I am a passive member and just read the emails. There was a seminar about
java technology at ISI which most of us filled in the list and got
subscribed :)

I am not sure this is not the first time that somebody claims something
about comparing .net and java. Anyways, I just wanted to comment on this.

I was involved with java  for couple of years, was a big fan of it (of
course the server side) but becuase of 'a project', I had to move to .net;
At first I tried to compare everything together. I remember myself keep
saying 'So what? this is exactly this.' and ...

Now, I am very comfortable with it and I really prefer .net becuase of
close interoperablity with other microsoft  based tools and interfaces to
unmanaged code.

I am not starting anything, but the thing is that we can use what ever we
are comfortable with (and of course with respect to the projects needs and
the available resources).

We are (trying to be) software  engineer. The most important part  in the
engineering is how to use currently available materials.

Do we spend much time on architectures? do we really use all the features
available by the technology? or we just make the developers to follow some
ancient traditions to make the code?

I recommend trying Visual Studio 2005. Also try

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
Visual Studio 2005 - Team Foundation Server

It's all in one solution. Seriously.

I can't stand 100th one. Is there anybody in the group having a
positive feeling of Eclipse? It clicks my mind sometimes, wow MDA bla
bla. However, it has no productivity value, many teams use it though.
Please share me your experiences, probably enterprise  ones.

I have a very positive feeling of Eclipse. It's a
very good JDE supporting anything a JDE can do.

What is wrong with Eclipse???

Eclipse is the best and most popular IDE, and I personally enjoy working with it.

It has numerous plugins

Extensible

Light

Fast

Wide community support

Free and open  source



WHAT ELSE DO U WANT



Check out the link

www.onjava.com/.../2004-survey-2-results.html

It was last month we went to a conf about "why J2EE is not as successful as it suppose/expected to be", agenda was about real life examples, practices, different industries,

the bottom line is, stakeholders want to keep the legacy systems running (they've paid for it what'd you expect) and to match up with today's needs, they want to have the value added functionalities of enterprise  systems such as distribution  computing, controller transactions, higher security etc. But the fact is, if you, as an architect want to analyze such enhancements, you might end up with using .NET, J2EE, integration of both or even none of them. I personally don't see any value in such raw comparison of technologies without concerning the real problem statements , there are so many measurements in choosing the right framework, technology or right teams to use; which I believe you already know about them.

BTW, I think eclipse is pretty ok (note: I’m not saying it’s the best), we’ve managed to work with it in a big enough team. I agree with you as the dev tool is a good factor in speeding up the development  or how does it integrate with other dev tools, etc, but it’s not the only one. May be because I’m more into design, I guess once you have a good view of what you’re doing, you can write  the code  with ant and a text editor - ok may be I’m pushing it though

"J2EE and .Net are two evil princes that are fighting
for the crown of the dead king COBOL".
Picking between these two is like picking a religion
and I have picked Java, and everyday I pray for it!
But I also have in mind that Microsoft with their
horrible (both technically and philosophically)
products is the richest company in the world and Sun
has been doing worse and worse year after year
(although Microsoft's money comes from Windows and its
not going to keep flowing as strongly forever).
Microsoft is also the smartest software  company when
it comes to the business aspects (make a cute little
product that is very very simple to use in the
surface, but it doesn't matter what crap lies
underneath). On the other hand, the power of Java
comes from the community and is the power of freedom.
This is almost becoming like the classic legends of
the war between the Free and the Rich and we all know
that the rich will win the battles but the Free will
win the war since the Rich’s source  of power will
diminish as he spends his money on the battles but the
source of power of the Free won’t go anywhere.
What will happen in the short term is that if the Rich
that likes freedom (IBM, Oracle) support  Spring, .Net
will be beat sooner rather than later but if they
don’t, you might need to learn .Net to pay the bills,
but I am sure that Java or something like Java will
come out glorious in the end.

