Vincent Brabant's Blog

Community: NetBeans Archives

Reaction about the Charles Ditzel Interview

Sun Developer Network published an interessting interview of Charles Ditzel. But I wanted to react on some part.

We also occasionally hear that the layout manager, GroupLayout, which the NetBeans IDE GUI Builder uses to create its great user interfaces (UIs), causes some sort of lock-in or is proprietary. It's in JDK 6 and included as a library for use in JDK 5.0 and 1.4. As you can see, it's neither a lock-in nor proprietary.

He is right by saying that you have no lock-in nor proprietary. But at run-time only. Because at development time, you are locked with NetBeans, and his famous .form file.

When that will be fixed. When the GUI editor of NetBeans will be able to edit any java source file WITHOUT needs of a proprietary .form file, then, only then, you could say that there is no lock-in.

what I would like to see in a next version of NetBeans

NetBeans 5.0 Flash Tutorials in French

When the béta of NetBeans 5.0 has been available, I decide to write somes nice Flash tutorials for NetBeans 5.0.

But they are, today, only available in french.

You can find them on developpez.com, a high quality french website.

developpez.com is hosting a lot of forums (and specially a recently new netbeans forum) concerning development, tutorials, blogs, FAQ, Sources, ...

You can also find other flash tutorials written for NetBeans 4.1 but that are always up to date for NetBeans 5.0. By example, the ErrorStripe flash demo, or How to spare workspace

Hope you will enjoy those flash tutorials.

If you are interested by the tool I use to write such demos, just to say that I am using Wink therefore.
And I have to mention that Wink is free, even for a commercial usage.
Many thanks to Wink development team for such a good product.

Brabant Vincent
My French WebSite
My French Blog

Thank You NetBeans !!!!

Today, I received my award that was given by James Gosling at the NetBeans Day preceding JavaOne 2005.

As you can see in the picture, the award was signed by three peoples.

On the right, I can recognize the signature of James Gosling.
But I have no idea about the two other signatures.
If you could help me to identify the two others signatures, I will be very happy.

I just would like to say that this award would not be mine, but the one of the NetBeans Team, that continues to enhance NetBeans and to give us a very powerful IDE, for free, and open sourced.

NetBeans IDE 4.1 Flash tutorials

Today, I submitted 3 new flash tutorials to the NetBeans website.

Thoses tutorials were existing in the past, but exclusively for the french community. Except one I posted here in the past, as a snap preview.

I decided to translate them in english and to submit them to the NetBeans website.

• How to have more workspace ?
• How to navigate through Sources and Views ?
• How to install Modules via the Update Center ?

Enjoy them

Other tutorials would be available during the next weeks. Stay stuned.

French version of those demos (and other ones) are also available

I am now a Sun Certified Programmer for the J2SE 5.0

Hurrah, Youppie, Yes, Great, ..

Today, I received my Examination Score Report where it's indicated that I am now a Sun Certified J2SE 5.0 Programmer.

I passed the exam the 1st February 2005.

Normally, we know directly, at the end of the exam, if we success or not, if we are certified or not.

But, in this case, it was not the case. I had to wait until today to know my results.

And I am now a Sun Certified Programmer for the J2SE 5.0.

But, IMHO, I would have failed.

I will explain you reasons why I have the status only today.
And why I would have failed.

Once upon a time, somewhere in Octobre 2004, I went to
a book festival in Brussels.
And I bought some Java Certification books for less than 5€.

# Mike Meyers' Java 2 Certification Passport (Exam 310-025)
# Sun Certification Training Guide (CS-310-025 & CX-310-027): Java 2 Programmer and Developer Exams, Second Edition

I was thinking that, for that price, it was always a good buy.

But I never look at them, until the 15 Decembre 2004, when Evelyn Cartagena, of Sun, posted this message: a call for candidates for the Programmer 5.0 Beta Certification Exam.

she said

Candidates will have four to five (4-5) hours to complete 138 questions. The time allotted should give you time to respond to all questions and provide your valuable comments while taking the exam.

After reflexion, I though it was a good opportunity. And for that price (in Belgium, it was only 40€), if I failed, it was not like I spend 150$.
It's always good to know about your knowledge level for your daily computer language. So, I decided to subscribe and start studying.

But the problem was the following: Objectives were not yet available. So, what to study?

