Chaotic Java

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The new features seem to mostly revolve around JavaScript development, and promises to even show suggestions when developing AJAX code and libraries. Also, Alex says that if you’re running Web Sphere 5.1 or later, you’d be getting source-level debugging for JSP pages!

And of course it’s free to those already packed with licenses for IDEA 5.0.

These news matter to me more because it marks the end of Irida project (now called 5.1) and the beginning of the Demetra project, already starring in the early access program’s site (go and register now!)

Demetra is the next version of IDEA, marked 6.0, and is supposed to offer a lot in UI design, collaboration support and support for the fresh Java EE 5. JetBrains always surprised for the better, so much that their great IDE is no longer a surprise. Right now however, in my opinion, they have a bit of a fight against Matisse in the UI region - And I can’t wait to see how that gets resolved.

The thing to remember most is that unlike Eclipse or NetBeans, IDEA is not free - They can’t allow themselves to fall behind, and so far I don’t think they have. Their next IDE will show however, if they are going to fall behind in areas like UI design, which they controlled (again, in my opinion) up until recently.

Lukas pointed me to the NetBeans Graph Library used by Mobility Pack to create the flow charts between mobile forms, splash screens, etc (and in my humble opinion, will be used later to design flow charts for JSP pages, like in Java Creator Studio).

They also have a Web Start application there for you to test. The snapshot is from there. It actually got me thinking of reopening the dusted code of GenCore, my genetic algorithms framework of years past. One of the worst parts about it was the complexity of creating genetic processing circuits. To that end I was planning to write a front-end graph client, but just hated to start writing it all from scratch. You could say I was lazy, and even searching for existing frameworks didn’t quite get good results.

Risking by sounding even more like a marketing guy for NetBeans, this Graph Library brings some added value to the NetBeans rich client platform that actually makes me take a second look at it (I usually don’t like RCPs. Dunno why.)

Too bad there aren’t many tutorials on the subject, though (at least not on the graph’s site; I didn’t look around yet)..

I’ve recently asked out loud why the Mobility Pack is not available for Mac OS X downloads. Java being “Write Once, Run Everywhere” and NetBeans is carrying the flag of “using only standard Java packages”, that fact seemed weird to me.

Lukas answered the post by saying that in order for NetBeans’ Mobility Pack be available on the Mac, it needs to become a more interesting platform for J2ME development. In other words, there aren’t enough J2ME developers working on the Mac platform. In addition, he said that companies providing emulators usually do so for Windows and Linux, but not for the Mac.

He is correct, though. Currently, the only Mac emulator I know of is MPowerPlayer, provided for free for developers. It seems good enough - And I know it’s a shame people can’t play with Mobility as I know that just by showing Mobility Pack to a few friends (dotNet developers, no less!) they downloaded NetBeans at home and started playing with it. I can’t imagine them giving the same reaction if I showed them how I hand-code a MIDP application.

Lukas also provided a link to the “no Mobility Pack for Mac bug” in the NetBeans bug list, and told me to vote for it. Now, I implore you, the Mac developer: Vote for this bug. Even if you don’t work with J2ME today, you might want to do that in the future - And just like we, new-age programmers, don’t hand-code (or at least, don’t want to hand-code) Swing Forms, J2EE Deployment XMLs and even Ant scripts, we don’t want to hand-code J2ME forms.

So, vote for Mobility Pack on the Mac!