Initially I didn’t like the concept of a workspace in Eclipse, but now I do. Going back to Netbeans, I suddenly miss the facility. I have a bunch of projects I need to use at work, and then another group of projects for various development efforts I’m running at home. I don’t want the work projects visible at home, and I don’t want the home projects visible at work (either way it’s distracting) — but there doesn’t appear to be an obvious way to accomplish this in Netbeans. I can think of a couple of hacks, but none are particularly nice.

Another stunning omission is lack of support for syntax highlighting other languages. Python/Jython highlighting is available with the Coyote project. Not sure what other languages are available, but it seems as if PHP, at least, is not. It’s a bit of a joke that JEdit has had support for C/C++, PHP, shellscripts, etc (basically you name the language and support is probably there) for an age, but Netbeans is up to a 5 release with support for bugger-all other than Java. Yes it’s an IDE and therefore has a different set of objectives to an editor like JEdit, but if you’re a developer working in more than just Java, the omission is glaring. Anyway, doesn’t the “I” in IDE stand for “integrated”?

Speaking of JEdit, the anti-aliased BitStream mono font, also looks acceptable there, so I think I’ll be moving back to JEdit, for my Python projects at least.