Best IDE for Java?

[Joe]

Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
Pro box, lots of power and memory).

What IDE would you recommend?

Thanks for your help.

Joe

[Justin Campbell]

Personally, I prefer JBuilder. As with any category, there will be people
who prefer one utility over another (I dare not mention pico or vi). There
is a CE version (I believe it's actually called Foundation) available for
download at borland.com. Plenty of features and a robust support foundation
make this one of my favourites. If you're planning on using it professionally,
I would definitely recommend purchasing the Professional edition (besides
the fact that it's required by Borland's license agreement).

Hope this helps.

Justin Campbell

"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
>downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
>seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
>menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
>Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
>What IDE would you recommend?
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Joe

[Ako]

Its a good idea to start with Forte CE if you really want to stard using a
n IDE straight away and yes its normal for Forte to be slow as its writing
in java and java is not terribly fast when it comes to heavy desktop applications.
As Justin said probably you will need something more advanced than Forte
CE if you want a tool for professional development.

Good Luck,

Ako


"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
>downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
>seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
>menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
>Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
>What IDE would you recommend?
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Joe

[Joe]

Justin and Ako, thanks for the info - I'll check Borland's JBuilder.

Thanks.

Joe

[wizard]

"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
>downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
>seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
>menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
>Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
>What IDE would you recommend?
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Joe

[wizard]

"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
>downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
>seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
>menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
>Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
>What IDE would you recommend?

Forte will be slow to respond because it's written entirely in Java. You'll
notice that repeated operations will be much faster as the code is loaded
and cached.

Most experienced programmers don't use an IDE very much, mainly for debugging.
The reason - it's actually faster to use a programming text editor like
Visual SlickEdit and dispense with the overhead of an IDE. Also, and this
is really big point, if you're doing GUI layout, most of the IDE's use a
grid-bag layout, which is absolute location, not relative. This means your
screens will have the same size no matter what hardware you're running on.
We first started with an IDE (Visual Cafe) and have now completely rewritten
all our screens to relative addressing using flow or border layouts.

The other problem with an IDE is that unless you are very careful, all insert
their own libraries into your code. This is very dangerous if you're supposedly
platform independent. It means that if you ship your app, you'll have to
include the IDE classes that are called. Borland is guilty of this, as well
as Visual Cafe. Forte doesn't do this.

Also, most IDE's require you to structure your code so that a "protected"
area is available to make changes. This is a block of code that the IDE
recognizes and can alter. This style may not be to your liking. For instance,
Visual Cafe likes to put field variables at the bottom of a class file, we
like it at the top.

IDE's are very useful to pick out properties and debug. But like most development
efforts, trying to find one tool that does everything is usually not possible.
My advice is to look at the other options, like Borland and even IBM's Visual
Age, which gets good reviews, and be wary of the pitfalls associated with
each. Once you get proficient with Java, you'll probably not use an IDE
very much, just and editor. We have looked at several, including TextPad,
CodeWarrior, and SlickEdit, and always keep coming back to SlickEdit.

[Rich]

If you are moving from VB, I'd take a good look at Visual Cafe. It will
seem very familiar.

Rich

"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
>downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
>seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
>menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal? (W2000
>Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
>What IDE would you recommend?
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Joe

[Brent]

Joe,
We were primarily a Microsoft house until we started developing a couple
application in Java about 7 months ago. We purchased 7 copies of Borland's
Enterprise JBuilder 4.0 for about $14,000 (Full retail price would have been
much more). That's right. No more friendly MS prices.

Borland recently announced JBuilder 5.0 Enterprise. Retail Price $2,999.
But here's the kicker: Upgrade price to go from 4.0 to 5.0 $2,399. Ouch.

Its a decent product but at these prices its difficult to keep buying it!!!

Brent


"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote:
>
>Justin and Ako, thanks for the info - I'll check Borland's JBuilder.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Joe

[Julia Lerman]

Joe -

Not sure if you are checking back to this thread but I have been doing the
same research (VB to Java) and am now playing with JBuilder. I am
documenting my discoveries on a website and if they are of anyhelp to you
then that makes the effort (of the documentatino) worth it to me!!

www.thedatafarm.com/dotnet

Julie Lerman

"Joe" <joe@actman.com> wrote in message news:3af6d72c$1@news.devx.com...
>
> Hello. I'm new to Java (VB'er maybe ready for a move.NET...), and I just
> downloaded the JDK 1.3 and the Forte Community Edition (CE) IDE. The IDE
> seems a little slow, i.e. moving around the environment, mouse selections,
> menu selections all seem to have a slight lag time. Is this normal?
(W2000
> Pro box, lots of power and memory).
>
> What IDE would you recommend?
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Joe