. For me at least, it doesn't work very
well in Eclipse.

Like I said before, I'm glad there are three; it keeps them all
on their toes. Having one would be the saddest situation of
all.

Agreed. Eclipse and NetBeans frustrate me though. Because if you could
combine the best aspects of both you'd have something that could compete
in pretty much every department with IDEA and that would win hands down on
price.

Dan.

 

[Shane.Wilks]

Having just graduated, I'm relatively new to the field of professional
developers. The company I currently work for uses JBuilder 10 but I'm
willing to drop that like a hot potatoe for another IDE if I think it's
better.

Is there any site or other resource that can provide and objective,
side-by-side comparison of the major IDEs (netbeans, eclipse, jbuilder,
etc.)?

 

[Daniel Dyer]

Having just graduated, I'm relatively new to the field of professional
developers. The company I currently work for uses JBuilder 10 but I'm
willing to drop that like a hot potatoe for another IDE if I think it's
better.

Is there any site or other resource that can provide and objective,
side-by-side comparison of the major IDEs (netbeans, eclipse, jbuilder,
etc.)?

You're unlikely to find an objective comparison as the people compiling
these reports most likely have an agenda in favour of one IDE or another.
You could try searching the archive of this group to see what people have
said about each of the options in the past. This topic comes up at least
once a week.

I'm not familiar with JBuilder (the only version I ever used was one of
the early ones). What don't you like about it?

Dan.

 

[Chris Smith]

Having just graduated, I'm relatively new to the field of professional
developers. The company I currently work for uses JBuilder 10 but I'm
willing to drop that like a hot potatoe for another IDE if I think it's
better.

Keep in mind that there's a certain amount of benefit to working with
the same tools as the other knowledgable developers in your company...
especially if you're new and not familiar with the project build tools
and configurations.

I prefer Eclipse to JBuilder; but that doesn't mean I'd use Eclipse if I
were in your shoes.

(And no, I'm not aware of an objective comparison.)

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

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Shane.Wilks]

In general it's not that bad but I always keep my eyes open for
something that may serve me better (read: an IDE that does things *my*
way ...)

 

[Roedy Green]

Is there any site or other resource that can provide and objective,
side-by-side comparison of the major IDEs (netbeans, eclipse, jbuilder,
etc.)?

I have a list of possibilities which should help you narrow it down.
This is like asking someone to find you wife.

If you have money, Intellij is your most likely choice. If not Eclipse
or Netbeans. Take them for a test drive.

If you want something simpler than will run on an old klunker there
are many choices.

 

[P.Hill]

Out of interest, is there some aspect of Eclipse that makes the
workspace concept necessary? Is it something to do with the continuous
compilation or some other feature?

I think the pedigree is Smalltalk, Visual Age and then Eclipse.
The idea of keeping everything you do in one pile completely controlled
by the dev environment comes from that. OTOH, I wouldn't say it
is necessary in recent releases. The last vestige is you have to put a
mention of project in this thing called a workspace. There can be more
than one workspace (a collection of projects); I personally have a
second "personal" one at work for odd casual/learning projects. The
project file can be simply referenced in a workspace. The 2nd workspace
files need not be anywhere near the other ones. A project file can be
created next to the existing files ala the previous mention of one of
paths in the new project creation wizard.

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at with listing those
features. If you just mean "you don't understand the word import", you
can just say it, I won't be offended

No, the idea was to remind ourselves that these are complex _beasts_
that set the bar for IDEs and include all kinds of things you have to
get your head around to use. But I'd bet, if I'd asked you last week
what import meant you might have said something about bringing something
"in", so it is a lot more complex than you not understanding the word
import or even its particular narrow usage in Eclipse. Its a problem of
these beasts called IDEs. The one in particular has both new and import.

NetBeans made it ridiculously simple
(probably because of its focus on Ant).

That does sound like a good feature that naturally comes from
natively/directly using the ant file.

Agreed. Eclipse and NetBeans frustrate me though. Because if you
could combine the best aspects of both you'd have something that could
compete in pretty much every department with IDEA and that would win
hands down on price.

I'm glad you agree. Such competition and evolution is never a simple
trajectory, but it looks like these three, plus even a few "also rans"
are keeping up the race.

-Paul

 

[Roedy Green]

I have a list of possibilities which should help you narrow it down.

it is posted at http://mindprod.com/jgloss/ide.html

 

[opalpa]

Yes this qualifies as not having to spend much time configuring up
front!

It was pleasent how my target names were recognized and build, clean,
documentation generation, and testing where all setup.

NetBeans installed without problems and imported a 250 file project
very quickly. Very promising.

Another positive was that NetBeans didn't polluate project directories.
In total it created one xml file in the root directory. I don't like
clutter; I'm compelled to understand every file within a project.

I'm just beginning to explore NetBeans but like what I see. Definately
a better experience than Eclipse installation/setup.

Thank you.

Opalinski
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.geocities.com/opalpaweb/

 

[decent_john]

I have 2 web applications which share same java sources so i have t
have 3 different projects. two projects for web apps and anothe
project for java sources. The web app projects are dependent on thi
java project.

I tried hard to configure eclipse for webprojects dependent on othe
existing projects. I think, it's sort of impossible to create the abov
scenerio using eclipse.

I am happily using netbeans4.1 for the same. :