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| <title>NetBeans Dream Team Interview: Vincent Brabant</title> |
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| <h1>Series: Meet the Dream Team Members<br> |
| </h1> |
| <i>(In January 2007, we announced the 11 charter members of the <a |
| href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NetBeansDreamTeam">NetBeans |
| Dream Team</a>, a community-oriented group of highly skilled NetBeans |
| users devoted to promoting NetBeans and working on the NetBeans |
| project. In these interviews discover who they are, why they are |
| passionate |
| about NetBeans and what goals they have for the NetBeans project.)</i><br> |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| <h1>Vincent Brabant</h1> |
| <img alt="Vincent Brabant" |
| src="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/vincent-brabant.jpg" |
| style="width: 185px; height: 204px;" align="left" hspace="10" |
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| <h4>Congratulations on becoming a member of the Dream Team.</h4> |
| It's a dream that became reality. :-)<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>Do you have any immediate projects you want to tackle as a Dream |
| Team member?</h4> |
| 1. Do a NetBeans presentation in French at Sun Tech Days in Paris.<br> |
| 2. Translate the <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/kb/articles/NBFieldGuide.html">NetBeans |
| book</a> into French, if possible.<br> |
| 3. Provide more Flash demos.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>You've been an active NetBeans community member for over four |
| years, what aspects of NetBeans's evolution have stood out for you?</h4> |
| What I like in NetBeans is the out-of-the-box experience. Once this |
| installation is done, I am instantly productive. It is not necessary to |
| install a lot of other modules to be able to work. And when I want to |
| go further I can install a Pack that works nicely together with the |
| IDE. But If I want to extend it, it's also possible thanks to |
| <a href="http://www.nbextras.org/">nbextras.org</a>. But there are some |
| things that are missing in NetBeans, like the |
| ability to import a EAR or a War or a JAR and transform it into a |
| project, and run it. It's very useful when you want to test some |
| open-source project. <br> |
| <br> |
| Also, I really have no idea how many people are |
| working for NetBeans, but it seems like it's an army. When you look at |
| the work done last year it's just incredible how productive they have |
| been.<br> |
| <br> |
| The fact that NetBeans projects are driven by Ant (or by Maven, if you |
| use the mevenide) is also really nice stuff. You have a lot of power |
| in your |
| hands thanks to this approach. For example, if you want to run some |
| code like |
| PMD/CheckStyle each time you compile your project, it's possible. |
| If you want to add CodeCoverage each time you are testing your |
| application, it's possible. |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>As a result of your localization efforts, have |
| more French-speaking developers switched to NetBeans or expressed more |
| interest in the IDE?</h4> |
| Yes, certainly. I received a lot of mail saying “Thank You” for |
| translating NetBeans IDE Field Guide draft chapters, and also for |
| French-only tutorials and demos. But I was more happy when I saw |
| people starting to contribute tutorials in French. The only problem was |
| that French-speaking users were not going to <a |
| href="http://fr.netbeans.org">fr.netbeans.org</a>. |
| So, I decided to also go where French-speaking Java developers were: |
| <a href="http://developpez.com">developpez.com</a>. The traffic there |
| is much larger.<br> |
| <br> |
| What I would like to see is a history of people that decided to switch |
| to Netbeans after looking at my demos. Someone I met at Javapolis told |
| me he was using Eclipse, but when he saw my demos, he decided to try |
| them and finally he switched to NetBeans.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>Why aren't French-speaking developers going to fr.netbeans.org?</h4> |
| I really don't know. Once, I asked the question on the nbdiscuss_fr |
| mailing list; in general, people prefer to look at the official |
| NetBeans website. But the link to fr.netbeans.org is too hidden. When |
| people see that a "Choose Page Language" option exists at the top of |
| netbeans.org they are taken to the <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/index_fr.html">French index</a> and not |
| to fr.netbeans.org<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>In an old <a |
| href="http://tempwww.netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/vincent_brabant.html">interview</a>, |
