Ending several months of negotiations, Sun has decided not to join the Eclipse open-source tools effort backed by rival IBM. Apparently, they started negotiations with the idea of scrapping NetBeans. Then things shifted to merging the projects, and then it fell through.

Although they may not be in the same camp, if we have plugin support via JSR 198 maybe this won't matter so much?

Read the article here: http://www.zdnet.com.au/builder/program/work/story/0,2000034960,20281606,00.htm

Related new on TSS:

Sun aiming for unified plug-in standard if they join Eclipse

Sun considering Eclipse support

This is another sign of Sun’s resistance to face the realities. For companies I have worked with as a senior level J2EE developer/consultant, I never heard of any mentioning of NetBean. People are pondering the choice between JBuilder and Eclipse. Should Sun joins Eclipse, it would be great beneficial to developers, the Java community and themselves too!

Why even bother why the sub par Joe Blow.

lol - Sun One is the Joe Blow. Who in the world is using that for a production system?

I have also worked 5 years with as a senior level J2EE developer for several companies. I have heard and see many times NetBeans and SunOneStudio used on J2EE projects. Projects (people) are choosing often SunOneStudio based on NetBeans or IBM WSAD based on Eclipse. JBuilder is mentioned to an amateurs.

:-(

Although they may not be in the same camp, if we have plugin support via JSR 198 maybe this won't matter so much?

Not real likely. See how there have been no externally visible deliverables from this JSR in over a year? These guys are caught up in the same political infighting, because they don't want to support Eclipse.

I perfectly agree. JCP is another way to slow down J2SE / J2EE growth.

For example, Visual Age 3.5 featured a visual "servlet builder" which could be the foundation of JSF. Now, several years later, we are still waiting for a final JSR...

JSR198 - I am just wondering what kind of over-bloated whack API they can come up with to abstract away the differences between plug-in's that use SWT and Swing...

Dean & Corby,

> Not real likely. See how there have been no externally visible deliverables
> from this JSR in over a year? These guys are caught up in the same political
> infighting, because they don't want to support Eclipse.

Actually, there hasn't been any infighting in the EG and we have made
some good progress. The community review is due by the end of this month
with the final first version by May/June. We had a slow start getting
everybody plugged in, but have been moving nicely since them. There
has been good collaboration from most of the group, including Sun & IBM.

One of the issues with the JCP is how JSRs do go "dark" like this. There
are changes to that process that will help this coming early next year.

> JSR198 - I am just wondering what kind of over-bloated whack API they can
> come up with to abstract away the differences between plug-in's that use
> SWT and Swing...

Actually we resolved the Swing/SWT issue a while ago in the APIs. It was
not an easy problem, but I think you'll find that the solution is very
reasonable. One of the other issues with the JCP is that the EG is not
allowed to talk about details of the EG publicly during this period of
the JSR.

I know it is easy to be cynical (just read some of the threads on this site :),
but I think you will find that when you see the JSR specification there is some value here.

Ted Farrell
Oracle Corporation

and see how sun and oracle screwed up.

Ted,

If you were forced to use your (Oracle) development tools in a real project, then being cynical is just a way to make it through the day...

Look, forget Eclipse or whatever; just try to get your Oracle installer upgraded to the 21st century.

Please, stop making Java look bad and just stick to persistence storage.

Actually I have always found Oracle tools to hit the mark. They may not always be pretty but you can always get the job done. With regards to JDeveloper it's a very nice IDE with no lock-in to Oracle. It even has all the nice interface features you would expect, such as gui class editing, refactoring etc. plus a very nice UML<->java component that actually works for model driven development with roundtrips from uml to code to uml etc. etc.

George,

> If you were forced to use your (Oracle) development tools in a real project,
> then being cynical is just a way to make it through the day...

I have. Why would you assume I haven't? There are many of our customers
who also have and are happy with the product. No one was claiming it is
perfect. In fact my post had nothing to do with JDeveloper at all. You
once again decided to go off topic to bash Oracle with no supporting facts.

If you really are trying to solve problems, I think you would be more effective
providing constructive, on-topic feedback about real issues rather than negative
commentary. Looking at your posts on TSS, 90% of them are that way, targeted
at almost every vendor who has posted here, except of course Borland, who
you are completely aligned with (even saying that BES should replace WLS!!).
Are you sure your last name is spelled correctly here? ;)

I have looked at the Oracle forums where you have referenced spending time,
but there is not a single post from you (using this name). That is confusing.
I would be happy to have an offline conversation with you about any issues
you have with Oracle products and get you in touch with the right people to
address them, but I won't respond further to negative, unsubstantial commentary.

