Java Development Environments

There are a wide range of integrated development environments available for editing, compiling, and debugging Java code. This discussion barely scratches the surface of those tools available. In this class you are welcome to use any tools, or platforms available to you, and that you are comfortable using. My discussion is organized around platforms and the various tools available for each. I will note those system that I have personal experience with.

Unix-based Java Development Environments

Name: emacs
Company: Free Software Foundation
Price: Free
Strengths:
• Tried and true environment
• Excellent configurable programmer's editor
• Nearly Universal on UNIX platforms
• Available elisp packages for Java and HTML
  

Weaknesses:
• Relies on Sun's JDK or Netscape as a compiler.
  

Personal Experiences:
I have been using various flavors of emacs as a code development
environment for over ten years. I was so addicted to it that when
I first got a decent PC I spent a lot of time looking for emacs
clones (there are several) so I could not only develop code, but
simply type. I used one for a while. Then I bought a copy of
Visual C++, and had an eye-opening experience. The world
of software engineering has been progressing outside the confines
of UNIX, and sadly it has done so faster. I immediately noticed
that I could generate more code faster, without spending most of
my time setting up infrastructure, (Makefiles, source code control, skeleton code fragments to open X-windows, etc.) on these modern
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), than I could on my
beloved emacs. The lesson is if you are emacs proficient, I
recommend that you give something else a try. There is more to
life than UNIX and emacs. If you have never developed code on a
UNIX platform before, then perhaps you should give emacs a try,
if for no other reason, historical perspective.

Name: Soft as it gets
Price: 45-day demo
Strengths:
• Excellent configurable programmer's editor
• Very Java Aware
• Lots of Macros for HTML and Java
• Excellent support for edit-compile-execute design cycle
• Auto-completion

Weaknesses:
• No JIT compiler
• Relies on Sun's JDK
• No debugging support
• Auto-completion
  

Personal Experiences:
I used ED for about a month when I first started programming in
Java and I really liked it. Since then even more Java support has
been added. The default color text highlighting is a bit
outrageous, but its easy to customize. If you don't want to stray
to far from the UNIX style of program development, then ED is a
great choice.

Name: Café
Company: Symantec
Price: ~$80.00 (Café Lite Free)
Strengths:
• Nice integration of all program development phases
• Native Java compiler sj
• Built in JIT compiler
• Integrated debugger
• Nice screen usage
  
Weaknesses:
• Weak wizards... no built-in macros
• The cleanest interface wants files before starting projects
• When trying applets it constantly gets confused and closes
  and reopens itself.
• Minimizing and Closing documents is confusing
  

Personal Experiences:
I am currently most comfortable with Cafe as a Java Development
environment. The built in native compiler and JIT are the best I've
seen. I like the fact that its main window does try to take over
the whole screen. I don't recommend Cafe Lite, it was so buggy and
difficult to use that I doubt I would have ordered the full version,
if I hadn't already done so.

Name: Visual J++
Company: Microsoft Inc.
Price: Beta version free until November
Strengths:
• Same interface as the Microsoft's other Visual tools,
  which are the standard for serious Windows95 code development.
• Excellent Wizards! VJ++ will write hundreds of lines of code
  for you.
• Fast native compiler
• Integrated debugger
• Excellent support for building large or small projects
• Takes advantage of Explorer 3.0's JIT compiler
• Great on-line documentation
• Neat resource editing tools

Weaknesses:
• Default paths were hosed when I installed it
• Don't like dockable views and the undocked windows waste too
  much space
• Uses Explorer as its appletviewer; default is hosed
• Wants you to create projects before files
• Sometimes messes up dependencies on objects defined in the
  same file and compiles files multiple times (It must do incremental
  compiling)
• Class views should indicate inheritance

Personal Experiences:

I've been trying to get used VJ++. It has tremendous potential. It
took me a while to get it configured correctly... which is strange
because I let it installed both it an explorer sung the defaults.
It's tendency to waste screen space might be less of a bother on
1024x768 screens.

Name: MJE (Mini Java Editor)
Company: Lim Thye Chear
Price: Freeware
Strengths:
• Tiny (<200K)
• Easy to Use low frills interface
• Distributed with Java source

Weaknesses:
• No JIT compiler
• Relies on Sun's JDK as a compiler.
• No debugging support
• No fancy wizards, macros, or Java Awareness

Personal Experiences:
MJE was by far the easiest system to install and use. It takes nice
advantage of Java's multi-threaded enviromnent. I use it as an example
of a useful Java application. This might be the future.

Name: FrIJDE
Company: Cooperative Development
Price: Freeware
Strengths:
• Wants to be the emacs of the network world

Weaknesses:
• There's a lot of code that doesn't seem to do much

Personal Experiences:

Has a lot of potential, but I'll have to wait and see on this one.

Name: Java WebIDE
Company: Chami Wickremasinghe
Price: Phone Call (Web-based Applet)
Strengths:
• Well, you can use it anywhere

Weaknesses:
• Hard to say

Personal Experiences:

This one is very near the deep end.

• This file was last updated on 8/25/96