Issues with BlueJ- compile time, exporting project to Eclipse

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hello all, I’m working on an RPG along the lines of Rogue or ADOM, and I’ve run into a couple of questions I’ve been unable to resolve on my own. There may be an obvious solution to this, I don’t yet know much about Java (or programming in general). Rest assured that though I know very little now I am studying as much as I can online. I’m also taking a Java class at school this semester. Please forgive my temporary ignorance.

(1) Up until a few days ago my project compiled almost instantly. I’ve gradually been adding classes and code, and now suddenly the compile times have increased to around five minutes. I’ve read only a little about using a script to compile more efficiently- could that be a possible solution? For reference the old versions still compile quickly, the slowness is restricted to newer versions of the project.

(2) I’ve heard good things about Eclipse, and I’ve decided I’d like to export my project and continue developing with Eclipse. I found a BlueJ plugin called ‘Exporter’ that has been recommended for doing just that. I’ve exported the project to a folder, and it generated some sort of xml file (is this an ant script?). Needless to say I don’t know Eclipse well yet. I haven’t been able to figure out how to import the project. I’ve been able to open the individual files, but not the project itself. I found an ‘import’ option that works for existing Eclipse projects. There doesn’t seem to be one for non-Eclipse projects. I feel stupid for asking this, but where did they hide the ‘import’ option? I feel a little lost.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

#2

You can import from a “file system”, which takes the files from a folder. You can also start a new project in the same location. Also if you just start a new project and copy the files into that project’s folder then you’ll also get the files.

#3

It is definitely in your best interest to get into a “real” IDE such as Eclipse or NetBeans. BlueJ may be acceptable for learning Java, but you need a tool that scales up for serious development. The compile lag is probably because of all of the extra data BlueJ has to maintain for pedagogic reasons.

When you make the switch, let me know what you think. Some folks prefer to start their students in BlueJ, but others jump right into Eclipse. I’d like to know the experience of a budding Java game developer.

#4

Thanks for the responses- I’ve got my project imported into Eclipse and it compiles in about a second now. I can’t begin to express what a relief it is.

My teacher initlally recommended starting in a simple IDE. BlueJ was helpful to me when I was still struggling with extremely simple Java concepts. I think it was nice to work in a simple, clean environment with little to no automation, because it made writing code itself seem more real, less magical and complicated. I felt like I was writing the code myself instead of having the program write it for me. The thing that I most dislike about BlueJ is the lack of text editor features. I’m used to working in ConText, and I really missed such features as book marks, brace matching, and being able to look at two parts of the same document at once. Another thing I disliked is the way a new class will start preformatted, with a constructor, sample methods, etc. I think it would have been better to type everything myself and learn in the process.

Hmm, so I guess in general the lack of automation was good, and I found the clean interface and unintimidating feature set were helpful.