A couple of Sun employees have asked me what what potential bridges I can see between Eclipse and netBeans. It remains a good question. The whole SWT vs Swing issue makes interoperability far harder than it might be, but it surely doesn’t make it a binary impossibility. People, not code, are turning the debate into a binary issue.
Trust Jaime to nail it in a sentence– turn the telescope around and say:
“I must say that diversity of IDE’s is so much impacted by a common standard for plugins as a phone user is impacted by being able to call to other networks.”
Whether or not interoperability is easy, its essential for creating value networks.Consider the European wireless scene, and its mandate for GSM, which did so much to drive revenues and wireless quality in Europe. Sometimes a lot of money comes out of the most simple technical bridge – SMS messages now drive billions of euros in revenues, GSM notwithstanding.
One area to look at opportunities to talk to Eclipse might be those in which Netbeans has a lead; that is, building web apps using RAD-style approaches. Its all about the value from volume .
I, for one, don’t think netBeans “ought to dry up and go away“. Like I said before, competition is good, netBeans is making Eclipse better.
But couldn’t we learn from the wireless providers and at least have a roaming agreement?
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