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!

I downloaded the lastest daily of Netbeans 6, after a couple of exceptions in the m9 release I had been using began to get annoying. Not only is it extremely buggy compared to prior version (unusual for a Netbeans daily, in my experience), but it appears they have replaced the quite functional file dialog with an absolutely abysmal, in my honest opinion completely unuseable, dual mode dialog box.

Whatever possessed the development team to allow that abomination into the main trunk, let’s hope it is a temporary aberration and by the time NB6 goes final, saner minds have prevailed.

1. Netbeans is not an island.

I’m the only one using Netbeans on our project. I’m the small deformed child, in the corner of the class, that none of the other kids wants to play with.
Our projects are all driven off ant build scripts, so the logical way to use NB (when everyone else is using Eclipse or Intelli) is a free-form project (i.e. “Java Project with Existing Ant Script”). Okay, that works fine, but when you want to compile a single file from within the IDE, the ant script ide-file-targets.xml is created — that’s still okay, I can hack so that the internal classpath in that file points at the classpath in our main build script. But what about code completion, and the other IDE tools that rely on knowing the classpath?
First, right-click on the Project, select Properties, then Java Sources Classpath, then reproduce the classpath you’ve already created in the build script….?

Hmmm. That’s a word that starts with A and rhymes with “pass”.

A related note: I hate the ant icon on freeform projects in NB6. Go back to the old one.

2. A Project is not an island.

If NetBeans is not an island, neither are the projects in it. If you hit Ctrl and move your mouse pointer over a class name you can jump to the implementation… but not if that class is defined in another project. There might be a way to do this — but it ain’t obvious.

3. Why can’t I turn off Editor Hints?

I don’t like them. I don’t need them. And if I do, I’ll ask. But the problem is, there’s no obvious option that says “Use Editor Hints” to turn them off, and I’ve been through the advanced options — a number of times.

Besides, checkstyle covers all the stuff we actually want to check for.

4. “Help” is rubbish.

Stick it in a proper browser, so I can at least hit CTRL+F and find something in the current page. Oh yeah, and my up and down arrows don’t work in the help window either. Might be a Linux issue. But maybe not.

5. Where’s “Jump to Resource”?

Alt+Shift+O opens a dialog to jump to a “type” (class/interface/etc), which is nice. But Eclipse will open any resource: Python scripts, build scripts, whatever. Gimme that instead.

6. Fix Imports doesn’t remember what I chose last time.

Chances are if I select commons LogFactory one time, I’m going to want to select it the next time. I do not want to select it from a drop-down menu every time.

7 Minimal installation wanted.

I want to specify a minimal installation. All non-essential modules switched off. Everything that doesn’t stop the IDE from falling over in a steaming heap. Code completion yes — built-in Tomcat, app server integration, HTTP monitor, J2EE blueprints, integration, etc, etc, etc… absolutely not. I’ll switch on the bits I want, thanks all the same. In fact, don’t even bother including them in the distribution. Download on demand.

8. Reformat

If you say reformat xml, surely it means fully reformat? Not just reformat a bit. Either that, or relabel the menu option to “Half-assed Reformat Code”.

Okay, so that’s only eight. But Top Ten rolls off the tongue better than Top Eight…

Handling this file is, I believe, something that neither I, nor any developer, should have to deal with. It feels uncomfortably like having to hack the IDE for something that should be built in by default. Integration with ant is all very well, but I don’t think editing those project-generated ant scripts should need manual intervention except for the most unusual of circumstances. And certainly not to add single-file-compilation for code in another source directory.

By the way, in order to add another source directory (such as a ‘test’ dir) for single-file-compilation, add a new action to project.xml as follows:

  
 compile-selected-files-in-test
 
files
  test
.java$
relative-path
  
   ,
  
 

(This is just a copy of the action created automatically when you first pressed F9 to compile a file in the main source tree — with a new target and folder).

Then add the new target to ide-file-targets.xml:

 Must set property 'files'

 
 
  
 

Note that I’m using a dynamic classpath in the above target (with a refid to the actual classpath) — whereas the default usually has a list of jar files.

So, it would appear that my own “inexorable march to Eclipse” has turned into an all out retreat back into the fold. How does it feel? In the words of Wesley Snipes (in US Marshals, I think): Righteous. Very righteous.

SIDE NOTE: Looking forward to Mustang (Java6) since the fonts in the Linux GTK look-and-feel look even better…

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.

There are a number of things which I find annoying, among them the intrusiveness of the IDE, an inability to customise directories and path structures in a way which I am familiar with, and so on. Worst of all, there’s a sense of deja vu harking back to the days when I (briefly) used VisualAge (shudder), and even though Eclipse/WAD/RAD aren’t close to being that horrific, there’s still guilt by visual association.

However, I do like the integrated test environments — which came as a surprise, since with NetBeans I have generally gone into the options, turned off pretty much every module, and then scripted the bejeezus out of the command line to do everything I want (outside of the IDE). I’ve always found the scripted approach (either using Python or Jython or plain old bash) more powerful — but admittedly the RAD style is growing on me…

…probably like a fungus.