Refactoring

Java

Refactoring

Nov 4, 2002

4 min read

[@909]

Borland reworks Java tools. JBuilder 8.

Benchmarking: Trove Collection Performance.

Jeff — Eclipse 2.1 Features List…

Dominic — Java XML API Performance and Usage articles

Brent — Give a man a fish…

Fred — RSS Coming to a Cell Phone in Your Hand.

CodeGuide 5.0 build 505, a Java IDE.

Recipe of the Day: Recompiling the RE.

AOL Launches Enterprise IM.

[@573]

Cedric — Benchmark from a .Net perspective. Interesting read.

Online music sales plummet. It's just a bunch of BS. It is all about quality. It makes me so mad that I'm going to have to download some mood music from Kazaa.

[@509]

I spent most of the weekend refactoring jTalk's various Utility-type classes, which was long overdue. In the process I got to seriously play with Eclipse and IDEA.

I've used both before, for smaller projects; never with anything really sizable. As I was telling Russ last week, I'm an old school kinda guy. You give me vi and I'm happy as can be. It is hard to break old habits… Nevertheless, I was not looking forward to hours of endless regexp substitutions.
When it was all said and done, I have to admin I would give IDEA the higher mark.
Both are excellent, feature-rich IDEs. I was easily able to do anything I wanted to in IDEA, but I did have to refer to Eclipse's help and FAQ quite a few times.
CVS support is stellar either way. Although I find IDEA's color labeling more intuitive. Ant is also well integrated in both products.
Eclipse (out of the box, sans-extra plugins) lacks extended support for numerous file formats (xml, dtds, tlds, etc.) On the other hand IDEA was able to handle just about anything.
Performance wise, Eclipse is a little snappier, but nothing extremely noticeable. Visually, Eclipse is more appealing, but not more functional. The IDEA sidebars are extremely useful.
In the end what annoys me the most about Eclipse is that I keep on having to look for menu items, settings, etc. In IDEA, everything is where I would except it to be. Maybe it's just me, the way my left brain works.
[Update]
I don't agree with Russ' rebuttal on the CVS issue. Eclipse seems to keep track of entries internally, which forces you to re-synch with the repository whenever files are modified outside of the workbench. That's just plain wrong. Maybe there's a way to turn it off, but I've yet to figure it out.

If you're like me and are using Phoenix, but not as your default browser, and would like to launch URLs from the Run or command line windows. Here's a simple trick:

Add the path of the directory containing phoenix.exe to your environment PATH variable. To open an URL in Phoenix, type the following command:
phoenix http://erik.thauvin.net/
Too bad quick searches cannot be executed that way

Neil — Open Source: Start Here.

Joda 0.8, an open source Java Properties Framework.

ieSpell 1.1.0, my favorite spell checker.