> Look, forget Eclipse or whatever; just try to get your Oracle installer
> upgraded to the 21st century.

This is what I mean. JDeveloper doesn't have an installer. It takes < 30
seconds to install by unzipping. That is how Eclipse ships as well. We
get nothing but complements on the JDeveloper installation process. If
you are talking about the Oracle runtimes installer for other products, that
would make you now off-off topic. Look at the title of your post.

I encourage you to have an offline constructive conversation with me.
Bad-mouthing me and Oracle here without trying to solve the issues proves
nothing.

Ted Farrell
ted dot farrell at oracle dot com
Oracle Corporation

I think he was referring to the crappy java installer that ships with oracle database products ... not to be negative :-)

Ted,

Can you pass the message to the installer guys that on windows,
MSI based installation is the way to go.

Thanks

Can you pass the message to the installer guys that on windows,
MSI based installation is the way to go.

It depends on what your product is and who your audience is. There are a lot of developer products that should be available as a .zip or .tar.gz file, and instead they come as big registry-f***ing InstallShield abortions. I won't give examples (to spare one of our beneficient technology partners) but we've lost at least one workstation (meaning we had to re-install the OS) because of an "over-reaching install" that should have just been a zipped image.
 
Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

Cameron,

Thanks for your helpful and supportive comments.

Hello Ted,

Well, I appreciate your response to my post. Yes, I admit, my post was on the rant side, it’s because of my experience with Oracle's non-database offerings throughout the years.

Oracle Forms, Power Object to Oracle Application server (OAS) and then the re-tries with (Orion based) Oracle9iAS 9.02, 9.03, 9.04 and now 10g. No need to talk about Oracle's past regarding front-end development tools. Let's talk about Oracle recent offerings. The Oracle8i, what was the "i" for, Internet? Was it the Java stored procedures? Was it the database HTTP server; was it the PL/SQL Web pages? Well, now we have "g", for grid. Perhaps we'll get a clear picture on the actual feature and innovation regarding Oracle10g technology.

What about Oracle's J2EE application server offerings mentioned above. How I had to work with Oracle Application Server (OAS) and Oracle9iAS 9.02. Well, OAS was dumped and Oracle finally used Orion for Oracle9iAS series. But, still OAS was offered and we had to endure the pain and suffering regardless. And, then Oracle9iAS 9.02 with its countless proprietary jars and total disregard for supporting standards like LDAP and JAAS (JAZN doesn't count). Then a stripped down version 9.03 EJB 2.0 support with countless bugs, but then 9.04 (developers version) came out with no apparent new features or bug fixes and now 10g...

"You once again decided to go off topic to bash Oracle with no supporting facts."

Not really, I'm concern that Oracle is involved with any JSR. The facts are out there with Oracle's tool offerings.

"Looking at your posts on TSS, 90% of them are that way, targeted
at almost every vendor who has posted here, except of course Borland, who
you are completely aligned with (even saying that BES should replace WLS!!).
Are you sure your last name is spelled correctly here? ;)"

My job as a software developer has been enhanced because of Borland's tool offerings - since the Turbo Pascal days. It’s just that simple, Borland has proven time after time, they can produce quality tools that support open standards. Thus, I feel good about their involvement with any JSR.
 
I do like other vendor’s offerings; BEA'a Weblogic is a joy to work with, great J2EE implementation. I don't agree with BEA's Workshop proprietary product and strategy. I admire IBM for their support of Java and Linux. What can we say about AlphaWorks, I also feel great about BEA and IBM working on JSRs. Of course, we must recognize SUN's contribution and innovations as well.

Not a Borland employee and never met "de la Lama" :)

"I have looked at the Oracle forums where you have referenced spending time,
but there is not a single post from you (using this name)."

Look back in the Oracle9iAS 9.02, 9.03 forums, my issues were not unique and many posts revealed all the familiar problems.

"but I won't respond further to negative, unsubstantial commentary."

I did not make up these problems; unfortunately I had to work with these Oracle tools because my clients were using them. The problem comes from people assuming Oracle can deliver quality development tools because of their database success.

