Another reason to use Netbeans instead of Eclipse

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on a post by another Eclipse fanatic. The insect ... oups, blogger, was making fun of people using Netbeans. Well, fortunatly for him there was no comments or reply button on the page because I would have replied and my comment would have been difficult for him to handle:

You might like the chaotic and always in beta look and feel of Eclipse however the biggest problem with Eclipse is its buggy Java compiler.

Some people don't even know this but Eclipse has his own "internal" Java compiler. Netbeans on the other hand uses the JDK supplied compiler. Eclipse's compiler has one advantage over the one in the JDK and that is the granularity of the compiled elements. Eclipse will compile and "link" smaller pieces of code. In a few cases where you have to stop debugging and restart in Netbeans, Eclipse will simply recompile the small bit of modified code and keep the debugging session alive. The problem however is that the last time I looked there was still a bug in the compiler forcing us to add useless class cast in generic code. To that you might respond that it is not such a big issue. My response to this would be: well one of the benefit of generics is to remove the need for a lot of type casting in the code so for me it is important. My other response to this would be that it is not the only problem with the Eclipse Java compiler. The reason I switch to Netbeans despite Eclipse being the standard where I work is that for a while in the transition to Java 1.7 the Eclipse compiler would simply not compile my project. This was eventually fixed (a week later) but I simply could not wait a whole week without a working IDE so I switched to Netbeans. I have no problems with that because I have always preferred Netbeans to Eclipse. Aside from what I would call the objective argument (an IDE should compile the code correctly) there is of course a subjective side to my preference for Netbeans. I prefer the more static placement of the Netbeans windows and views. It is flexible enough for me and without feeling chaotic like Eclipse. Also, Netbeans was in front of Eclipse supporting the preview version of Java 1.8 and I would not want to be the guinea pig for the 1.8 internal Eclipse compiler.

Eclipse vs Netbeans ... no contest

Everyone is crazy about Eclipse. Me, I just can't stand Eclipse any more. Version 4.x was supposed to bring working multiple editor window but it just is not working. If you use a second editor window (drag an editor tab on a separate screen) the shortcut keys do not work and operations selected in the menu are simply not applied to the correct screen. I don't need billions of plugin. I need a working editor and just like I can't stand single pane file browsers I simply can't stand an editor that does not properly support multiple separate editor window. I spend most of my time editing code so I'm going back to good old clean and stable Netbeans. Which Java IDE should you use ? Well Netbeans of course.

FInally a decent Groovy and Scala IDE

Yesterday I installed InterlliJ Community edition on my Linux system at home. I have not completed my evaluation but I must say that what I have seen so far looks good.
Groovy support is available "out of the box" while Scala support can be added by downloading a plug-in. I have been reading about both languages and I even started writing little scripts at work in Groovy (utilities to extract data from text files and such). However I must say that the lack of a good IDE was quite a hindrance. As a Java programmer I expect a lot from my IDE being used to programs like Eclipse and Netbeans. Some of the productivity gains from those new languages are not so impressive when one is used to working with a good IDE. Take for example the Groovy (or Scala) "def" keyword. This is often presented as one of the advantages of Groovy over Java. You can replace:

  StringBuilder myString =  new StringBuilder();

with:

  def myString =  new StringBuilder()

The problem is that in Eclipse for example when I enter the first expression I type the following:

  myString =  new StringBuilder();

Then I just press +F1 and select "Create local variable" and the IDE adds the missing type at the beginning of the line.
Another example is the Groovy @Delegate annotation that generates delegate methods for a given member. Again in Eclipse I just right click the member and select "Generate delegate methods" from the Source menu.
Of course, in this category both Groovy and Scala offer much more gains then what an IDE like Eclipse can offer. However, those gains have to be weighted against the loss of other IDE functionality. As a Java programmer and Eclipse user I expect a good browser for my language. A browser is an essential part of a good OOP environment. This is so true that Smalltalk development kits have always included a browser. It is somewhat painful to apply good OOP principles if you don't have a browser (good OO programming tends to result in more numerous small classes).
The other must of course is code completion. The large number of core classes and API makes this absolutely essential.
I think a good open source environment like IntelliJ will contribute to the adoption of both Groovy and Scala.