What are you using to write your code?

[Glyph]

I was just trying to decide between IDE's before I invested much time in any of them.

Found this great article. I felt it was very detailed about the objective differences.

InfoWorld review: Top Java programming tools | Developer World - InfoWorld

NOTE: it is an 11 page article

As someone who has only done scripting before, and never used an IDE, and just learning Java -- I think I am going to use Netbeans.... for now at least.

[optimus203]

Hey everyone. I'm a fresh newbie to Java. We use Textpad to compile and run at school, but at home I run a mac. So I use TextWrangler with add-on scripts to compile and run. I started playing around with Eclipse, but was a little too advanced for my current needs.

[Eranga]

My advice is touch many editors you can, from simple one to advance. But you must clever with an advance IDE latter part.

[al_Marshy_1981]

A good teacher should guide his/her students to explore the world and choose the best suitable for them, not for the teacher. ;)

Brilliant, my thoughts exactly

[gauravfzd]

Well I m not an experienced programmer. When I started learning JAVA I used Navicoder IDE for java for writing and running JAVA programs, but after some time I faced some difficulties using that IDE like error when using Scanner for input. So I switched to eclipse IDE . Don't mind if I am wrong, I think that Eclipse does not use Java development kit that we install in the computer and it contains of its own. I only uses the Installed JRE's JVM to run the class file..

[Eranga]

Most of the IDE provides release two versions early stages, with and without JDK versions. But nowadays most of the IDEs comes with the latest JDK versions. And also most of the IDE are capable to search the system and find the JDK installations and link to it at the time of installing IDE.

However I'm not clear with that what you mean by Eclipse does not use JDK.

[JosAH]

However I'm not clear with that what you mean by Eclipse does not use JDK.

Eclipse comes with its own compiler: ECJ (Eclipse's Compiler for Java); it is based on IBM's Visual Age Java compiler. It's an incremental compiler so it can be used by editors to (partly) parse Java text. It is an extremely fast compiler.

kind regards,

Jos

[gauravfzd]

Thanks JosAH for explaining my point..........

[Eranga]

Eclipse comes with its own compiler: ECJ (Eclipse's Compiler for Java); it is based on IBM's Visual Age Java compiler. It's an incremental compiler so it can be used by editors to (partly) parse Java text. It is an extremely fast compiler.

kind regards,

Jos

Interesting point.

If I'm correct Eclipse could be run as a standalone application as well, is it?

[JosAH]

Interesting point.

If I'm correct Eclipse could be run as a standalone application as well, is it?

Eclipse needs a JRE to run.

kind regards,

Jos

[Eranga]

Specifically? Not with JDK? :0

[gauravfzd]

Eclipse only requires the JRE, It may be the one installed by JDK

[Singing Boyo]

So eclipse uses its own compiler... wow, not sure why I never figured THAT out. I've been using it for 4 years now.

Not that it really makes a difference what compiler is used (unless, like me, you program off a flash drive and can save space by just having the JVM) Same bytecode comes out anyway, or at least bytecode runnable by any JVM.

[JosAH]

So eclipse uses its own compiler... wow, not sure why I never figured THAT out. I've been using it for 4 years now.

Not that it really makes a difference what compiler is used (unless, like me, you program off a flash drive and can save space by just having the JVM) Same bytecode comes out anyway, or at least bytecode runnable by any JVM.

There are some nifty little difference between Jide (the Eclipse compiler) and Javac (Sun's reference compiler). It is not clear which one is correct although Javac is the reference implementation. I started a little discussion in this forum a couple of months ago about this very topic but I can't find the link anymore (it wasn't much of a discussion either ;-)

kind regards,

Jos

ps. Eclipse also comes with its own javadoc tool and debugger and jar tool. Only a JRE is needed ... Netbeans o.t.o.h. needs the entire JDK to be present.

[Eranga]

So eclipse uses its own compiler... wow, not sure why I never figured THAT out. I've been using it for 4 years now.

I'm not an Eclipse user, but I've never know this. I thought it required complete JDK to move on.

[wjncross]

I'm a netbeans user mainly because I want the GUI building functionality. I've coded GUI's by hand in the past but want to focus more on non-GUI code or non-standard GUI functionality where the GUI falls short.

I agree with the other comments that if you want to know what is happening then do it all by hand and later move on to builder tools.

[Eranga]

I'm a netbeans user mainly because I want the GUI building functionality. I've coded GUI's by hand in the past but want to focus more on non-GUI code or non-standard GUI functionality where the GUI falls short.

I agree with the other comments that if you want to know what is happening then do it all by hand and later move on to builder tools.

I agreed with you. Hands on experience never develop with those any kind of IDEs, better to move with very basic editors (which we've talk about million times)

[amro]

Geany from Geany : Home Page

[amro]

geany is very lite and fast
I do all my c++ and Java with it and it has buttons for building, compiling, and run
and obviously search replace etc
it also has the traditional area to show the errors and some other few more stuff
i also use it as general text editor

[mcnam4119]

I use netbeans because a friend recommended it and also my teacher said its easier to use than JCreator