No doubt, Oracle is entrenched with the crown jewels (data) of the corporate world. This created a perpetual maintenance revenue stream that even Bill Gates could envy.

However, all the money in the world cannot guarantee the production of good software. IN MY OPINION, Oracle has not, to date, demonstrated it could produce quality software products outside of a database.

Again, why is Oracle leading JSR 198? What credibility does Oracle have in software innovation?

One more time, most software vendors agree with general best practices for the better of mankind, so just grab any software package, install it and see how a installer should look like...

"Bad-mouthing me and Oracle here without trying to solve the issues proves
nothing. "

Ted, nothing personal, I really hope you can bring some change to Oracle's internal culture on software quality and innovation.

I will agree with the quality aspect of Oracle even in the Oracle database
starting with the Installer - which will not sometime let you uninstall.

All Java based database management tools sometimes die on you.

After stringing the Eclipse community along for months, they at last declared that if they were to join the eclipse community they would want eclipse to be merged into NetBeans, and they would want SWT to be dropped in favor of Swing.

 

To me, if these were really the sticking points, then the whole dialog that sun has been having has been nothing more than a strategic deception. There is no way the eclipse group would ever go along with that, and it seems very disingenuous to act as if they were seriously considering joining when they knew all along that they harbored irreconcilable differences.

 

Furthermore, in their rejection, they make it sound as if Eclipse is a proprietary IBM product, and that NetBeans, by contrast, is part of the open source community:

In declining an invitation to join the Eclipse consortium, a Sun official cited a plan to merge Eclipse with Sun's own NetBeans open source tools initiative. But IBM declined that invitation, so Sun then declined to join Eclipse, said Ingrid Van Den Hoogen, senior director of Java and strategic marketing in the Sun software division: "We offered to unify the Java tools efforts between what IBM is doing with Eclipse and what Sun and the open source community are doing with NetBeans”

Sun will continue its work on “Creator”, their new and improved Java IDE. They are confident that Creator, when it is released next summer, will quickly eclipse Eclipse.

 

What the heck have the Sun executives been smoking?

> sun has been having has been nothing more than a strategic deception.

I used to think like this as well. I no longer give Sun that much credit. This would imply that Sun knows what it wants... and I believe history has proven that this is simply not the case.

And you know this how?

Perhaps it was the name Eclipse, and the suggestion from it that you wont be able to see the SUN ? :-0

Eclipse is far better than slow ass Netbeans and with SUN into eclispe it would have been more of BS and politics than any real work. SUN is going down becuase their people just talk and talk , but do nothing concrete.


Go Eclipse Go !!!

Seems that you are working with the Windows version. The Linux version is mcuh slower than Netbeans and crahes a few times a day. I am working with both IDEs
every day. If I would have a chance I would delete eclipse immediately.

The idea of SWT is just crap. Who needs another implementation of AWT?
Even SUN realized that AWT is very well and developed Swing. IBM was part
of this development. Now they think they are smarter and have their SWT.
But SWT is the reason why eclipse crashes a few times a day (it seems the
IDE is not build for some heavy work).

I can understand SUN since Netbeans 4.0 will rule.

Isn't that the TRUE! Man we're using it here because IDEA doesn't have SWING built in yet. It isn't that big of a resource pig, but it runs like it's going through mud. Go figure...

I do not think Sun had many reasons to ever join the Eclipse development. If they play by IBM's rules, they only lose. Eclipse is competing squarely with what Sun is doing in their own corner. Do not forget that Eclipse is one of the corner stones of Websphere, and that SWT creates a nice incompatibility layer that prevents plugins to be ported to other IDEs in any reasonable manner - a typical honey pot lock-in strategy that only benefits IBM at the end. So, don't blame Sun for not joining - the conditions simply were unreasonable.

I don't in the least bit blame Sun for not joining Eclipse. What I blame them for is for pretending that they intended to do so. The Eclipse folks seemed to be bending over backwards to accommodate Sun, and were willing to change the name from Eclipse to something less offensive to Sun, and they were willing to work with Sun on many other issues as well. However, the issues that Sun finally bailed over were ones that anyone would have recognized as irreconcilable from the very beginning. What makes me angry is that they go through two months of pretending they want to join; when all along I don't believe they had any intention of doing so.