I see what you are saying. The problem with me is that I have always
been down to other tools and development  configurations. One thing
that can help me out is to have a picture where Eclipse fits in a
development team. I know there are zillions of plug-ins, features, and
perspectives in Eclipse; however, the Java IDE itself is too buggy and
akward for me. Afterall, it just slows me down. Umm, to get back to
the main discussion, it will be great if you can answer me the
following questions:

1- What was your development configuration in terms of type of tools
and tool integration?

2- How big was your team?

3- What sort of sofware process did you apply?

4- What were major techlogies involved in the project?

5- How long did the project take?

An IDE is a tool, ok? It lets me do this and that, faster and easier, it
helps me alright, but does it get in my way also? Eclipse for me is a tool
with lots of nice features, but here and there it gets in my way.

I'm most productive when the tool doesn't get in my way, when I don't feel
its existence, but I feel the fine outcome it brings me. Like a good hammer
perhaps! A hammer which fits the size and figure of my hands fine! With
which I can create the best woodworks!

For me Eclipse is not such a hammer! I cut my figures constantly with it
For me IDEA is the ultimate hammer.

Dev tools, version control tools, and any other stuff that you want to use must be standardized among all your teams and carefully chosen.

I don't think using Eclipse for big teams is going to give you much trouble as people are using it, so I guess because of its advantages that you've mentioned earlier, usually it is a good choice. I don't see Eclipse as some tool other than a dev tool, what you probably are looking for is a setup of a good version control tool which Eclipse also gives the plug-ins for that. It also migrates with RUP tools like Rational Rose. There are other tools out there such as Oracle dev tool, Weblogic, etc but I have a feeling that Eclipse has much more fans these days. Having said that having much fan is not always enough

I guess no matter what process you're using or how big the team is, how long the project is going to take, how far the milestones are, Eclipse would still be ok, even if you have C++ coding you still can use it. I started with Netbeans, Sun ONE, they are good but way too slow comparing with Eclipse. But I also agree it might be a bit tricky to set it up at first place.

It looks like you are more into comparing the tools and you have already made your decision on using J2EE. May be if you can come up with a list of dev tools that you have in mind and the kind of industry you are in, people here can be more helpful.

Many large scale mission critical enterprise  applications developed by JEE however M$ .net is perfect to build rudimentary and trivial applications.



Largest enterprise applications with millions of transaction ported from mainframe to java  like Saber holdings ,which is the largest booking system in the word that connects many travel agents around the word or Walmart store handle 7 million sessions and 106 million page views per day using Java!



Even governments such as Iran Brazil UK and China mandate using java for their development  platform



On one hand we have a vast number of industry gurus and open  source professionals and billion dollar companies like IBM, BEA Systems, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard JBoss etc supporting Java ,on the other hand we have bunch of Drag and drop ,copy paste dumb developers and a company called M$ which fighting in many fronts range from

game to music .





Moreover ,here is the J2ee mailing list not the battle ground for M$ .net and JEE.

please read through what I have written down there and if you found  anything against "Elipse" or J2EE that have upset you this much, you can then advice us a bit more

These are why we technical people love java, but how about non-technical managers; You know that most of managers prefer low cost and fast solutions.



Consider that you are negotiating a project and you want to convince the project stakeholders that they are better to use java  technology than its close competitor .net. I think these 101 reasons are technical, We need justifications to convince business people using their own language  (money and numbers).



This discussion helps us to be able to overcome the market and create more jobs that’s why I invite everybody to join a discussion about this matter.

Ya, it has no productivity value. Be aware no IBM exec. reads your email.
The number one java  IDE has no productivity value?

Well, that`s my idea. I was really asking for values. You may share me
what values you think Eclipse brings along.

I know Eclipse is being used widely, probably because it`s free. I
have been talking to managers about this recently, and the last thing
that I can`t argue back is that it is free, which is really good.
However, that just doesn`t do for me. I belive Eclipse is slow and
messy. In addition, having a lot of plug-ins can make the life harder.
In the book "Simpler, Faster, Lighter Java" the writer describes how
this kind of technology support  becomes a trap for many projects. As
professionals, we need to know the values to make the right decision.
That`s where I am.

Eclipse is not just an IDE.

Yes it is free but IBM spent a lot of time and money to develop the free product !



