James Gosling: on the Java Road

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20070228 Wednesday February 28, 2007


Converting the hardcore users...

I became a hardcore emacs user 29 years ago (yes! Really! The first emacs I used was the excellent implementation on Multics by Bernie Greenberg). But a lot of time has passed since then and the exponent in Moore's law has changed everything. And yet there's a hardcore emacs population out there that I've been slowly trying to convince to join the modern age. I had been exchanging email with one of them, John Wetherill. He finally broke down, tried NetBeans, and sent me this email:

I've been a hardcore emacs user for 20 years, and after some extremely horrible experiences with various IDEs, my resistance to trying NetBeans was enormous. But after your suggestion I spent the effort getting up to speed, and ... it's CHANGED MY LIFE! I can't believe what a great tool NB is. I've been losing sleep discovering all these cool features.

I can see that I will now view my development career as "Before NetBeans" and "After NetBeans". I'm not exaggerating. It is just that cool. I want to evangelize it, and plan on spending a bit of time doing so at my J1 session.

OK I'll shut up now. Thanks for persuading me to switch. :)

'nuff said. I can't wait to see what he says after he tries out the new code editor in NB6 (download the latest build from netbeans.org) Permalink Comments [16]

Comments:

I find NB is good for app developers, however there are a lot of Java platform developers out there too, who don't need 95% of the features found in NB. We just need an editor (that can start-up quickly on Solaris, Linux, Windows, and MacOS) with the same exact UI and key bindings on each system.

When you compare the start-up time of XEmacs 21.1 (seconds) vs. the start-up time of NB5 or NB6 (minutes), and the available platforms of each, there is no comparison. I reach for XEmacs 21.1 each time.

Sometimes, it is true: If it ain't broke (for 29 years), don't fix it.

Posted by Anonymous on February 28, 2007 at 05:32 PM PST #

Who cares about start up time? I have Eclipse and XEmacs running at all time on my machine, I launch them maybe once a week. And James, if your friend likes NetBeans, wait till he tries Eclipse...

Posted by 64.142.66.175 on March 01, 2007 at 01:00 AM PST #

Hi James, the link for 8 fallacies is broken. About Netbeans: it's great!

Posted by Emerson on March 01, 2007 at 04:11 AM PST #

Hi James, I understand why you feel the urge to tout NB (wink), but seriously, the IDE that "rules them all" *is* IntelliJ IDEA. Check it out. -Norb

Posted by Norb on March 01, 2007 at 07:13 AM PST #

Can I script/code NetBeans like I can Emacs (and does it have keyboard macros, one the the *stupidest* features for Eclipse to leave out :(

Posted by Dave Newton on March 01, 2007 at 10:11 AM PST #

I use Netbeans (a dataload), IntelliJ Idea (5+ projects), and Eclipse (J2ME, Java Games, C++ development). Personally I prefer IntelliJ but it's an unfair comparison as I was forced to use it for X time period. I would say Eclipse is the winner but I just can't make that leap. I encourage any developer to try them all and find an IDE that suites you - as mentioned - it will come down to your coding Before IDE and After IDE.

Posted by George Frick on March 01, 2007 at 02:53 PM PST #

IntelliJ ... no doubt ... I've been forced on eclipse....yes free have great power. After using eclipse (with MyEclipse 5), IntelliJ still rules....I'm more well versed with Eclipse now, but I installed IntelliJ on my home PC last month and I've been developing with pleasure on it. The main reason? BECAUSE INTELLIJ IS LIKE EMACS! You don't need your DUMB MOUSE after you assign everything a shortcut. Puggins for Hibernate and Spring are out dated on IntelliJ, but I still find intelliJ so much more productive than eclipse. But or free, nothing beats eclipse ;)

Posted by Why do you need to know? on March 01, 2007 at 05:33 PM PST #

I've been an emacs addict for about 22 years. I recently tried Eclipse. I really did try, but it could not handle an indentation increment different from the tab stop setting, which is necessary for developing the JDK code base. Yes, the settings exist, but Eclipse just ignores one of them. So I tried NetBeans, and I've not looked back.

Posted by Neal Gafter on March 01, 2007 at 07:05 PM PST #

It is really sad to see some of the senior developers flaunting their emacs and vi skills and refusing to learn the modern tools like Netbeans. The productivity gain from tools like Netbeans (in the build side it is Maven2) are immense, and lets us concentrate our efforts on more valuable aspects of software development. Success, productivity and quality are directly related to the tools we use, the way we use them.

http://wiztools.org/paper/SVN_Netbeans_Maven2.pdf

Posted by Subhash Chandran on March 01, 2007 at 10:03 PM PST #

As a vi (and more recently vim) user of 25 years, I seriously wonder about these "emacs" people. ;-) Of course I tried to learn emacs back when I was a smoker, and some of those five-finger combinations are impossible with a cigarette between your fingers! But: At least we get to agree about how much Netbeans rocks.

OTOH for really stuck vi users, I see there's now a "vi in Netbeans" module!

And to the person who says NB takes "minutes" to start: Get a faster machine/more RAM, or stop lying, whichever it is. On my aging AMD2600+ with 1GB and JDK1.6 it takes around 30 seconds to start NB, and I have quite a number of extra modules that I could/should get rid of.

Posted by Mike on March 02, 2007 at 12:05 AM PST #

It is interesting to note that Eclipse creates a kind of DLL Hell within an IDE: "Plugs-in Hell"...

Posted by Bruce Wong on March 02, 2007 at 01:22 AM PST #

i view my development career as "before IDE" and "after IDE" too, after using basic editors for years, from norton's editor on 286/dos circa 1990, then pico on linux, and finally vi for years. Finally i saw the light with IntelliJ, then Eclipse, and now i've settled on Netbeans :)

Posted by evanx on March 02, 2007 at 02:19 AM PST #

But James ... you are forgetting that some developers use multiple languages and platforms. What should us do with Netbeans, if it only works for Java ? Also ... Netbeans still sucks as a text editor, and when programming you are primarly editing text ;)

Posted by Alex on March 02, 2007 at 05:40 AM PST #

Netbeans still sucks as a text editor, and when programming you are primarly editing text ;)
I have to disagree here. When programming you are editing a AST (which is represented as text), or something akin to it. The greater understanding your editor has of that syntax tree, the more it can help. Conversely, if all your editor understands is the text, in my opinion you're essentially crippled. I used to be a hardcore XEmacs user, and while I still use it for editing some text, I would never even consider it for doing Java development (or Ruby), and I've basically walked away from Perl because it has nothing like Eclipse.

Posted by Matt Tucker on March 03, 2007 at 10:53 AM PST #

You know what, now I'm starting to Use Emacs for daily life. I dunno where this Horse will lead me, but I think it'll make the fun back at me on Coding. I jJust, like the simplicity .... ^-^ Laa ilaaha illallah, Muhammadurrasulullah

Posted by Eko SW on March 04, 2007 at 04:52 PM PST #

I am a hardcore vi user, its true that it is not easy to switch to something new once you are used to and comfortable with some editor or tool. Another thing which I wonder about these tools is whether the code generated by them is really the one which I want? Coding is a small portion of the entire SDLC. It won't matter by trying to save time here. I would prefer having my control over the code than have code generated by the tools which obviously have a lot of overheads. I as a trainer have only advised students to use the IDEs only to the extent of screen layout. That's the place where they could save some time.

Posted by Pravin on March 06, 2007 at 08:46 PM PST #

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