src/content/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-plewe.html - netbeans-website-cleanup - Git at Google

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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>Joerg Plewe</h1>
 <a href="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/joerg-plewe.jpg"><img
  alt="Dream Team Member Joerg Plewe"
  src="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/joerg-plewe.jpg"
  style="border: 0px solid ; width: 298px; height: 240px;" align="left"
  hspace="10" vspace="5"></a>
 <h4>As a Speaker and a Blogger, what topics
 command your interest?
 </h4>
 Currently, I'm more of a blogger than a speaker. I blog on <a
  href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/herkules/">Java.net</a> primarily
 about desktop Java but also about general topics ranging from Ant
 techniques, OO databases and benchmarks, to flight simulators. When I
 get the opportunity to speak, I like to talk about my simulation
 project, <a href="http://www.flyingguns.com/">FlyingGuns</a>, which is
 a networked simulation framework with a World War One flight simulation
 action game as a demo. I had the great opportunity to discuss
 FlyingGuns at JavaOne 2003, and just recently at a local <a
  href="http://www.d-jug.de">Java users group</a> here in Germany.<br>
 <br>
 <h4>When was your introduction to NetBeans?</h4>
 That was a long time ago. I think I started with version 3.1 or
 so. Those days, I preferred it over JBuilder for reasons I cannot
 explain. I just liked the way NetBeans felt. I liked the approach of a
 filesystem that project files had to be 'mounted' on. This was known to
 be infamous and was removed with NetBeans 4.0, but well ... I liked it.
 Also in those days, free IDEs were not as common as today. The quality
 of NetBeans as a free tool back then was very impressive. It was one
 reason more to use and support it.<br>
 <br>
 <h4>How have you participated in the NetBeans Project?</h4>
 Basically, I
 haven't been a NetBeans "developer", I'm more of a user. I always try
 to give feedback about my experiences with NetBeans to help to make it
 better. I've filed issues since October 2001 for various (pre) releases
 of NetBeans in different areas: project system, UML, UI. I always
 enjoyed working with the daily builds and not missing out on the
 slightest improvement. The good thing about the NetBeans project is
 that these issues are really read by someone and acted on very quickly
 in many cases. I encourage people to take part—you really can have
 influence on the product! "Community driven" is not just a marketing
 slogan in the case of NetBeans.<br>
 <br>
 And I enjoyed talking with <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roumen/">Roman
 Strobl</a> about my feelings on NetBeans. We talked a lot about IDE
 usability, not so much about APIs or RCP concepts. <br>
 <br>
 <h4>What stands out for you in the evolution of NetBeans?</h4>
 NetBeans 5.0, with the broadening of the features set: Matisse,
 Profiler, Mobility, UML, etc. Each day, there's something new. For
 about a year,
 watching the incredible progress of NetBeans has been fun. So, there is
 no single feature that
 stands out for me but the speed of improvement.<br>
 <br>
 <h4>What are your goals as a member of the Dream Team?</h4>
 I'd like to evangelize NetBeans by demonstrating NetBeans usage in an
 unspectacular but believable way. <br>
 <br>
 <h4>But we like spectacular!<br>
 </h4>
 Here in Germany, where people are less enthusiastic than, for example,
 Americans, if we say, “Hey, look how cool NetBeans is!”, we quickly
 become suspected of being highly biased. That approach is the way Sun
 evangelists usually work. But the Dream Team has the chance to appear
 unbiased and hence more believable. We use NetBeans because we are
 convinced and not because we get paid for it. We are experienced
 professionals and not enthusiastic kids. Being too loud and spectacular
 could ruin that impression.<br>
 <br>
 As an example: in a former company, I developed a data binding
 framework and a GUI development process. This worked with any IDE, but
 together with Matisse it was a strong bundle. So I used NetBeans in
 presentations but didn't emphasize that fact by any means; I just
 showed its power with a real world problem. Doing this kind of "silent
