Re: A constructive debate: Eclipse or NetBeans?


I've tried both Eclipse and NetBeans. My first impressions are that
Eclipse
is the only one with a signficant user base but it is extremely slow,
invasive and cumbersome to use. NetBeans is slightly easier to use but has
a tiny user base.


In my experience Netbeans is slower than is Eclipse, and Eclipse isn't
(depending on the hardware it's running on) all that slow.
Of course compared to VI everything is slow :)

Both Eclipse and Netbeans are cumbersome when you're not used to it. But
Eclipse kinda grows on you to a degree, it never really suited my tastes.

I actually found this extremely shocking because so many people complain
that Linux and command-line driven languages like OCaml are so much more
difficult to use and they miss a good IDE. So I think I should give some
specific examples.


That's because most people never learn to use a command line or a simple
text editor.

OTOH when doing larger projects, with hundreds or thousands or interrelated
sources, the project organisation integrated with the editor and debugging
facilities of a well designed IDE are invaluable.

In contrast, it took me two days and several requests for help to get even
a
minimal OpenGL demo working from Java and that only works from the command
line. I started by trying to find OpenGL bindings for Java but, amazingly,
none are as mature (reliable) as OCaml's LablGL and, consequently, there
is
nothing of use in the Debian package repository. Apparently Sun are aware
of this deficit and they are working with SGI to resolve it.


Had you had the same expertise in Java that you do in Ocalm you'd have got
it working faster.
So your comparison isn't valid.

Needless to say, this is not what I was expecting from a mainstream
language. Installing JOGL required various .properties files to be copied
to certain locations and edited, various environment variables to be set
and
so forth. Even after all that, only a couple of the demos actually work.
Trying to run other people's OpenGL-based Java demos from the web I find
that all are unstable on both my Linux box and my Windows box. Asking
around, this seems to be a ubiquitous problem specific to Java.


JOGL isn't Java. If the designers of the library made those decisions, don't
blame Java for it...
Also don't blame Java for your lack of experience using it.

So my impressions so far are that command-line tools are much easier to
use
and obviously far more powerful than these "industrial-strength" IDEs. I

They are not. You're just more used to them.

believe people only use them because they feel more comfortable with a GUI
but, when the GUI is this complicated and unintuitive, I think you have to
question whether or not a command line is better.


It's better, for some things. It's far less productive, for others.

Perhaps you should consider ditching IDEs altogether?


Maybe you should consider ditching the anti-Java ranting based on nothing
but a flawed experiment designed around a desired result to make Java (and
IDEs) look bad?


.

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