Re: Whay IDE am I supposed to use/is the best?
Timothy Madden wrote:
Well I use Vim (or vi) www.vim.org, but you will have to do a little
learning in order to go with the same choice (for which case you can
open Vim, maximize the window, press F1, and start reading a few pages).
The point is if you don't know too well what and IDE is and what it
does, try to get a text editor first (or some simple editor-as-IDE), and
manually type the commands you need (for example to compile). At least
until you get bored, but in any case _not_ before you understand them
through a little practice.
Than you might feel a _need_ for an IDE, though it has never happend to
me yet, really. Even if you don't, there is nothging to loose by not
The value of an IDE comes from the "I", not the "E".
NetBeans and Eclipse, for example, both provide great dashboards to
control all relevant resources - databases, app servers, dependencies,
test frameworks, source repositories, ad infinitum.
They also add value through their debug capabilities. You can debug
without them, but it's more work.
Conveniences like auto-complete and ready access to Javadocs are nothing
to sneeze at either.
The danger from IDEs isn't that they lack value; if anything it's that they
provide too much value. You can get lazy/addicted to their features and
forget how to do things from the command line or with Ant. Worse, you
can let IDE artifacts (like Eclipse's ".classpath") creep into your process and
code repository, breaking compatibility with standard tools (like Ant).
using the IDE, really. Proof to that is the fact that not everyone is
using one, some willingly choose to stay outside their convenient world.
That doesn't prove that there's nothing to lose, only that the loss is small
enough for some people to bear it.
But at the end you will find that you learned something in the process,
provided you know where the documentation is and you are not shy to look.
In any case what you should not do is go to the most sophisticated IDE,
so that you have to ask someone else to install it, 'cause you don't
understand what it wants, and after that realize that you still need a
few instructions from the person who installed it, because the 'New
project' button opens 3 to 10 more dialog boxes, instead of creating a
new project.
The major IDEs for Java do not fit into this description.
If you go that way, you will just learn "where to click", and you will
never learn anything else again... (sad part here).
Anyone who lets that happen is missing out on much of the rich experience
of being a computer programmer.
And cutting their skills short.
--
Lew