 evangelism" very effectively avoids religious IDE discussions. That's a
 thing only people not paid by Sun can do. <br>
 <br>
 <h4>Do you plan to write articles, tutorials, and the like?</h4>
 I think writing articles and tutorials about NetBeans is a task for
 the full-time evangelists. The Dream Team should write articles about
 other
 things like real world projects thereby mentioning that NetBeans is the
 best and
 natural choice. This will increase believability and trust. <br>
 <br>
 One of my proposals is to create a project done by the Dream Team. For
 example, a mind-mapping tool connected to the IDE's features. The main
 focus should not be NetBeans itself but the tool that everybody might
 consider useful. The side benefit to NetBeans is that it will show how
 this can be done in the IDE. It's neither an article nor an tutorial,
 but a public development that appeals to a general interest. The first
 steps of this are available on a <a
  href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/DTMindMap">wiki</a>
 page. <br>
 <br>
 <h4>The Dream Team was selected over three months ago, what is the
 group up to?</h4>
 We are trying to constitute ourselves, to find our
 inner structure. The group consists of very different people with very
 different skills. So any topic can be discussed and an expert is
 available. This enables us to do projects like the one I mentioned
 above. For me, doing this project alone would be hard because my
 knowledge of module development or project integration might be
 missing. No problem with the team around me. Additionally, members of
 the NetBeans teams are on our mailing list and tracking our progress
 and are willing to support us.<br>
 <br>
 <h4>You're a flight pilot in your spare time. How long have you been
 doing that?</h4>
 Flying is a dream that I've had since my
 childhood but I didn't realize it until early 2000. I also tried
 finding an IT job in the aviation industry, but that's barely possible
 in the area I live. <br>
 <br>
 <h4>How did you use NetBeans to develop your flight simulation
 game,&nbsp; <a href="http://www.flyingguns.com">Flying
 Guns</a>?</h4>
 FlyingGuns (or DRTS – Distributed RealTime System) is not just a game,
 but also a fun demo for the simulation technology used to develop it:<br>
 <br>
 <li>HeadQuarter – Networking backbone, distribution framework<br>
 </li>
 <li>JXInput – Non-standard input devices like joysticks<br>
 </li>
 <li>JTrackIR – Headtracker for Java<br>
 </li>
 <li>Scene3D – High-level 3D engine abstraction<br>
 </li>
 <br>
 I started the project with a friend in 2002 being that I was both an
 aviation enthusiast and a technology geek. And of course I wanted to
 prove it could be done in Java, which was heavily doubted those days.
 First, we had in mind to sell either the technology or the game.
 Unfortunately, we couldn't find an appropriate customer, so we decided
 to open-source it in early 2004. Nevertheless, some subprojects have
 been
 used outside the actual game and the JXInput module even found its way
 in orbit on board of the International Space Station.<br>
 <br>
 <a
  href="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/flyingguns-screenshot-swing-ui.jpg">
 <div style="text-align: center;"> <img alt=""
  src="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/flyingguns-screenshot-swing-ui.jpg"
  style="width: 578px; height: 432px;"><br>
 <span style="font-style: italic;">(Click on image for larger view.)</span>
 </div>
 </a><br>
 <br>
 Today, FlyingGuns is my personal pet project. The components are still
 free (BSD license) and everybody is invited either to use it or join me
 as a developer. <br>
 <br>
 I used some NetBeans 3.x in the beginning and felt very comfortable
 with
 it. The introduction of NetBeans 4.0 with the new Ant based project
 structure brought me short of switching to another IDE. FlyingGuns was
 just too hard to build because it consists of many subprojects in a
 deeply nested structure. With 3.x, I could just mount all the folders
 and the project was set up. For 4.0, I had to edit and maintain a lot
 of dependencies in so many places. The most severe constraint was that
 NetBeans 4.0 only allowed a single source directory per project, which
 tripled the number of projects I had to maintain. But the situation
