[java] Enterprise Java IDE

I am with the government and we us JBuilder.

Try JBuilder personal edition. The gui building is not bad. Fairly intuitive. But it does lack some functionality.

---

First make it work,
then make it fast.
--Brian Kernighan

"I’m happy to share what I can, because I’m in it for the love of programming. The Ferraris are just gravy, honest!" --John Carmack: Forward to Graphics Programming Black Book

JBuilder 8 Personal
at school for some reason my Distance Learning teacher likes us to use BlueJ.

[edited by - fadilthrejk on March 19, 2002 at 4:53 AM]

If you want a really good Enterprise level Java IDE that many developers in the real world use including myself then check out Eclipse. It's open source, free and is highly extensible has a great framework and plugin architecture so you can download third party plugins or develop your own. There are many plugins already developed for Eclipse. It's also intergrated with Ant, JUnit, JBoss (open source J2EE application server, among other application servers). There are plugins for XML editing, UML diagrams all kinds of source control plugins yadda yadda yadda.

Go check it out: http://www.eclipse.org
then go find plugins here: http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/index.jsp

Also, the Eclipse project provides an alternative to Swing called SWT which is way more efficient and extremely fast since it used JNI to call the native platforms windowing API (Win32, GTK whatever).

One thing you will find is that no matter what IDE you use to create GUI's visually you will eventually end up having to tweak/rewrite code that the GUI builder created (unless you are writing throw away code).

[edited by - bslayerw on April 23, 2003 2:19:54 AM]

Thx for the replies!

I have looked at eclipse a little in the past, and am somewhat inclined to use it. However, is it as prominent in the workplace as JBuilder? I am looking into both at the moment and will probably download them and evaluate a bit tonight.

JDeveloper, by Oracle.

Victor.
c[_]~~

bslayerw,

I started using eclipse, but have hit a (very) basic snag. Maybe you can help me out a bit.

Since I just installed XP on a clean hd and haven't done any Java programming on it yet, I downloaded the current jre and installed that first, then setup eclipse. Everything seems fine. I write a basic hello world, as per eclipse's FAQ; project creates, saves + compiles, and runs fine. Gravy.

Then I do the same, but make a Swing Hello World. Copied directly from Sun, just to make sure I am not doing anything dumb.

Unfortunately, Eclipse keeps trying to run HelloWorld, not SwingHelloWorld. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to switch the active project for the Run command. I close HelloWorld and I keep getting:

quote:

---

Exception during launch
Reason:
Launch configuration HelloWorld references non-existing project Hello World.

---

Can't seem to find where to change that 'launch configuration'.

I'd like to be able to close down projects completely when I am not using them (right now it lists both of the projects in the workspace).

Anyway, since I am completely new to this IDE maybe you can tell me how to switch between projects correctlt.

Thx.

The Tyr project is here.

[edited by - OctDev on April 24, 2003 8:15:38 PM]

JDeveloper by Oracle. Yes!

I''ve switched from JCreator to Eclipse. Eclipse RULES!!!

For the guy with the problem, try right clicking somewhere on your project and pick "Run As Application," or something similar to that.

The BEST IDE for Java is IntelliJ, hands down, no matter what Eclipse fans say, because they probably haven''t tried it (it actually costs money!). If you need lots of integration with other tools in the commercial world (enterprise-class in and of themselves) then your field is going to include Sun ONE Enterprise Edition, JDeveloper, JBuilder Enterprise, Together Control Center, and probably Websphere studio or whatever it''s called, which has an Eclipse base but lots added on for IBM servers and tools.

Netbeans is a good one, and while older ones have been pokey, the latest 3.5 beta is pretty snappy. Sun ONE is based on it. I use Sun ONE Enterprise at work and it''s pretty good in it''s latest incarnation, but needs just a little more smoothing out. It comes with integrated support for Sun ONE app server, built-in Tomcat, version control (CVS plus commercial like PVCS, VSS, etc.). I do Tomcat and build .war files for WebLogic with it, and it works quite well. Haven''t done much Swing with it, but these days most "enterprise" java is going to be web-based with EJB if you''re a large company.

BTW, I''m with "the government" too, but have only the past 2 years and did Java elsewhere as well. The government has no de facto standard, much like industry doesn''t, so don''t let anyone tell you otherwise.

If your budget is limited in this learning phase, my suggestion is to be familiar wtih Netbeans, Eclipse, and JBuilder personal as other enterpise IDEs are built on them. Also, get to know UML. I recommend checking out ArgoUML or Poseidon for UML community edition (do google searches). Argo will do Java generation, but I don''t think Poseidon CE will, even though it''s a commercialization of ArgoUML. But in the end if what you really want is a highly productive IDE to write AND maintain code efficiently, then IntelliJ 0wns the competition.

I have to agree, IntelliJ, just kicks so much butt, it''s not funny.

JBuilder seems very popular. It''s definately worth getting used to and doing some work in Eclipse and Sun ONE studio as well. I haven''t touched Netbeans nor has anyone I know, but my experience in the industry both first and second hand is limited.

UML is a must, if you can''t UML, you''re basically useless in my book. You need to be able to do AT LEAST a class diagram. The amount of time saved is hard to quantify, but you''ll definately notice it. Omondo UML is a decent plug in for elcips, but don''t go to fast, otherwise it''ll crash. Posiedon, is annoying because it doesn''t let you bring in standard Java API, I haven''t used Argo, largely due to stability concerns.

Oh god...must you mention BlueJ..it''s the bane of my existence...Seriously. I''ve had it corrupt my files..yes...TEXT files..more than 5 times.

---

Gamedev for learning.
libGDN for putting it all together.
An opensource, cross platform, cross API game development library.

BlueJ needs to die, JCreator isn''t that hot either.

On the topic of IDEs, I''ve used Eclipse quite a bit, and as I''m upgradding my computer i hope that it will be running quite a bit fast. However, I''ve resently been looking at other IDEs to see just what other features are out there. I read some stuff on netbeans, so I tried to use it. I installed it on several machines, all with java 1.4 on them and it seems that netbeans can''t find the java path even if I set it. any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

please refer to the install guide.

Hope this helps ...

EDIT: Could not install without the command-line option "-is:javahome path/to/JDK". But it runs fine without any additional configuring right ouf of the box.


[edited by - Petr Stedry on April 28, 2003 10:25:43 AM]

I''m guessing you have spaces in one of the names in your file path.

let me guess, C:/program files/jdk1.4.1/ or something like that?

Have an environment variable called JDK_HOME that points to where you installed your JDK, (mine is c:\j2sdk1.4.1_02). That allows Netbeans to find the JDK.