As far as you’re other points:

If SWT was designed to be an incompatibility layer, as you suggest, I am very thankful for the side affect of it being much faster, and easier to use than NetBeans. I continue to hear people proclaim that, under ideal conditions, Swing is just as good as SWT. But, if Sun can't make Swing work nearly as well as SWT in NetBeans, them I think they will have a hard time convincing the rest of the world. Perhaps their new "Creator" IDE will do a better Job when it comes out next summer, but I wouldn't count on it.

Who cares if IBM is benefiting from Eclipse; we are also benefiting from it. There is nothing in eclipse that ties you to WebSphere or any other IBM product. In fact, there are tons of third party plug-ins available that have been developed by the community that work just as well with all the other application servers as they do with WebSphere.

Joe Jenkings: >>
I don't in the least bit blame Sun for not joining Eclipse. What I blame them for is for pretending that they intended to do so.
<
I do not know why exactly Sun wanted to join. I got the impression that they were invited by IBM first. Regardless, I think think these are just political games, a cat and mouse chase about their differences where they are just checking out if they can get a piece from each other's cake. And maybe Sun did try to join but the conditions were unacceptable. I do not know how that is 'pretending'. I would call it a negotiation.

Do not make emotional conclusions just because you like Eclipse. I understand your disappointment if you were hoping for one unified Java IDE project. At the end, I think it is better that we have more competition and that SWT is now pushing Swing to be better too.

>>
Who cares if IBM is benefiting from Eclipse; we are also benefiting from it. There is nothing in eclipse that ties you to WebSphere or any other IBM product.
<
Well, certainly from a single developer's point of view it is good. From Sun's point of view it is not because it makes joining Eclipse very unattractive. Why would they contribute to Websphere development when they are competing with the thing.

Eclipse is free just because it would create a development community and thus aid Websphere. Not all plugins help Websphere but a great majority do. "If you go with Websphere, look, you have 100 useful products you can plug in too". IBM does not have to build XML editors, UML modellers, etc. etc. because someone else did. That is great for IBM, bad for Sun, bad for BEA. And I am not criticizing IBM here, BTW.

Here goes my rant. :)

Who cares? Honestly I don't really blame SUN for this, because as we all know Eclipse is IBM through and through. Might not be proprietary, but what's the difference? IBM donated the code. Various developers on the project are IBM employees. IBM is definately in control of this project, and do be so silly as to thing otherwise. So I'm not surprised at SUN's reaction at all.

I'm not surprised at them not going with NetBeans either. People please... SUN wrote their one logging system for 1.4 instead of using Log4J? I'm surprised they stuck with NetBeans as long as they have. It's funny. The corp that puts out a product used most by open source developers rarely, if ever, use open source. I love java... I breath, eat, sleep java. I have little respect for SUN or it's holier than thou attitude.

I've tried all IDEs in detail, and I'd have to say that WSAD/Eclipse is a resoure hog and NetBeans just doesn't work part of the time. JDeveloper I won't touch because eventually Oracle will charge $20K / CPU for it. JBuilder was the best overall, but it's "slave to many master of none". Intellij IDEA I would say is the best IDE, and one of the best visual tools period. If all my tools were like IDEA, I'd be twice as productive.

If SUN grows a brain, maybe they'll work out a deal with Intellij. Na... never happen.

I have developed on Visual Age, JBuilder and Eclipse. They are all resource hogs and frequently hang up. If you develop on Windoze, I would recommend a free IDE that is really fast and has lots of power, Gel--> http://www.gexperts.com

Perhaps that 486 is finally obsolete after all ;)

Just kidding, I know that all the modern IDEs are resource hogs, but seeing as how fast computers with lots of memory are very inexpensive today, I don’t see how low CPU/memory requirements would make it into the top 10 features that I would base my IDE decision on. I run Eclipse on a 2 Gigahertz P4 with 512mb RAM (About $500 these days), and I haven’t had any resource problems. Overall, I have had an excellent experience with running Eclipse, in stark contrast to the frustrations that I had running NetBeans on the same exact machine.

As for hanging up: that has happened several times over the last year that I have been using eclipe, but it hasn't been a significant issue for me, nor has it been a significant problem for the other developers on my team. Of course everyone has their own unique experiences. If your PC is seriously resource constrained, as it sound like it is, then perhaps that can be exacerbating the situation for you.

That reminds me of the competition between Visual Cafe (WebGain) and JBuilder.
At the beginning, Visual cafe took 80% or 90% of the market. Visual cafe was written in C++, so it was much faster at that time. But, when people get better hardware, when Swing improves, the speed difference is smaller and less important. Other factors, for example the "standard", become more important, so VisualCafe (WebGain) disappeared.