 relaxed with NetBeans 4.1 opening for multiple source directories. With
 NetBeans 5.0 and its increased number of features, for example,
 Matisse, Profiler, ant debugger and so on, using NetBeans was pure fun
 again. Today, I'm considering dropping my own ant build structure in
 favor of the common NetBean ant project files. They are just better. I
 wish some of the features, like JNLP generation, appeared earlier to
 save me a lot of work. <br>
 <br>
 One of the coming subprojects of FlyingGuns will be the scenario
 editor. For the project to always try to stay close to Java standards
 (Java3D, Swing, javac, ant, etc.), NetBean RCP will be the choice.<br>
 <br>
 <h4>Compared to French, Chinese, Brazilian users of
 NetBeans, German users seem quiet. Why is this?<br>
 </h4>
 I totally agree. NetBeans is not that visible in Germany, but I don't
 know
 the reason exactly. Other IDEs are very strong here. This confuses me a
 bit,
 because German developers don't even require a localized version—they
 prefer the original English versions (in contrast to France I think).<br>
 <br>
 One reason might be that NetBeans had the reputation of being slow, and
 reputations, especially bad ones, last very long here. Whenever I point
 other developers I know towards a new release of NetBeans they admit
 that NetBeans has improved a lot. But they just don't care for J2EE
 integration or web support that much. The main thing they work with is
 the editor where NetBeans is still a little bit behind. Matisse has
 been the only feature where they really thought using NetBeans is
 great!&nbsp; <br>
 <br>
 <h4>Will you lobby to get a NetBeans Day event in Germany?</h4>
 Absolutely. NetBeans is not that strong here which means the room for
 improvement is very big. :) I'd connect it to a
 popular conference like <a href="http://jax.de/">JAX</a>.<br>
 <div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(April
 2007)</span><br>
 </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-brabant.html">Vincent
 Brabant</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
 Giudic</a><br>
 <a
  href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-senger.html">Vinicius
 Senger</a><a
  href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-giudici.html">i</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>
 </body>
 </html>
	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
	<html>
	<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../../netbeans.css"
	media="screen">
	<meta name="author" content="Tinuola Awopetu">
	<meta name="keywords"
	content="NetBeans IDE, NetBeans Platform, NetBeans Dream Team, Flying Guns, Joerg Plewe">
	<title>NetBeans Dream Team Interview: Joerg Plewe</title>
	</head>
	<body>
	<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>Joerg Plewe</h1>
	<a href="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/joerg-plewe.jpg"><img
	alt="Dream Team Member Joerg Plewe"
	src="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/joerg-plewe.jpg"
	style="border: 0px solid ; width: 298px; height: 240px;" align="left"
	hspace="10" vspace="5"></a>
	<h4>As a Speaker and a Blogger, what topics
	command your interest?
	</h4>
	Currently, I'm more of a blogger than a speaker. I blog on <a
	href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/herkules/">Java.net</a> primarily
	about desktop Java but also about general topics ranging from Ant
	techniques, OO databases and benchmarks, to flight simulators. When I
	get the opportunity to speak, I like to talk about my simulation
	project, <a href="http://www.flyingguns.com/">FlyingGuns</a>, which is
	a networked simulation framework with a World War One flight simulation
	action game as a demo. I had the great opportunity to discuss
	FlyingGuns at JavaOne 2003, and just recently at a local <a
	href="http://www.d-jug.de">Java users group</a> here in Germany.<br>
	<br>
	<h4>When was your introduction to NetBeans?</h4>
	That was a long time ago. I think I started with version 3.1 or
	so. Those days, I preferred it over JBuilder for reasons I cannot
	explain. I just liked the way NetBeans felt. I liked the approach of a
	filesystem that project files had to be 'mounted' on. This was known to
	be infamous and was removed with NetBeans 4.0, but well ... I liked it.
