ok i thinks thats 5.0 ??? that is just weird becouse as i said before i do that all the time :o
I guess it’s probably just a bug in my installation of the platform then.
I’ll try and get around to submitting it to the Netbeans bug database when I have time on my hands…
I’m not sure that this feature ought to be really fine. I use netbeans and also took as a habit to have my code always running in the debugger and submit hotfixes without restarting the program. When i save files they are not necessary intended to be submited as hotfix. Having the IDE doing it when not needed could/would break my running program more often than it would help me.
I prefer hitting the “apply code change” button myself when i estimate that it can be flwlessly submitted than letting the IDE do it for me all the time and break what’s running.
Eclipse already detects when your changes will break things and tell you.
Cas 
I doubt it will detect that an algorithm that you saved in one file will lead to crash/instable state in one of a class that you intended to edit and save right after that one… 
You can do the same in Eclipse. Just deselect Build Automatically under the Projects menu. Then select build when you are ready to submit the code.
Eclipse compiles the file you’re working on as you type. You don’t even have to save to see errors.
Cas
I don’t think it compiles the file as much as it just does a syntax and reference check. NetBeans tries to do the same thing, just 100 times slower and less reliable.
Is this related to the compile and hotfix point we were discussing ?
I generally set automatic parsing to 250ms delay, it has always detected everything the compiler ought to detect and never slowed me down. You might had a different experience, but in my case it works pretty well, that is without problems. Maybe that slowness you feel is related to the delay that is set by default (1200ms, iirc). Even with long sources (1-2k lines), i get the errors right after i stop typing and i get all of them.
The last time I tried NetBeans I really couldn’t get past the interface - the Eclipse UI is just so polished compared to NetBeans. There are lots of little things that really annoy me about Swing interfaces - like the grey background you get when resizing windows, and 1.5’s god-awful default Metal theme - I’m positively spoiled rotten by SWT, regardless of how evil Sun seem to think it is!
That said, NetBean’s GUI builder is an excellent bit of kit - a much better user experience than Eclipse’s VE. And someone at Eclipse really needs to take control and make sure the devs tackle the boring jobs as well as the fun ones - the Eclipse Web Tools download is currently broken for a lot of people, and nobody seems to care - I get the impression that NetBeans is a lot better run in that area.
While both IDEs have strengths, they also have weaknesses. You’ve just got to pick which ones you can live with.
The “grey rect” problem is gone in Java 6. I personally don’t like SWT… partly because of the energy spent on it instead of making the “real” UI stuff (Swing) work better, partly because I prefer the flexibility of Swing. SWT seems to work OK on Windows, but it is not all that great on Linux or Mac. On Mac in particular it has been a royal pain because of how Apple has made Java a first-class citizen on OS X and done some magic with their AWT/Swing code with regards to fitting it into the Cocoa (an Apple API) event loop.
Thanks Pepe for the parsing delay hint… I’ll try that. I also didn’t even know about the “apply code change” thing until you mentioned it. I guess the fact that I’ve never had to tweak Eclipse for these things is just one reason that I prefer it… though I’m starting to use Matisse now and NetBeans is growing on me. With general editor speedups and refactoring improvements I could easily switch back to NetBeans.
The NetBeans guys need to make the auto-complete smarter: E.g. Fix MyClass x = new so it doesn’t pop up a list of every class known to the IDE (after several seconds of building the list), and instead base the completion on classes that are assignable to MyClass with accessible constructors. They should make auto-complete work properly inside of inner classes while they are at it.
Both are really great tools, I’m just amazed at the quality of the free tools we have for Java development. Try to do C/C++ with MS Visual Studio and you will be reminded of how good we have it. (And Visual Studio has been improved a lot in recent years, yet it is still no comparison to Eclipse or NetBeans.)
SWT on Mac is a royal PITA. The fact that they went with Carbon rather than Cocoa means mixing anything from AWT with SWT is guaranteed to cause an application to deadlock. Grrrr.
Just to add to the discussion: Not liked NetBeans at all. Feels very clunky. Eclipse is OK, but the project management side of it still sucks. Ever since the old Turbo C/C++ days, I’ve never found an IDE that actually had decent project management capabilities. I really dislike all the arm twisting that all the environments force on you in the way a project should be structured, compiled etc. Eclipse I only use on Mac and Linux, and even then I only use it as a text editor.
Even though I’m a long-standing Eclipse fan and the SWT was a great thing… now I’ve seen just how fast JDK6.0 is at rendering Swing GUIs (finally! The actual performance they were promising 5 years ago!) and just how nice the subpixel antialiased font rendering is (finally! only 6 years after its debut on Windows!)… well, I just wish Eclipse was written in Swing now.