I started with the great O'reilly book Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook. And I played with all examples of that book by using NetBeans 4.0. It was very useful because NetBeans 4.0 was already supporting the new JDK 5 language features.

I continued to study with the JDK 5, reading a nice French article of Lionel Roux (available on developpez.com), and by reading the draft of the third edition of the JLS (Java Language Specification), that was available at that url
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/java_language-3_0-mr-spec.zip.

(Please note that you can now freely download the PDF file. It is available at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/ ).

By reading those books, I learned a lot of things I didn't know about, before.
To be sure that I studied all new API of the J2SE 5, I also used a nice tool, called JDiff, that permits to see you on line the difference between J2SE 1.4.2 and 1.5.0.
So, I discovered that I had a lot of things to study.

What I forgot, and it was mentionned in the call of 15 Decembre, was that they posted, the 20 Decembre, objectives of the exam.

So, I was able to enhance my preparation. But the date of 1st February was there.

Continue Reading...

NetBeans Workshop in Luxembourg and Belgium

This week, Sun Belux invites me to a Technical Workshop, to celebrate the launch of NetBeans IDE 4.1.

They organized a Technical workshop on May 25 (Luxembourg) and May 26 (Belgium).

In the mail it was said

Please feel free to forward this invitation to your colleagues.

Because we are belonging to the same community, I can consider you as my colleagues.

More details and registration on the following page:

http://be.sun.com/nblaunch

P.S. It's possible to win a trip to JavaOne.

I hope to meet somes of you.

Vincent

NetBeans IDE 4.2 adopt a new graphic chart

UPDATE: It seems that they decided to use that new look and feel for NetBeans 4.1RC1.

NetBeans EDI 4.1 is not yet released that they are already preparing the NetBeans EDI 4.2. And, therefore, it seems they are reviewing the colormap and changing their logo.

Please discover what you can see now when you download the last daily build of the NetBeans IDE 4.2.

How do you like it?

What I would like to see in NetBeans 4.2 !!!

In his blog, Ludovic Champenois, one of the lead enginners on the J2EE functionality in NetBeans, asked what we (NetBeans's users) would like to see in NetBeans 4.2 or even NetBeans 5.0.

So, hereafter is my wish list:

• Enhancements
  • Please look at all issues marked as Enhancement/Feature in Issuezilla of NetBeans. And say to the reporter if it's accepted or rejected.
  • Enhance the Form Editor to support new layout introduced in Tiger but also new JGoodies.
  • Enhance the Code Formatter
  • Enhance the Refactoring (we have not yet the basics (Extract Method, by example)
  • Add all features of Tasklist modules (with display of PMD result, and proposal of suggestions ...)
  • Have capability to create our own Ant based project, or to modify a existing one. (Why I have to always do the same modification _add a new target that generate PMD, Checkstyle, and Findbugs report_ in each Ant script I created in NetBeans ? It could be simpler if I have possibility to modify the Ant script that will be generated like I can modify existing templates for classes, ...
  • Add UML Support with Reverse Engineering (Be able to create UML class diagram based upon your sources, or be able to generate a sequence diagram based upon the method you selected)
  • Enhance support of Annotation (@Interface), to facilite generation of new java source or directly bytecode.
  • Enhance the Metric Module to have nice graphics and more metrics.
  • Fix the SCAN problem each time we start NetBeans.
• Add Support for
• Maven as Project Manager.
• TestNG as Unit Testing.
• Hibernate
• Struts
• Spring
• JBoss / WebSphere deployement
• AOP
• Reverse Engineering of Unit Tests: Based upon a TestCase I created, the skeletton of the Class to test is generated.
• Transform the SJSC (Sun Java Studio Creator, aka Rave) into a NetBeans Module. So I will not be obliged to use two tools based upon the same core (the netbeans platform) for my web development and always be obliged to switch to the other one.
• The main enhancement that must be done is to give a better documentation and facilitate the creation of modules for NetBeans.

When I compare the number of modules created for Eclipse and the number of modules created for NetBeans, I conclude that creation of a module for Eclipse seems simpler than creation of a module for NetBeans. If you do no enhancements in that domain, you will never be able to eclipse eclipse.

Success for NetBeans 4.1.

Vincent

Javapolis 2004 Day 4: NetBeans 4.0 and Beyond

NetBeans really rocks.
As many of you know, I am a long-time user of NetBeans, now. Already 4 years now that I am using NetBeans. Already 8 months that I was playing with the alpha, beta, RC1, RC2 of NetBeans 4.0.