	Also in those days, free IDEs were not as common as today. The quality
	of NetBeans as a free tool back then was very impressive. It was one
	reason more to use and support it.<br>
	<br>
	<h4>How have you participated in the NetBeans Project?</h4>
	Basically, I
	haven't been a NetBeans "developer", I'm more of a user. I always try
	to give feedback about my experiences with NetBeans to help to make it
	better. I've filed issues since October 2001 for various (pre) releases
	of NetBeans in different areas: project system, UML, UI. I always
	enjoyed working with the daily builds and not missing out on the
	slightest improvement. The good thing about the NetBeans project is
	that these issues are really read by someone and acted on very quickly
	in many cases. I encourage people to take part—you really can have
	influence on the product! "Community driven" is not just a marketing
	slogan in the case of NetBeans.<br>
	<br>
	And I enjoyed talking with <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roumen/">Roman
	Strobl</a> about my feelings on NetBeans. We talked a lot about IDE
	usability, not so much about APIs or RCP concepts. <br>
	<br>
	<h4>What stands out for you in the evolution of NetBeans?</h4>
	NetBeans 5.0, with the broadening of the features set: Matisse,
	Profiler, Mobility, UML, etc. Each day, there's something new. For
	about a year,
	watching the incredible progress of NetBeans has been fun. So, there is
	no single feature that
	stands out for me but the speed of improvement.<br>
	<br>
	<h4>What are your goals as a member of the Dream Team?</h4>
	I'd like to evangelize NetBeans by demonstrating NetBeans usage in an
	unspectacular but believable way. <br>
	<br>
	<h4>But we like spectacular!<br>
	</h4>
	Here in Germany, where people are less enthusiastic than, for example,
	Americans, if we say, “Hey, look how cool NetBeans is!”, we quickly
	become suspected of being highly biased. That approach is the way Sun
	evangelists usually work. But the Dream Team has the chance to appear
	unbiased and hence more believable. We use NetBeans because we are
	convinced and not because we get paid for it. We are experienced
	professionals and not enthusiastic kids. Being too loud and spectacular
	could ruin that impression.<br>
	<br>
	As an example: in a former company, I developed a data binding
	framework and a GUI development process. This worked with any IDE, but
	together with Matisse it was a strong bundle. So I used NetBeans in
	presentations but didn't emphasize that fact by any means; I just
	showed its power with a real world problem. Doing this kind of "silent
	evangelism" very effectively avoids religious IDE discussions. That's a
	thing only people not paid by Sun can do. <br>
	<br>
	<h4>Do you plan to write articles, tutorials, and the like?</h4>
	I think writing articles and tutorials about NetBeans is a task for
	the full-time evangelists. The Dream Team should write articles about
	other
	things like real world projects thereby mentioning that NetBeans is the
	best and
	natural choice. This will increase believability and trust. <br>
	<br>
	One of my proposals is to create a project done by the Dream Team. For
	example, a mind-mapping tool connected to the IDE's features. The main
	focus should not be NetBeans itself but the tool that everybody might
	consider useful. The side benefit to NetBeans is that it will show how
	this can be done in the IDE. It's neither an article nor an tutorial,
	but a public development that appeals to a general interest. The first
	steps of this are available on a <a
	href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/DTMindMap">wiki</a>
	page. <br>
	<br>
	<h4>The Dream Team was selected over three months ago, what is the
	group up to?</h4>
	We are trying to constitute ourselves, to find our
	inner structure. The group consists of very different people with very
	different skills. So any topic can be discussed and an expert is
	available. This enables us to do projects like the one I mentioned
	above. For me, doing this project alone would be hard because my
	knowledge of module development or project integration might be
	missing. No problem with the team around me. Additionally, members of
	the NetBeans teams are on our mailing list and tracking our progress
	and are willing to support us.<br>
	<br>
	<h4>You're a flight pilot in your spare time. How long have you been
	doing that?</h4>
	Flying is a dream that I've had since my
	childhood but I didn't realize it until early 2000. I also tried
	finding an IT job in the aviation industry, but that's barely possible
	in the area I live. <br>
	<br>
	<h4>How did you use NetBeans to develop your flight simulation
	game,  <a href="http://www.flyingguns.com">Flying
	Guns</a>?</h4>
	FlyingGuns (or DRTS – Distributed RealTime System) is not just a game,
	but also a fun demo for the simulation technology used to develop it:<br>
	<br>
	<li>HeadQuarter – Networking backbone, distribution framework<br>
	</li>
	<li>JXInput – Non-standard input devices like joysticks<br>
	</li>
	<li>JTrackIR – Headtracker for Java<br>
	</li>
	<li>Scene3D – High-level 3D engine abstraction<br>
	</li>
	<br>
	I started the project with a friend in 2002 being that I was both an
	aviation enthusiast and a technology geek. And of course I wanted to
	prove it could be done in Java, which was heavily doubted those days.
