Ah the joys of competition and speed of open source development.<\/P>
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief change agent, recently made an interesting statement<\/A> :<\/P> Why is netBeans so good? One word: Eclipse<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE> At RedMonk we have some reservations about netBeans, but Java One<\/A>, and some recent conversations, have nuanced our views somewhat. Stephen argues the cons in our dialectic on the subject, while I try and work with the pros. <\/P> One of the pros is that Matisse<\/A> is just very very cool, and I would say some distance ahead of what Eclipse currently gives us for GUI development.<\/P> I saw an audience of Microsoft developers break into spontaneous applause seeing pretty much one of the same features (automatic resizing of a popup window… go figure) demonstrated in Visual Studio… just a couple of years ago.<\/P> Microsoft developers tend to be more visually oriented, more concerned with forms, buttons, and layout than transactional function.<\/P> A lot of the folks using Eclipse and J2EE however are more transactional in their thinking, and more server-based; they like glue code and thinking about the build.<\/P> Netbeans is increasingly targeting the former type. <\/P> So it is instructive to see Eclipse is working to replicate the functionality provided by Matisse<\/A>. This screencast<\/A> tells us more about Eclipse Visual Editor directions. <\/P> Oh yeah – one point to make about layout. netBeans is tracking Windows Vista look and feel, rather than putting forward a dorky applet-looking GUI. In other words devs that develop using netBeans over the next couple of years should be able to deploy GUI-based apps with native Vista look and feel. That is potentially one Eclipse differentiator… well, how should I say, eclipsed? <\/P> Just as Eclipse is improving Netbeans, so Netbeans is improving Eclipse.<\/P> There are positive voices<\/A> supporting Netbeans, but also plenty of push back. This great analysis by David Berlind<\/A> sums up Netbeans greatest problem–lack of major ISV adoption momentum. Eclipse is attracting ISVs as if it was a black hole and software companies were nearby interplanetary objects. You can’t fight the gravity of the situation.<\/P> But that competition thing actually seems to work.<\/P> I would recommend Java developers take another look at both<\/EM> development frameworks. Both have come a long long way in the last two years. Performance on both sides has improved.<\/P> If you think Eclipse is the bees knees then why not kick netBeans’ tires. What have you got to lose, your prejudice? <\/P> Putting some energy in will indirectly benefit your platform, too.<\/P> One final note to Sun, the netBeans developers and community though; you need to take a leaf out of Jonathan’s book and be less defensive. Eclipse is good. It won’t go away if you ignore it. Why not start building some bridges, functional and cultural?<\/P> [disclaimer: Eclipse and Sun are both RedMonk clients]<\/P> <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ah the joys of competition and speed of open source development.Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief change agent, recently made an interesting statement : Why is netBeans so good? One word: EclipseAt RedMonk we have some reservations about netBeans, but Java One, and some recent conversations, have nuanced our views somewhat. Stephen argues the cons in our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wfjh-4N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}