I just want comment on performance issues. Personally, I do not use Netbeans, or JBuilder or Eclips. I use emacs for both server side and Swing works.

I think two open source ide is better than one for developers.

Wei Jiang
Perfecting J2EE!

I am sure the Swing vs SWT thing was a major hurdle.

but there are about 100 other reasons why eclipse is better then netbeans.

I am disapointed in Sun, but that seems to be par for them lately...

IBM should buy Java, and HP Suns hardware division... and we'd all be better off. cause they seem to be running themselves into the ground.

just my 2 cents

-j

I have been using Eclipse for 18 months and have had no performance or reliability issues (P4 2GHz/512 adn 768Mb on a 2nd box). Occasionally, the JVM dies which of course takes down Eclipse, but I cannot say that this is anything but a minor annoyance. With respect to Sun's efforts to integrate with the Eclipse org, I think that as long as Sun eschews the open-source movement, it was a good thing that the relationship failed to consumate.
Just my 2 pennies worth.

6 days without a hitch. The thing never crashes, and has only minimal visual issues (very rare). The real kicker is its ability to handle large numbers of files in a project (I've had it up to as many as 4500!).

You get what you pay for (usually)...

Best,

John C. Dale

Unfortunately, I and many developers I know use laptops as our main development platform. The machines we purchased just 2 years ago (1Ghz PIII with 320MB - 512MB of RAM) just don't cut it for Eclipse development. For the record, I love Eclipse and cannot do without it but I had to dump Windows XP and install Linux on my 320MB laptop to have any hope of using it. Bear in mind we tend to run an app server (either Resin or JBoss) on our machines at the same time as the IDE. After a while, my Windows machine is constantly off in 'update the swap file' never-never land.

Man... don't blame the machine. I don't even use a laptop anymore. I'm literally carrying a small form factor dell GX240, 1.8gHz P4, 1GB RAM, and a 120mb 8mb cache IDE.

Eclipse get's heave after a while, and WSAD blows right out of the box. WSAD with the WTE server running is a total pig. I cann't afford to by 1GB DIMMs just for an IDE.

By the way, I don't know how any J2EE developers gets by on less than 512mb of RAM. I have intellij running with opera, outlook, trillian, jetaudio, and NO servers - 420mb of ram in use. :)

WinXP, IDEA, MySQL, Mozilla = 320MB commit charge.. that's still 180MB for other apps with 512MB memory.

getting by with only 512mb of RAM is like this: develop with your IDE, deploy manually to the AppServer, start the AppServer (go for coffee), test your changes and stop the AppServer.

I developed with JDeveloper and 9iAS (Standalone OC4J) and after 2-3 hours of work (and not stopping OC4J inbetween) JDeveloper used about 300mb and I had to kill OC4J at about 350-400mb ... my pc was in the middle of a heavy swapping party ;o)

so working with it is possible, but not desirable

ed

> power, Gel--> http://www.gexperts.com

...which is "written in a language other then Java"! Is it C#? Oh, my...

We do not accept here anything that 100% pure Java. Even Eclipse's SWT is a herecy. So what if it makes the thins usable? We're not interested in that. Pure purity and total abstraction from realities of life (such as cost-efficient hardware) is our chosen, the only right course of action which we will defend no matter what the facts are. :)

This reminded me of situation a good few years ago when there was a cool OS/2 and bad 16-bit Windows. OS/2 was 32-bit "multitasking and multithreaded", etc.etc. But it simply did *not* run on common hardware. Do you even remember this OS now? It was important from "theoretical" point of view, but from practical one it was irrelevant. A similar thing happens now. You develop on a single machine, your server is always the same. Why then have a sophisticated JIT compiler, but compile everything on app startup each time when only a single class could have changed? During the development cycle startup speed is very important. Thus, a lot of cool features in Java design, which seem important are simply irrelevant.


Speaking of Eclipse, it is abhorrable. :-g It seems to be a third generation of some initial Smalltalk design. In addition, all their interface class names are prefixed with 'I' which smells of Microsoft COM (or I may be too young to know that it was some other prog env where this convention appeared first). How can Sun make itself event try to get close to such un-Java things?.. :-)

have fun,
-Vals.