Right now it is very stable, a lot of big companies are producing plug-in for eclipse, for example BEA is not going to continue with his BEA Workshop IDE, they are going to make plug-in for Eclipse.



You can pay for Eclipse plug-in, myEclipse is a group of good plug-in that is very useful and very cheap.



I used JBuilder, NeatBean and Eclipse but Eclipse is the best one as you have plug-in for everything, for example I start a job that plug-in for SubVersion(Version Control) was need, We couldn't find a plug-in for NeatBean but Eclipse had the plug-in.



Right now is good time for selecting a good IDE and adapting to it, it is Eclipse.

I love Java more about numerous reliable open  source frameworks  , but .Net is young .
I Love Java more about platform-independency in a broad range of Computers ( from Mobiles to Mainframes ) and Operation Systems (from Symbian to OS/390) against the current versions of .Net CLR. [Rotor , Mono , Portable.Net are not for commercial usage]
I Love Java for nice architecture and specification of EJB Technology against the Enterprise services  ( COM+ , Not Redistributable) in .Net Technology.
But I Love to .Net for Simplicity and Speed.
I love .Net for Attribute keywrod and attributes usage.

fo some reasons and usage .Net is better and for some other reasons and usage Java s better . but in an abstract view Java is better than .Net.
however i suggest to study some eBooks .
J2EE and .NET Application Server and web  Services Benchmark
Middleware Company
October 2002
J2EE and .NET (RELOADED)
Yet Another Performance Case Study
The Middleware Company Case Study Team
June 2003
The Comparison of J2EE and .NET for e-Business
The Technical Report (hipic-10292003) of High-performance Information
Computing Center at California State University, Los Angeles
2003
J2EE vs. Microsoft.NET
A comparison of building XML-based web services
By Chad Vawter and Ed Roman
June 2001

I just get off on what you say. However, the thoughts
why people are using Eclipse has been around in my mind recently. It
comes to more attention when I see other companies are building tools
upon Eclipse, like Rational XDE, new Borland tools and as Anoosh said
new BEA workshop, right? Now, the question is whether not Eclipse is
becoming more of a process tool, by which whole project need's can be
met. IMHO using Eclipse only as an IDE, while there are IDE's like
IDEA, is not a good idea. right? so what else keep the product in the
market? if it is more than an IDE then how people use it?

The other tools companies (Borland, BEA, Rational) minimize their costs
by basing their tools on a *popular and successful* platform  like
Eclipse. Many car manufacturers do the same too. They share their
platform with other companies. But there's always room for alternative
platforms too. For example most hardware comapnies use the common PC
platform, while there's Apple with its distinct and innovative
platform. But not all people are wise or daring to choose the best
platform

But you may know that Apple is moving from PowerPC chips (that makes it
distinct from ordinary IBM compatible PCs) to Intel chips.

The fact that Apple is moving toward Intel is a strong ground to the
fact that Apple's managing team is wise. they just don't want to be
screwed up by PowerPC people. yet, they are making a good decision to
stay in the market, though they loose a bit of share in this period.
after all, they will have the chance to survive. I still stay with ara
that some of the recent investments on Eclipse are based on bugdet
cutting plans.

I've wonderingly read all ur ideas about Eclipse.
If you paid a little attention to the 100th reason you'd find out
that Eclipse is compared with VS.NET not another Java IDE.
The only IDE that has the same and more features which
VS.NET has.

It is one of the most popular IDE for Java among developers, designers,
managers, students and bla bla bla whether you like it or not, it
proves itself thousands times in many projects.

I see most of you are expert developers and
some are IT professionals, IT men are always the most logical people in
the society in my psychological experience.

I guess the reasons some of you missed some logical points
in this argument is summerized as follow:

1. Has not enough experience with Eclipse
2. Showing Off
3. Not to pay enough attention the 100th reason
4. Working with cracked tools, so it is hard to you to work or
manage your company easily with free tools.
5. and 4 another reasons ;)

I wish the best for all of you,
and give you an advice: think more about yourself
than other things, you will satisfy with it.