Sun takes a fair bit of flak for its developer tools strategy, some of it deserved, and some just based on prejudice, but developers are a canny bunch, and tend to know a useful tool when they see one.
I posted a while ago that Eclipse is now following NetBeans in some areas, notably web app development.
But who would have thunk Microsoft too would be considering implementing functions that Sun delivered some time ago? In this case, instant messaging for agile development, reinforcing developer pair bonds and buddy-based approaches.
John Montgomery, recently anointed as program manager for Visual Studio Live, an IDE “that is smarter when it’s online and back-ended by a set of services”, publicly asked for ideas to implement in the product. He got plenty of suggestions, including this one, via Greg Duncan.
I’m thinking “distributed team” Live features. Features in the IDE that help you work with your team, no matter their location.
1) For example, think an IM presence like feature, where when you have a Solution open in the IDE, you can see everyone else on your team who also have the same project open.
Kind of like Presence w/ Context. Not just that they are online but online and in the same project. i.e. in your same context…
2) Or something like a “Sync’d IDE’s”
I see my teammate/buddy is in the same project I’m on (or I see that he isn’t and I ask him to open a project… maybe including a VSTS Project link?).
I then click on the “SYNC IDE’s” button (and my buddy agrees), and then open a class…
Now we are both on the same code, in the same location in the code, etc…
Heck add shared editing… So either one of us could edit the code.
A P2P IDE. Now talk about team coding.
Ah Greg means something like the Sun Java Studio Enterprise Collaboration Service?
Sun is building cool developer tool functions for online web apps into its IDEs faster than Microsoft and Eclipse? Interesting.
Chris Reckling says:
January 17, 2006 at 1:18 am
Hi James – IBM has done some research in this area, too, as you can imagine. In fact, we showed alot at Lotusphere 2005 last year. Here’s a link to a description:
http://alphaworks.ibm.com/contentnr/rsducdemos
Scroll down to “Jazz”. So far, it has not made it into shipping product yet.
Chris
Anonymous says:
January 17, 2006 at 8:14 pm
I got to try out the Sun Studio collab function at a workshop. While the function in sounds great in theory, the way it’s implemented in Sun Studio was found to be botched and more obstructive than anything by most attending the workshop. It just didn’t “fit in” properly.
Alexis MP says:
January 17, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Good, now you can improve it since it’s part of NetBeans: http://collab.netbeans.org.
james governor says:
January 18, 2006 at 11:51 am
hello anon… thanks for your feedback. of course there is absolutely no chance MS would botch it in their first cut at Tuscany….
i should point out negative impressions are somewhat less compelling when they come from anonymous sources. but thanks again. where/what was the workshop? was their anything you liked about the product?
M-ook says:
February 19, 2006 at 5:27 am
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