Monday, 14 May 2007

Swing/NetBeans development impressions

 

I've never been a big desktop app developer.  I had heard from a number of people at JavaOne that Swing had become much easier to work with lately.  I had a friend who wanted me to port a simple C# desktop app to Java so I immediately jumped in to get a feel for desktop app programming again.

 

I had heard from a number of people that the Netbeans Matisse swing builder was a really good tool. I was not disappointed at all. I was able to whip up a quick copy of the application UI I was porting in Matisse and get it functioning and doing things rather quickly.

NetBeans as an IDE could use a bit of work though. Some things I found that weren't so great:

  • Quick fix support is much more primitive than in Eclipse.
  • The recompilation and error hilighting is not as fast as Eclipse.
  • Sometimes auto-complete would fail mysteriously.
  • The debugger doesn't let you change your code while your program is running.
On the other hand there were some things I liked about NetBeans:
  • Matisse is a great tool for making Swing apps.
  • I didn't have to download any plug-ins to get started.
  • The XML editor is pretty decent.
  • The build system is built in and a no brainer. You don't have to hack your own.
  • Performance and stability were better in NetBeans.
  • No need for perspective switching.
Overall it seems that Eclipse is a little Frankensteinish at times with so many plug-ins all trying to work together.  On the other hand, the base Eclipse Java Development Platform is exceptional.  I'm going to have to stick with Eclipse for now.  
Posted by justin at 10:39 PM in Java Programming
Responses (3)
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