Monday, 14 May 2007
Swing/NetBeans development impressions
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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.
- 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.
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Hi, I suggest you to try NetBeans 6.0 - we are working on the editor in NetBeans. So quick fixes are better, error highlighting is faster and code completion is more intelligent. You can give Milestone 9 a try. Btw it is possible to change code during debugging sessions (check out toolbar button "apply code changes"). Cheers!
Hi, take a look at MyEclipse (www.myeclipseide.com) it's a set of Eclipse plugins all tested working together, and have ported the Matisse editor right into it
I had the same experience a while ago. http://labora.harnvi.net/?p=40
The reply from the Netbeans camp was that "Yes, Java editing sucks, but just wait for 6.0". I tried the milestones and the difference is really big. Great improvments.