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| <p><h1>Benefits of Collaboration, Competition Highlighted at NetBeans Day 2005</h1> |
| <div class="articledate" style="margin-left:0px;">Patrick Keegan, originally published |
| on java.sun.com, June 27, 2005</div> |
| |
| <p>Over 500 people packed the ballroom at the Argent Hotel on Sunday for the |
| second annual NetBeans Day. Attendees were treated to keynote addresses from |
| leading industry figures, demos of existing and upcoming features in the |
| NetBeans IDE and platform, and giveaways of the new <i>NetBeans IDE Field |
| Guide</i> (full disclosure: I am co-author of that book). |
| |
| <p>Sun Microsystems president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz, |
| Java language founder James Gosling, and Javalobby founder Rick Ross all |
| delivered keynote addresses. Hideya Kawahara and Paul Byrne provided a demo of |
| Project Looking Glass, which has a thriving developer community hosted on |
| java.net. |
| |
| <p>The speakers' emphasized the benefits of both collaboration and competition. |
| |
| <p>In his keynote address, Ross cited the role that the NetBeans IDE, in its |
| competition with other development tools, has played in strengthening the Java |
| community as a whole. "It's really amazing how much passion and loyalty people |
| have to their IDEs," Ross said. "That passionate interest in development tools |
| that programmers have creates fierce competition.... This competition has worked |
| incredibly well." Ross contrasted the situation of Java technology developers, |
| who can use multiple free IDEs that are constantly improving, with that of .NET |
| programmers, who are locked into one expensive tool. |
| |
| <p>Ross went on to "set the record straight" about perceived shortcomings of the |
| NetBeans platform and IDE compared to the Eclipse project, noting that the |
| NetBeans IDE has supported the development of rich-client applications and plug- |
| in modules for longer than Eclipse has even existed. |
| |
| <p>Ross further complimented the NetBeans IDE on making development easier and |
| helping newcomers succeed, saying that it accelerates a new developer's sense of |
| achievement. He concluded by urging developers to keep providing feedback to |
| push the IDE team to continue making improvements. |
| |
| <p>In his brief address, Schwartz emphasized the importance of collaboration and |
| community and the way that the NetBeans IDE project fits into that. Speaking |
| about how Sun's commitment to openness is part of the company culture, Schwartz |
| declared: "The cause of Sun is to eradicate the digital divide," not just |
| between rich and poor countries but also between communities of developers. |
| |
| <p>Schwartz then introduced Todd Fast, an engineer for Sun's Java Studio |
| Enterprise IDE, who provided a demo of developer collaboration features that |
| combine instant messaging and the ability for developers to work on files |
| simultaneously and see each other's changes as their colleagues type them. Fast |
| announced that these features, which are currently available in Java Studio |
| Enterprise technology, have been contributed to the NetBeans project. In |
| addition, Fast noted that APIs are already available for further enhancing these |
| features. He then demonstrated a voice-over-IP feature that another developer |
| recently contributed. |
| |
| <p>After the opening keynote addresses, NetBeans technology evangelists and |
| engineers provided demos of features in the recently released NetBeans IDE 4.1, |
| announcements and demos of upcoming features, and information on how to build |
| modules for the NetBeans platform. |
| |
| <p>Perhaps the best-received feature demo was that of Project Matisse, a new |
| incarnation of the IDE's visual editor for Swing technology-based applications |
| that includes the new "natural layout" and greatly simplifies user interface |
| (UI) design with improved visual feedback. Matisse is available in current |
| development builds of the NetBeans IDE and will likely be included in the next |
| release. |
| |
| <p>Speakers also gave presentations on the NetBeans Profiler, the NetBeans |
| Mobility Pack, JXTA, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java SE, formerly known |
| as J2EE) support in NetBeans IDE, and new and hidden editing features. In |
| addition, they provided demos of Java Studio Creator software and Java Studio |
| Enterprise software, which are Sun IDEs that are based on the NetBeans IDE. Most |
| of these features will also be covered in individual sessions throughout the |
| course of the 2005 JavaOne conference. |
| |
| <p>A panel of technology experts answered questions about the future in their |
| areas of expertise. |
| |
| <p>Graham Hamilton, the lead architect for the Java Platform, Standard Edition |
| (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE), spoke about the extreme care that his team |
| takes in adding language features to the JDK, even with the significant new |
| features that appeared in J2SE 5.0. He noted that release 6 (code name Mustang) |
| will contain no new Java language features. For release 7 (code name Dolphin), Hamilton and |
| his team are exploring ways of manipulating XML literals through Java technology |
| code. |
| |
| <p>Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) spoke of his interest in evolving support for |
| scripting languages such as Jython. He and Hamilton agreed that the Java |
| language is not the best for all problems and that they would like to develop |
| better multilanguage support. |
| |
| <p>Bill Shannon briefly spoke about the importance of annotations (introduced in |
| J2SE 5.0) that will greatly improve ease of development in the Java EE 5 |
| platform, which is currently under development. |
| |
| <p>Robert Brewin (architect for Sun Developer Tools) spoke about the need to |
| keep focusing on making tools easier to use. |
| |
| <p>At the end of the day, awards for community contribution were given to Rich |
| Unger, Vincent Brabant, Maxym Mykhalchuk, Bruno Souza, and Manfred Riem. |
| |
| |
| <p><h3>About the Author</h3> |
| |
| <p><a name="Keegan"><b>Patrick Keegan</b></a> has been writing technical |
| documentation for the NetBeans IDE for six years. He is coauthor of <i>NetBeans |
| IDE Field Guide</i>, which has just been published by Prentice Hall. He lives in |
| Prague, Czech Republic. |
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