A Few Glorious Months (Netbeans rant)

UPDATE: it helps if you check the menu options properly…

I don’t tend to waste my time investigating all the nooks and crannies of an IDE (Integrated Development Environment, for the non-developer-types). I typically just use the basics. Some might say I’m wasting time by not using those features, but it works for me.

So when the Eclipse & IntelliJ users on the team opened a dialog box and jumped straight to a source file by typing the first few letters of the filename, I just shrugged and went back to navigating through the project tree…. that is, until someone pointed out that Netbeans had the exact same feature — “Go To File” (so obviously a little investigation of menu options wouldn’t have gone astray).

Then, lo and behold, I discovered shortly after, that Netbeans’ “Go To File” function actually did more than Eclipse (and was at least equivalent to Intelli). You could type the capital letters of the class and it would list the matching classes. For two glorious months (or so), I had a feature that was at least as good as my colleagues. The months of enduring taunts, because of my obscure choice in IDEs, faded from memory as I jumped from file to file with a flick of a few (less) fingers… at least, until the latest version of Eclipse arrived with that feature.

Now Netbeans 6 beta 1 has been released. I’ve been burnt in the past by NB early releases — but this is a brand-spanking-new beta. Spit-polished with the glean of months of development effort, since then. Gosling is talking about it. The general consensus elsewhere appears to be that it’s good.

And, after upgrading, it does look good. Not a huge amount of visible difference from NB5. A few burrs here and there have been filed off the sharp edges. There are some things I don’t find attractive, but it’s bearable. Integration with source control doesn’t seem to thrash the CPU, which is a major improvement.

But then… Alt+Shift+O…

My most-used feature.

The only thing I could (until recently) hold above the Eclipse users on the team, and say confidently (and maturely), “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah”.

One thousand curses on the perpetrator, for violating the perfection of the Alt+Shift+O! Yes, they’ve indeed extended it to search all filenames instead of just classes, but at the same time they’ve rendered it unuseable. Not only is it slower, it is s…l……o………w……………e……………………r.

It is grindingly slow.

If the phrase that immediately pops to mind to describe the fastest thing you’ve ever seen is “blazingly fast”, then a snail would be described as “blazingly fast” by this feature. A tortoise would have the opportunity to perform a full circuit around my desk, and execute a perfect pirouette, before this abysmal piece of code decided that it should return some results.

Slowness I could’ve forgiven if they hadn’t removed the only thing that (until recently — and yes, I know I keep saying that) made me better than the Eclipsers. The feature-in-the-feature that made me as good as the Intellis. Searching, via the capital letters of a class.

MCGF would find MyCrazyGeneratorFactory.java and MyCrazyGeneratorFactoryImpl.java. WDMCHSLN would find WhyDoMyClassesHaveSuchLongNames.java. As it is, I now have to type My (then wait an inordinately long amount of time) to find all files starting with “My”. Carry on typing if I want to narrow the results. With a bit more waiting…

Netbeans 6.

The upgrade that is actually a downgrade.

Now I have to endure the snickers of both the IntelliJ AND the Eclipse users.

Sigh.

Footnote: Welcome back NB5.5.1!