What's NetBeans written in?

[Roedy Green]

The cvs "diff" command, like the UNIX one it's based on, can ignore
whitespace, too, and has had that ability for as long as I've used CVS (over
seven years, now).

However that won't help you if IntelliJ has done any of a number of
transforms that are more that just whitespace, e.g. rearranger to
reorder methods, converting concatenation to .append, renaming local
variables...

You need something quite clever to filter what changes you want to
see. The low tech way to do it is to beautify code to the same
standard on checkin.

 

[Roedy Green]

I would assume IntelliJ can also do that.

IntelliJ has pages of options to control your preferred format. Sun
is nowhere near as picky.

Then there is the standard ordering of declarations and methods.

Then there are the IntelliJ strict naming conventions. They go further
than I am prepared to go, though I am gradually bring my code up to
compliance.

 

[Olle]

Not really. If your IDE vanishes then, with a little effort, you can

transfer your source code to punched cards and run it on any platform
that supports Java and has appropriate hardware. Meanwhile you can
enjoy the huge gains that a modern IDE provides. It only requires that
the project team agree on some standard software. That software will
range from source code control to 4GL development tools and an IDE is
a convenient way of integrating them.

Any modern IDE should NOT add non standard files that the project
depends on (all other IDEs whether or not they call themselves modern
or not are not modern). And has been said before in the thread: the
build process should be totally IDE independant, for example Ant based
(even though most modern IDEs can call any build program from within).

The only two modern IDEs I have found and used are Eclipse (free) and
IDEA (commercial) all I have tried others tend to try to make the user
dependent on it. Both are good, but if you have the money I would
recommend IDEA.

And the crap about 3GL and 4GL belong to the 80:ies (maybe early
90:ies) A good IDE helps the developer and does not hide the details
from him/her.

just my 2 cents