Well said, Tor. Overall, I take offense to the accusation of "traitor" or, to pick a more neutral term, "flip flopper" (and for people not fluent in colloquial American English, it basically means "changing your mind").
There is nothing wrong with flip flopping as long as you can provide a decent explanation for your new opinion (and possibly, one for your previous opinion as well, since you should be able to explain why you changed your mind). I change my mind all the time, and although I do my best to only do that when new evidence or data has come up that I should take into consideration, I probably don't even do that all the time. It's part of being human: just because you like something at a certain time doesn't mean you will like that thing forever. Politicians tend to get crucified more than anyone else for flip flopping, and that baffles me as well. I would never vote for anyone who says that they will never change their mind. It's such a stupid position to have, and it's so silly to see all these debates where a candidate is trying to corner their opponent into admitting they flip flopped. You will assuredly never get my vote if you engage in this kind of shenanigan, regardless of your party affiliation. Back to the IDE discussion, whenever somebody shows up on irc and asks what IDE they should learn, I tell them Eclipse or IDEA. Not because NetBeans is bad but because in their professional career, they are much more likely to have to master Eclipse or IDEA than NetBeans. That's what I meant by "NetBeans lost". -- Cédric On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Tor Norbye <[email protected]> wrote: > Where do I start...? > > Let's start with IDEs. I am *not* an Eclipse fanboy. There are many > things I don't like about it -- starting with the workspace concept, > and lots of annoying bugs and behaviors. > > I -was- a NetBeans fan. That was not because I was "a company man", > but because I personally worked on it for several years, I knew many > of the core developers, I filed hundreds if not thousands of bugs over > the years which meant that over time the IDE improved and removed many > of the things that initially annoyed me, so the IDE worked really well > for -me-. I'm having to do a lot of XML editing these days and I think > the XML editor in Eclipse leaves a lot to be desired. However, it > doesn't seem to me that Oracle really has its heart in it anymore, so > I've mentally moved on. > > Now that I'm working on Android I've given Eclipse a deeper look than > in the past, and after a few weeks I found myself productive with it. > Six months in I'm just as productive as I was with NetBeans -- the > Eclipse Java editor is very strong, and I've rewired all my > motorskills to deal with the Eclipse keybindings and workflow. In > short, I'm liking it, not with the same level of passion that I had > for NetBeans when I worked on core editing stuff for JavaScript and > Ruby, but nevertheless I can code and have fun with it. > > Now, I think what has irritated more listeners is that I'm praising > Android a lot more on the podcast. But if you'll listen to older > episodes, you'll find that when I got my first iphone, and later my > ipad, I praised those too. They were much better than what I had > before, and I enjoyed using them a lot. I still find them to be very > good products. > > Does that make me a "traitor" for suddenly deciding that I like > Android better? No! It's pragmatic. I have already mentioned on the > podcast why I now prefer Android -- but in case you missed that > episode, to me features like the speech keyboard, vector mobile maps, > and notification are "killer" features that I use -all- the time and > they'e more important to me than the thickness of the device. And it's > by no means the only feature. For me, something as simple as browsing > and installing apps on the phone is just a lot better. On the ipad, as > soon as I've picked an app to install, clicking "Install" will -exit- > the app store, scroll the home screen 5 pages to the right and "show > me" the icon for the app which is downloading. Which of course I can't > click because it's not done downloading yet. On Android, clicking > install starts the install but takes you back to the previous page > such that you can continue scrolling down the charts and seeing what > else to try. > > For -me-, and for the features I use, it's just a better experience. > That doesn't mean I think it's the same for everybody. But I think > it's unfair to label this as "paycheck fanboy-ism" when I'm making it > very clear what I prefer about it. There are many technologies at > Google, and there were many technologies at Oracle and Sun that I > never talked about. I don't think I spout the party line. When I like > something, I talk about it. I mean, come on, I've even talked about > ABBA! Repeatedly! > > -- Tor > > P.S. Chris -- I do use both vi and emacs regularly! But never for code > editing. Vim for quick file edits, usually config files, and emacs for > macros and filetypes like markdown. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
