> > First time I tried this I was sold. I haven't found another IDE that
comes
> > even close. I think having something like this around would greatly
> > enhance acceptance of embedlets.
>
> You ever had to maintain the underlying code that is generated by such
tools.
> It's ugly and typically unmaintainable.....but in the real world you
always have
> to dig into the code (every reasonably complex project I have ever seen
> has).....so the costs soon outweight the benefits.
That was one of my main problems with it as well, the code it generated was
all over the place, and it was difficult get into the code once VAJ had
created it. Frankly, I loved it when I first tried it... and it did have
some "cool" features, but in the end I found I had to switch back. One thing
I did like though, was how it managed *every* class and interface... and it
forced you to view and think of the classes in an "OO way", which is why I
still think it has value and I use it for teaching when I have to do that
sort of work. Nothing forces a student to really *get it* than working in an
environment that makes you think and work in OO and in java in particular.
> > The demo is 'old' as IBM is moving to eclipse and support for Visual Age
> > will stop in the (near) future.
>
> And so why are you recommending VAJ when it is already obsolete? Guess
> the GUI builder just wasn't that useful in the real world after all. ;-)
Eclipse is the "new" VAJ. I am happy to say that I am far more impressed
with Eclipse... not only have the removed a lot of the garbage, but your
source tree/project structure is intact (you can even change its location,
though not easily), you so can plug it into an existing project... even use
CVS.
It's good enough that I might even use it (VAJ fans can even make it look
like VAJ)... only trouble is that its editor is not great (the text entry
part is not "smart enough") and its missing a lot of the tools and UI
enhancements that JEdit plugins provide. Its also designed for Java
specifically, where JEdit allows me to work with anything (can you tell I'm
a JEdit fan?). It also seems to have a very slightly funky environment that
causes normal ant builds to fail (you can execute Ant targets in Eclipse) so
you have to be careful how you set up Ant.
I was also a little concerned about its strong tie to IBM (being an IBM
product)... not that I mind that much, but it was a little disappointing and
it worried me a little that IBM could start charging for it or do just about
anything else to it, at any time.
Anyway. You use what you use, I'll use JEdit, and other folks can use
Eclipse. Umm... what do you use by the way?
- Brill Pappin
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