And then I wish there were a bunch of cool new components in Swing as well. JIDE do a set of really nice ones.
Cas
Is antialiased fonts turned on by default now in JDK6 then?
Not to judge those online, but I have yet to meet a Netbeans user in real life who I’d trust a project to. ;D I’ve also yet to come accross a local business which uses Netbeans over Eclipse, Powerbuilder, or IntelliJ.
The way Sun promotes Netbeans seems like they’re desperate for users. It’s better now, but a little while ago you had to be on your toes when downloading the JDK or you’d accidentally end up getting Netbeans along with it. I’d like to shoot whoever decided to bury the link to vanilla JDK downloads in favor of the JDK/IDE bundle. I think I remember reading an article where Sun said Netbeans had more users than Eclipse simply because more people were downloading it (curiously, this was after the “dreaded bundle”). Every now and then I’m guilty of accidentally downloading Netbeans when It’s bundled with something else. Apparantly this makes me a Netbeans developer?! ???
It is arrogant of Sun to maintain that their vision for the language is superior to any other. Developers will always create their own niche standards depending on what is required of them. The best thing Sun can do with Netbeans is provide a strong core product to support the base vision of the language. If people want to fragment the technology via SWT and other means, then let them, but on their own terms. Rogue technologies always have to return to “home base” to maintain a good foundation. It is in Sun’s best interest to focus on that foundation rather than attempt to control the evolution of everything around it.
I like to think of Sun as the nucleus of an atom. See, they’ve got all these electrons (rogue flying technologies) under their control. Like any nucleus, they try to hold onto these electrons. However, there’s a problem: more electrons are added every day. Sun keeps trying to grab control of these electrons as they spin around, but eventually there become too many electrons for their core’s charge to hold onto. Sun becomes unstable as technolgies begin flying off in every which direction and they can’t reach far enough away to hold onto them any longer. To fix this, an atom needs is to increase its core’s charge- Sun needs to bolster their core. If they did this, they wouldn’t need to attract users from Eclipse because, being an electron, Eclipse would naturally be attracted to them.
[quote=“princec,post:38,topic:27380”]
From a Mac user’s point of view this was my view prior to Java 5.
From a Windows user’s point of view, Swing’s speed never bothered me since Java 1.3, though I recognised that SWT was a bit faster on Java 1.4. Back then it was (what I assume were) GC pauses in NetBeans while I was editing that made me switch to Eclipse… then I found the Eclipse auto-complete and refactoring and rarely looked back.
NetBeans 4 and 5 have made significant progress though… and I’m starting to like Matisse more and more. I have never been a fan of the GUI builders since I find they tie my hands too much, but I’m starting to learn how to use them better so I don’t get into that situation as much. So recently I’ve been running both NetBeans and Eclipse. Eclipse for general coding, NetBeans for creating the Ant projects and any non-trivial UI.
That was more than two years ago. Netbeans now uses much more accurate ways to know how many people actually USE the IDE. Sure, the direction they choose to count can drastically reduce the count as some users will never be counted, but i think that’s pretty honest from them.
Quote taken from a recent javalobby thread: http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/m91997965.html#91997965
[quote]The NetBean stats are not tracking downloads or website hits - since it ties into the update center (normally connected to on start-up) and includes a unique ID, it allows for meaningful statistics to be gathered on the whole population. Of course, if someone can’t connect to the update center (firewall or similar) or turns off the automatic aspect and doesn’t connect manually then they are not counted. For the statistics given, it takes 2 hits from the same user (install-id) per month to give a single “hit” - in other words, approximately 200,000 users ran NetBeans twice in Feb 2006 and connected to the update center.
[/quote]
Roumen’s blog is even more detailed and shows a simple graphic about user base growth: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roumen?entry=netbeans_growth_questioned
If the numbers are real, i think that if sun/netbeans is desperate for users, at least they succeed. But i don’t think they are desperate as they have users, and a good amount.
As a Netbeans user and a professional Java developer for just under a decade, I have to disagree.
[quote]As a Netbeans user and a professional Java developer for just under a decade, I have to disagree.
[/quote]
Me too.
Although I use Idea at work, I use NetBeans for everything else. Even at work we use it, when it comes to GUI building. Judging from the frequency at the NetBeans mailing lists, there are a lot others using it. At last it all boils down to what serves you most.
Quick question: does NB do hippie completion? To me this was one (of many) highlights in Eclipse 3.1, and I miss it sooo much in Visual Studio and Word and everywhere else…
On a side note, I like the way the Eclipse auto completion has been improved in 3.2 for editing JavaDocs.
And: Callisto is coming in : 1 days 21h:52m:51s