(Picking an entirely arbitrary jumping-in point in the conversation)

Fritz Meissner wrote:

> Anyway, enough criticism. Here's the question: what are the "killer"
> features of the other IDEs that makes everyone choose them over IDEA?
> Or is it just the price tag keeping you away?

In my case price is certainly a factor... ;-D  Sounds to me, though, 
like you've not used a recent (5.5 or newer) version of Netbeans. 
Personally I find the "compile/syntax colour/annotate" stuff in NB 
6(beta2) a tad /too/ aggressive!  I mean: give me a chance to finish 
thinking/typing the statement I'm busy with before marking syntax 
errors, field usages (I've turned off local variable usage marking).

As fro drag'n'drop editing for JSF/RC apps, I can't comment since I've 
sworn off webapps for Lent ;-) and am only starting to dive into the 
Netbeans platform for rich client apps.

My original question that started this thread was purely investigative. 
(I swear I wasn't trolling, yer honour...)  since I had occasion to deal 
with some ant scripts written by a team who were using IJ as there IDE, 
and, after some time, it finally dawned on me that the ant scripts were 
hopelessly out of date w.r.t "current" build practice, and had probably 
/never/ worked in any case.  (I could, as always, be wrong.)  I really, 
/really/ distrust this aspect of IJ, therefore.  I haven't tried any 
recent versions of Eclipse (but hated an earlier (v3.x-ish?) version 
enough to be put off for life -- not to mention SWT...) but lately 
Netbeans just rocks.

Let us stipulate that IDE preference is an ideological issue.  You say 
Tomahto, I say Tomayto.  (If ever I wanted to wast 20 minutes while 
teaching a course, I could safely bring up the subject of editors or 
IDEs ;->)  For me the strenghts of Netbeans lie in the superb navigation 
around any codebase, plus the intelligence of 
syntax/API/codebase/XML-path completion, plus (lately) the refactoring.

All that aside... I was a bit taken aback by Brian's earlier comment to 
the effect of "use whatever the client wants."

What is the client doing mandating a tools choice?  (reminder: an 
ideological preference; a non-rational choice.  i.e. a religious choice.)

In my mind the build process and project structure should be tool 
agnostic.  Tools are the prerogative of the artisan to choose.  You 
choose a chisel, I choose a spokeshave, the next woman chooses a plane. 
  (Of course the spokeshave really IS the right tool to use for the 
job... ;->)  The build process (i.e. dependency-based rebuilding, 
(something ant is appallingly bad at))[1] configuration management (NOT 
just source version control!) and the project /structure/ belong to the 
client, but the tools...???

How many development shops take this to heart, though?

[1] Of course only programmers are capable of, with malice aforethought, 
writing English sentence with nested parens...
-- 
mike morris :: mikro2nd (at) gmail (dot) com

http://mikro2nd.net/
http://mikro2nd.net/blog/planb/
http://mikro2nd.net/blog/mike/

-- A day without chillies is a day wasted --


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