> > power, Gel--> http://www.gexperts.com
>
> ...which is "written in a language other then Java"! Is it C#? Oh, my...
>
> We do not accept here anything that 100% pure Java. Even Eclipse's SWT is a herecy. So what ... <snip>


We ? Errr, please tell me that's a 'pluralis majestatis' you're using... If it wasn't for the excellent IntelliJ IDEA I too would still be looking for a native IDE, performance counts, period.

But Eclipse has great plugin support and is free :)

>Is it C#? Oh, my...

I'm the author of Gel, actually it is written in Borland's Delphi product, not C#. I do not consider Gel feature competitive with Intellij or Eclipse, but it serves some niches well like for people with lower level hardware and people who prefer a more stripped down development environment.

Gerald

I have to admit that I like the I prefix for several reasons. Making everything that's an interface an "able" just doesn't make sense all the time. Even the JDK doesn't to it (i.e. List).

Plus if you have something sorting alpha, then they get grouped.

Hands down. I won't use anything else. It is pure java/swing for the record.

I've used WSAD, Eclipse, and Kawa. IDEA blows them all away simply because they've found a nice combination of productivity enhancement, usability, and performance.

There is a reason it continues to win awards.

Go IntelliJ!

John C. Dale

I agree with you totally. I am forced to use WSAD 5.1 at work but I have paid my copy of IDEA and use it as much as I can. I am leading 15 developers so I have switch to WSAD to support them (mgmt loves WSAD). Recently I have moved to 977 EAP 4.0 build and its just sooooo cool.

Thanks JetBrain.

This is by far the best IDE for Java development. It out performs all the commercial IDEs and has the best support.

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
http://jdee.sunsite.dk/
http://wttools.sourceforge.net/emacs-stuff/emacsandjdee.html

I gotta tell you. If management loves WSAD and they're forcing it on you, let them spend a week in your shoes. Stuff like that pisses me off... management by magazine. This is why companies like WebVan and other good ideas fail. Doorknobs are at the helm. Sorry - I think this is getting OT.

I LOVE IDEA, but I would never force my developers to use anything without a hell of a reason. Ugh... I feel your pain.

Thanks for your comments. I feel better. I actually tried to sell IDEA to management but got into trouble. Well at least I still get to use IDEA as much as I can afford to. Thanks again.

>
> Thanks JetBrain.

Agreed! Aurora 977 with all it's flaws and even in it's beta stage blows the competition... When I first tried IDEA (~2 years ago) it redefined the meaning of IDE. Still after two years the Borland and MS are just copycats, and they still don't have the features that IDEA had two years ago!

I'm just hoping that people will not see the light and will keep away from it. Too many users will probably ruin the product in the end and the price will skyrocket...

Shouldn't Sun get the hint with all this IDEA praise going around?

If they want a decent IDE race they better go out an purchase Jet Brains. I doubt Gosling and his Jackpot project (incidentally we have't seen much fruit from it so far) will help NetBeans stay competitive.

Carlos

> Carlos

Sun, like lots of companies seems to have this NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. At heart they are an engineering company and I think that they try to do everything themselves. The benefit of Sun buying IDEA would be that they'd have much more money to spend on marketing. That could push IDEA out of the 'margin' and make it one of the *big* IDEs out there.

50% slash on the prices, some aggressive marketing and the world could change.. But no - that's not gonna happen, they're just too.. 'thick'.

I am disappointed by this news. The Java platform would benefit from a standardized workbench/plug-in model sooner rather than later. Sun needs to think more strategically here -- a significant number of developers ARE choosing Eclipse over NetBeans. Do you want to include them or not?

Both SWT/JFace and Swing have merit. As demonstrated by the "SWT using Swing" and "Swing using SWT" projects, the two are not irreconcilable. Sun should have planned to include SWT, or something like it, in JDK 1.5 as a replacement for AWT. Wrapped, native widgets have a place in the Java developer's toolbox.

(I realize SWT's has a stronger dependency on Microsoft APIs, and that there are risks riding the bucking bull of Microsoft APIs, but ... tell developers the risks, and give them the choice!)

Ben

> and "Swing using SWT" projects, the two are not irreconcilable. Sun should have
> planned to include SWT, or something like it, in JDK 1.5 as a replacement for
> AWT. Wrapped, native widgets have a place in the Java developer's toolbox.
>
By "Swing using SWT", I'm assuming you mean:
   http://swingwt.sourceforge.net/
Pretty impressive. They have a screenshot with Netbeans using SWT.


