Microsoft's Visual Studio for Java development

But if you're new to Java, the first recommendation would be to learn it without using an IDE - just start with the tutorial http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

I'm not a Java newbie. I've done quite a lot of Java development over the years (text editor + ant), but not as much as C++.

My reason for asking about Visual Studio is:

(1) I've already paid M$ handsomely for it
(2) I'm already investing some time familiarising myself with it for the sake of C++, which is my main language.

Typically I develop C++ and Java apps on my Windows system and port them onto UN*X, which is where most of them get deployed.

If Visual Studio is good enough to manage .java files and MS's J# "Intellisense" works for proper Java (this is probably the deal maker/breaker) and I can build using ant from within it (I'm pretty sure I can), it is probably good enough environment  for me. Microsoft does a lot of things badly, but it does GUIs very well. I just wonder if its J# GUI is usable for Java development or if I'm on a hiding to nothing.

On a side note... I've just lit up Eclipse and found it painfully slow start-up on a 2GB 2.66GHz dual core PC (i.e. supposedly a quick PC). I know I haven't done justice to it, but I'm really not keen on having multiple IDEs, if I can help it.

I tried importing a relatively complicated Java application (> 100 .java modules and lots of 3rd party .jars) into VS as a J# project and none of you will be surprised to hear that trying to get it to build was frustrating. Intellisense was pretty good, but I could see that I couldn't get away from the fact that what I wanted wasn't .NET, and I could forget about debugging... so VS really is a non-starter.

On a brighter note, I created a new project in Eclipse based on my ant build.xml and... certainly the import took a long time, but it looks like it might be usable for my purposes. I was disappointed to see that it didn't read source version from the build file (but the right place to fix that was quick to find in the menus) and there were a load of classpath-related errors which don't appear when you build using ant without the IDE (which I therefore expect are wrong). It is a poor GUI experience compared with VS, but it is usable.

:-)

I'm about to ditch Eclipse until i'm running with at least 1Gb RAM

>> I've just lit up Eclipse and found it painfully slow start-up on a 2GB 2.66GHz dual core PC

Which version?

>> none of you will be surprised to hear that trying to get it to build was frustrating

It will be because J# libraries are different from Java and J# itself is different from Java (though there are similarities).

>> It is a poor GUI experience compared with VS, but it is usable

Trust me, Eclipse has many more features than VS has :) I've used both of them for several years and learnt how to respect Eclipse more than other IDEs (be it any language). You can run multiple applications using Eclipse for example and you get their outputs in multiple consoles (in VS, you can run only one solution at a time).  You can even run one in 'Run' mode and one in 'Debug' mode. I prefer Eclipse 3.1.2. It also builds all files the moment you save them and the amount of time it takes to build a project with 1000 files will be much lesser than what VS .NET 2005 takes to build 1000 files. Plus it also takes lesser time to load. There are several other easier code-generation tools which I have found in Eclipse to be better than VS - e.g., while adding a new class you can specify in the Wizard as to what the base-class and implemented interfaces will be, and you get all of them with skeletal code. You can right-click on a data member of a class and say Generate Getter and setter, and you can generate get/ set methods for all members - or select which ones you want, which ones you don't want through check-boxes. If you want to use a class, all you have to do is type its name and select it from the intellisense - its package is automatically imported. In VS, if I have not added a reference to the DLL, it won't even show up in the intellisense - forget about automatic import or 'using' in the source-code. Renaming packages and classes is too easy by the Refactor tool and it will allow you to rename all folders/ all code-references to it as well (in VS, if you rename a project you will land into troubles renaming folder names of the project, source bindings with VSS, etc) Maintaining build configurations is also more comprehensive.

It has a much bigger community of users and contributors due to the plugin architecture, so people keep developing plugins which are available at www.eclipseplugincentral.com - you have plug-ins for virtually everything - C, C++, web servers, web development, different source-control and configuration-management tools, opening word docs, checking e-mails - in short, you don't need any other software if you have Eclipse ;-)

What's more? For all of this, its free and open-source.

>> I'm about to ditch Eclipse until i'm running with at least 1Gb RAM

I use Eclipse 3.1.2 with 512 GB and never faced any issues - works like a charm. Netbeans gets angry, though, if I leave it open and unattended for a long time :)

>>I use Eclipse 3.1.2 with 512 GB

Well that's a fair amount of memory ;-)

Yes I meant you don't necessarily need 1 GB for it

You meant 512Mb ;-)

What OS, processor are you using?

Thanks for the comments, mayankeagle. You sold it to me, if such a thing is possible with free software :-)

My experiences today are with Eclipse 3.2.2 with my opulent 2GB of RAM. I'll spend some more time getting a feel for it. I must say that I found the handling of my complicated build.xml encouraging.

I keep forgetting what the free Java IDE is that's *not* written in Java but runs native - can either of you remind me?