So Long VI and thanks for all the :wq!

I've been writing software professionally  for about 25 years, which makes me a geriatric programmer.  For 20 of those 25 years I've used vi or vim and make or ant as my main development tools, and I've been very happy with my productivity. Vim coupled with ctags and a bit of configuration gives you syntax coloring, in-the-editor compiling and quick code browsing.  It is a very efficient environment. 

Every few years a new development environment comes along. I usually kick the tires and give the new tool an honest try.  The first IDE I tried was TurboPascal which was fast and cheap, but it was Pascal ... and well,  it just didn't take.  I also remember Visual Cafe (my first Java ide), Eclipse and Netbeans 1 thru 4. 

For the last couple of months now, I've been using Netbeans 5.0, and I think I've finally been convinced to retire the trusty old VIM as my development environment. NB 5.0 does a whole lot of things just right to make coding much easier:
  • CVS integration  - everything can be done in the IDE, it's the most intuitive source code control integration I've seen
  • Matisse  - It is ultra slick - it is so easy now to create a quick gui panel - and the way the generated gui is represented in the code (using code folds to hide the code you shouldn't touch) is very nice.
  • Refactoring tools - things that should be easy (like renaming a package) now are, no more fighting cvs and  manually grepping through hundreds of imports.
  • Autocomplete - 80% of my trips to the JDK javadocs have been eliminated
  • Project dependencies - you can manage multiple projects and their dependencies in the ide, makes building much easier.
  • Ant at the core - uses ant scripts for building so you can build your software without the IDE
  • Stable - I've never lost a bit of work with nb5
Still there are a few things that could be better:
  • Startup time ...  vi/vim is much faster
  • Memory usage - after a day of edit / compile /run cycles I tend to need to restart netbeans, its heap tends to get large after a while.
  • The editor is not VI. I don't like having to reach for a mouse to do things.
After working with Netbeans 5.0 for a few months, I've decided it's a keeper.  So Long VI and thanks for all the :wq


Posted on: Feb 12, 2006

Posted by: plamere

Category: Java

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Comments:

I'm a guy on the Emacs side of the fence, but it's a fence in the same yard as yours. =) In 2002 or so, using Eclipse made me convinced that I never wanted to write Java without a smart IDE again. The only good thing about the VB family is the power the editor gives you, and Eclipse provided that for Java. I was pretty happy.

I'm starting a new project, and I was convinced after reading Tim Bray's posts that I should give Netbeans 5.0 a try. I do like Eclipse -- I've even written a plugin for it -- but I'll see what Netbeans has to offer.

Posted by Michael Hannemann on February 12, 2006 at 12:55 PM EST #

Here is something that might make you switch back: http://pix.mybll.de/vim.gif

Posted by Cedric on February 12, 2006 at 12:59 PM EST #

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