Actually, SwingSWT fits naturally into Java. Currently, Java provides a "system" Swing peer which tries to emulate the color scheme of your native operating system. If Sun added a new Swing peer called "native", that could implement that peer using SWT (which uses native widgets instead of emulating them).

If seemless integration into the native OS is important to the application designer, he/she could use the "native" Swing peer by default. If you use this peer, your apps would be indistinguishable with apps written in other languages using the native widget set. That's something that's important for commercial off-the-shelf software. This peer is effective competition with WinForms.

If consistency and almost identical look and feel on any platform are important to the application designer, he/she could use the "system" Swing peer by default or some other emulated peer. This sort of consistency and common look and feel is important for corporate desktops since it makes writing documentation and providing help desk support simpler (i.e. Swing widgets have platform independent behaviour while native widgets behave differently on Windows than on MacOSX and Linux so support and documentation become difficult.).

I'm afraid Netbeans was only the IDE that has been used to code the swingWT examples running in foreground! ;)

I'm really not disappointed that there' a fall out here wrt to IDE integration.

Why should Eclipse be forced to accept contribution from a second rate project? I mean Netbeans isn't as good as Eclipse, IDEA, JBuilder or JDeveloper. Just because the project is run by Sun or even Gosling doesn't imply its bleeding edge.

However, what I would like to see is integration with OpenOffice. I mean with Eclipse Rich Client Platform, an SWT with OpenOffice UI underneath that'll be a pretty neat platform for client applications.

Carlos

I think eclips looks like a empty computer case that you had to armod it with almost any thing .in my first use of eclips i wonder how it have nothing ? even it had't had a common "new window" and it can just create class files . in fact the main problem of java world is ide . there is not a realy good product that supports java as it's power . not in j2me nor j2se and a little j2ee .
i don't know what sun had been did in recent year's but it looks they are awake and they will help java wotld especially with some thig like rave project ( you can find more about rave in java.net blogs).
i preffer to use netbean's because atleast it didn't need to download a "new window" plugin.
i'm not trying to say netbean's is a good product just want to say eclips is a bad product with a Animus mind that will just help microsoft . i just use jbuilder EE(i almost tried any thing ) . there is not a good product for j2me , nor for j2me<->j2ee , not for j2se and almost not for java . you had to craate everything from scratch(new comming ide's like rave or jbuilderx or jdeveloper 10g has a realy good support for j2ee but nothing for j2me or combining this 2 world ) .
i wonder that how these company's waiting for microsoft to come with it's compact framework and grab the market then these company's will say hey guys java is better solution we can do it we can do .....

Good Thing!!!

I work for a major software company with 1000s of developers. We had a parternship with IBM. Our managers insisted we use WSAD. We piloted its use. Management provided formal training. We had IBM consultants help us. Our most experienced developers spent substantial time playing with it and understanding its architecture.

Well, after six months, all the developers I know still dislike WSAD and practically all of them continue to use "trial" copies of competing IDEs. Folks, this is the real story of what is happening. The IBM marketing numbers are bogus.

Open source doesn't mean anything unless it conforms to standards. SWT is not a standard. Eclipse has no standard plugin API. IBM is trying to lock people into their proprietary architecture, even if it is open source.

And frankly, this plugin mania mystifies me. So what if I can chat from within Eclipse or play some stupid game? What's the big deal about using distinct applications to do these things? Plugins only make sense when they work together in some symbiotic way. And many of the good plugins work with limited versions. So, it becomes impossible to run a version of Eclipse that supports all the plugins you need.

The whole UI experience is chaotic, inconsistent and unintuitive mess. As a user, I don't want to feel like I am interfacting with a bunch of plugins. I want to feel like I am interacting with a single tool with a consistent and predictable look-and-feel and behavior.

If any IDE has any hope of one-upping Microsoft's Studio, its Intellij. As a previous poster alluded to, Sun or IBM ought to buy Intellij. The only problem is that they might turn this great product into something like a bad Hollywood sequel. The Matrix comes to mind.

To say Eclipse is non-intuitive shows what friggin idiots your developers and leads are. I am glad I am not working at your place.

My team of 4 have written 7 reporting apps and 1 workflow app with nothing but Eclipse+Tomcat+CVS. Eclipse truly rocks.