looking for an IDE/dev tool

[Dave Vick]

Hey everyone
With out starting a 'my ide is better than yours' discussion I have a few questions:
I am in search of good, solid devlopment tool. However, being financially challenged it also has to be a free one.
I tried Oracle JDeveloper and didn't like the editor customization options - I could never get them to work right. Recently I've been using Borland JBuilder Personal edition and it is pretty good. Except for a few things:
It uses all of Borlands clas libraries and it wont let me change the defaults (you have to have the developer of enterprise version to do that). The libraries for xml and also for rmi seem to be older ones - compiling code with newer methods causes compiler errors. And the personal edition doesn't support servlets, jsp or other enterprise features either.
I downloaded eclipse but it seems to be more of a work in progress then a finished, usable tool. Some of the files needed for its 'first program' weren't included with the download so I couldn't even get that to work well.
So my questions are:
I used to use Forte when I was first learning Java and found it incredibly slow, I have heard that the new release (4.0) is faster. Has anyone used it and can verify it? Any other general comments on it.
Has anyone really used Eclipse? Did I just not give it enough of a trial or is it really not yet ready for prime time?
I am familiar with many of the more basic text-editors available but am looking for something with a little more umph: debugging, statement completion, setting file paths and the like. If anyone knows of a decent tool I haven't mentioned let me know.
Thanks for any input

[Gerry Giese]

Dave,
I've been using Forte 3.0 Enterprise for several weeks now and it's pretty good. I've researched the new version, and everything I've found is that it truly is faster. The stated system req.s go down from 866 MHz to 500 MHz, so you can count on it being snappier. I'm not sure if the speed improvement is based on code changes only or code changes + JDK 1.4, but if I were you I'd run Forte or Netbeans with JDK 1.4 and set the compiler for your target JDK version. Forte CE/Netbeans should have everything you need, and the reports on the new version's speed tell me that it's now snappy enough to not get in the way. The current version can be slow, but it's really not bad if you have a semi-recent machine (1GHz/256MB or more) and as an IDE it's pretty full-featured.
I'll try Eclipse at home next month and see, but I'm stuck with Forte at work for the long haul. I'm pretty sure that the Eclipse IDE isn't fully baked yet, and what it really needs is a lot of the snap-in modules that Netbeans/Forte already has written since it's been around longer.
I can't think of any other free IDEs that have everything you're asking for. Maybe you could find on of the open-source projects and add the code they need? I've heard that JCreator is getting better and better, but the code-completion is only in the Pro version, which isn't unreasonably priced (US$35 Academic/Personal, US$69 commercial). I've got a copy of CodeWarrior for Java (v5?) that's a little older but I'd be willing to sell for cheap.
Here's a list of free IDEs

[John Dale]

I've used Eclipse 1.0 for a small Java project extending another application (several hundred new classes, plus several hundred more from the old app), and like it. I keep the source in a repository using the team support feature(although I've been working mostly alone), and use JUnit. My use of JUnit is via the text UI, because it's convenient, and the class loading in the Swing UI doesn't seem to play nice with some native libraries I use (not an Eclipse issue). I've not tried the Eclipse Ant integration or JUnit integration.
I like it. Going through the tutorials didn't take long -- and was helpful in getting started. I don't recall any files being needed, but I tend to type short examples in IDE tutorials to get a feel. (And I would have already had junit.jar, if that was needed.)
The main limitation of Eclipse 1.0 is that it doesn't include a lot of features you find in the current commercial products. For example, it does not have any sort of visual composition tool for building GUIs. Nor does it include tools for building web apps, for which I think you would have to go to products like IBM's Eclipse-based WebSphere Application Developer.

[Dalia Rojas]

I was using Jcreator and it was great. But I've recently found a great tool which I intend to start using. You can find it at http://www.gexperts.com . I was interested in this one because it suggests method names as you're typing them in.

[Ilja Preuss]

Hi,
I am using the latest stable build of Eclipse 2.0 at work. It still has some minor issues, but is very stable (and usefull) in general. I wonder why you didn't get it to work...
Afaik the final release is scheduled for mid to end may.

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by John Dale:
I've not tried the Eclipse Ant integration or JUnit integration.

The JUnit integration of Eclipse is great: you can double click on a failed test or a line in the stack trace and the editor jumps automatically to the corresponding line in the code. In the latest build it has also improved in performance - IME it is nearly as fast as the TextUI.

[Jes Sie]

Whatever you do, stay away from Oracle's 9iJDeveloper.
I'll recommend TogetherSoft 6.0 for both IDE and moelling purposes.

[Brian Duff]

Hi Simon,
Was there something particular you didn't like about JDeveloper?
Thanks,
Brian

[Sudharsan Govindarajan]

Brian!
Personally I like Oracle 9i JDeveloper. It's very comprehensive for all Java developments. With 256 MB memory it is quite usable.

[Bruce Jin]

I have been using Eclipse for a year and I think it is better than Forte, JBuilder, and VAJ. It was very easy to install. Download, expand, and click Elcipse.exe then it works! It does not support EJB.