	First, we had in mind to sell either the technology or the game.
	Unfortunately, we couldn't find an appropriate customer, so we decided
	to open-source it in early 2004. Nevertheless, some subprojects have
	been
	used outside the actual game and the JXInput module even found its way
	in orbit on board of the International Space Station.<br>
	<br>
	<a
	href="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/flyingguns-screenshot-swing-ui.jpg">
	<div style="text-align: center;"> <img alt=""
	src="../../../images_www/articles/dreamteam/flyingguns-screenshot-swing-ui.jpg"
	style="width: 578px; height: 432px;"><br>
	<span style="font-style: italic;">(Click on image for larger view.)</span>
	</div>
	</a><br>
	<br>
	Today, FlyingGuns is my personal pet project. The components are still
	free (BSD license) and everybody is invited either to use it or join me
	as a developer. <br>
	<br>
	I used some NetBeans 3.x in the beginning and felt very comfortable
	with
	it. The introduction of NetBeans 4.0 with the new Ant based project
	structure brought me short of switching to another IDE. FlyingGuns was
	just too hard to build because it consists of many subprojects in a
	deeply nested structure. With 3.x, I could just mount all the folders
	and the project was set up. For 4.0, I had to edit and maintain a lot
	of dependencies in so many places. The most severe constraint was that
	NetBeans 4.0 only allowed a single source directory per project, which
	tripled the number of projects I had to maintain. But the situation
	relaxed with NetBeans 4.1 opening for multiple source directories. With
	NetBeans 5.0 and its increased number of features, for example,
	Matisse, Profiler, ant debugger and so on, using NetBeans was pure fun
	again. Today, I'm considering dropping my own ant build structure in
	favor of the common NetBean ant project files. They are just better. I
	wish some of the features, like JNLP generation, appeared earlier to
	save me a lot of work. <br>
	<br>
	One of the coming subprojects of FlyingGuns will be the scenario
	editor. For the project to always try to stay close to Java standards
	(Java3D, Swing, javac, ant, etc.), NetBean RCP will be the choice.<br>
	<br>
	<h4>Compared to French, Chinese, Brazilian users of
	NetBeans, German users seem quiet. Why is this?<br>
	</h4>
	I totally agree. NetBeans is not that visible in Germany, but I don't
	know
	the reason exactly. Other IDEs are very strong here. This confuses me a
	bit,
	because German developers don't even require a localized version—they
	prefer the original English versions (in contrast to France I think).<br>
	<br>
	One reason might be that NetBeans had the reputation of being slow, and
	reputations, especially bad ones, last very long here. Whenever I point
	other developers I know towards a new release of NetBeans they admit
	that NetBeans has improved a lot. But they just don't care for J2EE
	integration or web support that much. The main thing they work with is
	the editor where NetBeans is still a little bit behind. Matisse has
	been the only feature where they really thought using NetBeans is
	great!  <br>
	<br>
	<h4>Will you lobby to get a NetBeans Day event in Germany?</h4>
	Absolutely. NetBeans is not that strong here which means the room for
	improvement is very big. :) I'd connect it to a
	popular conference like <a href="http://jax.de/">JAX</a>.<br>
	<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(April
	2007)</span><br>
	</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-brabant.html">Vincent
	Brabant</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
	Giudic</a><br>
	<a
	href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-senger.html">Vinicius
	Senger</a><a
	href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/interviews/dreamprofile-giudici.html">i</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>
	</body>
	</html>