| you said NetBeans needed to appeal to |
| non-English developers; do you still feel the same?</h4> |
| Yes, I said that, and I continue to think it's true. The |
| <a href="http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-01/sunflash.20070131.1.xml">Multilingual |
| releases</a> are really nice stuff. The <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/brazil55-release.html">Brazilian</a> |
| guys did a very good job. And Maxym Mykhalchuk, who translated NetBeans |
| into <a href="https://netbeans.org/index_ru.html">Russian</a>, did |
| a huge job. He was nearly alone in that translation |
| effort. <br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>What advise can you offer others who want to promote NetBeans in |
| their own language?</h4> |
| 1. Start a blog and ask to add it on <a |
| href="http://planetnetbeans.org/">Planet NetBeans</a>.<br> |
| 2. Write Flash demos. (Start with Wink; you can later move to another |
| demo tool like Macromedia Captivate.)<br> |
| 3. Visit the <a href="http://nblocalization.netbeans.org//">Translation |
| Project</a> pages.<br> |
| 4. Join a Java user group or site in your language, and be active there |
| as a NetBeans evangelist.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>How can the various language communities work closer together?</h4> |
| We are already working closer via the Translation Project pages. Maybe |
| we could also share other resources and translate them, if needed.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>How often do you still contribute to the NetBeans site?</h4> |
| Not a lot in fact. Sometimes, I push Wink demos on the NetBeans |
| website. But I concentrate mainly on the French NetBeans |
| community through |
| developpez.com, which is NetBeans oriented. There are more advantages |
| to this group: First, the website is very active and the audience is |
| larger than the one I could expect on NetBeans itself. Second, there is |
| a team of French-speaking writers, so I am not alone anymore. I have |
| support for announcements, blogging, technical reviews, and more. <br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>NetBeans 6.0 will be released by the end of this year. How do you |
| think it’ll |
| be received by developers and the IDE market?</h4> |
| The focus of NetBeans 6.0 is mainly with the editor: tips, code |
| completion, code generator, inline refactoring, enhanced visual editor, |
| refactoring with Jackpot, etc. And thanks to that, the gap between |
| NetBeans's editor and those of other IDEs will be reduced. A lot of |
| people like Matisse, and they switched to NetBeans as a result. But |
| they continue to use another editor to edit their source code. |
| With NetBeans 6.0, I am pretty sure they will use the NetBeans |
| editor, and stop using other editors. And I think a lot of people will |
| join the NetBeans community when NetBeans |
| 6.0 is released.<br> |
| <br> |
| But I would like to say the following to the NetBeans team: Oh please, |
| oh please, do something for the edition of guarded block code. For |
| example, adding context around the text area instead of seeing an |
| empty text area. And also be sure that code completion will work |
| correctly in the guarded block code. <br> |
| <br> |
| Something else I see is the fact that a new book about development of |
| NetBeans modules will be published this year. I am pretty sure we will |
| see an explosure of NetBeans modules once the book will be available. |
| We are already |
| seeing more and more modules since the release of NetBeans 5.0. But I |
| expect more modules after the publishing of the book.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h4>Which is the sexier language: French or Java?</h4> |
| French. Because it's not a computer language; it's a human language. |
| And I prefer speaking to people than to computers.<br> |
| <br> |
| <div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(February |
| 2007)</span><br style="font-style: italic;"> |
| </div> |
| <h2>More Dream Team Profiles</h2> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-bien.html">Adam |
| Bien</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-bold.html">Emilian |
| Bold</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-chandler.html">Wade |
| Chandler</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-giudici.html">Fabrizio |
| Giudici</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-plewe.html">Joerg |
| Plewe</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-senger.html">Vinicius |
| Senger</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-silva.html">Edgar |
| Silva</a><br> |
| <a |
| href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-urrutia.html">Ibon |
| Urrutia</a><br> |
| <br> |
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