And yesterday, it was a big day:
The official announcement of the NetBeans 4.0 release.
The first time I met a NetBeans developer, after 4 years exchanging mails about NetBeans.

When Tim began his presentation, he asked how many people in the audience already used NetBeans. And, if I remember well, a large majority of the audience were people that never used NetBeans.

But I am pretty sure that Tim convince them to try it.

He showed how nice was supported the JDK 5.0, and how powerful is the Ant driven projects.

Also how JUNIT is really well integrated in the development of the workflow.

What was bluffing is when he creates a new project in netBeans to compile and run JEdit. How easy it was. Really amazing.
He justs indicate that he wanted to create a project with an existing
Ant script, indicate where the ant script is. If the build.xml follows Ant best practices, NetBeans does by itself the mapping between the actions in the IDE and the target in the Ant Build Script.

He also showed the J2ME support, and how easy it is to develop midlet application and how easy it is to test your application under different portable emulators.

He also announced that you will be able to debug your midlet application that run directly on your mobile.

Another very interresting part of the presentation was the one of JFluid. Personally, it was the first time I saw it running. And it is a very powerfull tool. You can really tuning your piece of code without decrease the performances of all the application.

That demo really convince me that I did the good choice when I adopted NetBeans 4 years ago.

Javapolis Day 3: Tim Bray

He spoked about Java. But not about the Java Language itself. No. About the Java Virtual Machine.
He explained that dynamic language like Perl, Python could accelerate the development, and also be robust.

Then, he speak about Jython, that is running upon the Java Virtual Machine and could easily be connected with all the current Java APIs.

So, could you imagine the advantage of a dynamic language like Jython or Groovy, having the possibility to use the huge number of java Apis ?

He also showed that responsible of JDK 1.6 (sorry, JDK 6.0) meeted people of Jython and that we will certainly see somes modification in the Byte Code of the JVM to facilitate usage of dynamic language as Jython.

He finished his keynote by showing the new recently version of NetBeans 4.0 and encourage people to download it and play with it.

I can also encourage you to look at it.

What do you think about support of other language on the JVM ?
Do you agree that somes modifications are necessary in the Byte Code to facilitate support of other language ?
Please tell me your thinking

Javapolis 2004 University Day 1: JDK 5.0 In Action

Firstly, I was amazed that they were using a Apple portable. Reason why I was amazed is that JDK 5.0 is not yet available for Apple's PC.

I was thinking how they will show JDK 5.0 in action with a portable running under Apple Mac OS X.

But in fact, it was only presentation of slides. So, in fact no "JDK 5.0 in Action".

The first part of the presentation was the most interresting. The reason was that second part of the presentation was exactly the same as the one given by Neal Gafter at Javapolis 2003 ( JSR-176: Forthcoming Java Programming Language Features by Neal Gafter [ Sun Microsystems ]).

I really think that Javapolis people would avoid to organize two times the same presentation.

The best part of the JDK 5.0 in action was when they show a very simple but complete test framework that run every methods of a class having a @test annotation and indicating how much methods failed or success. I am curious to see presentation of TestNG to know if it's based upon the same principle.

What I also liked was the fact that Joshua Bloch, working now for Google, speaked about NetBeans and encourage people to install it.

As a netBeans Community Member, I can also encourage you to download the release 4.0 of NetBeans (would be available this week) and play with it. I am pretty sure you will like the fact that netbeans projects are now ant-driven.

By the way, impossible to know what they are doing at Google. :-(

NetBeans @ Javapolis

Edition 2004 of javapolis will start the 13 of decembre.

Last year, Sun did a presentation of Rave (Sun Java Studio Creator).
This year, Tim Boudreau will do a presentation of NetBeans 4.0 ( that would be out for the javapolis event) but also explain us what we can expect from the future versions of NetBeans.

I will certainly blog here my impression of each session I will follow. And I also hope to meet you at the Bof session concerning NetBeans the 14 December at 7pm local time.

Why do we need more that one source directory for one project ?

Dear all,

Did you remember one of my blog concerning the usage of Ant to manage project ?

It seems that Netbeans people read my blog and will use Ant-Driven Project in next release of NetBeans. I really think it will be a plus.

But the really good new is that they success to hide the fact that their new notion of project is managed by Ant script. You really can ignore the fact.

But, comparing to old way of work, they introduced somes limitations.

For example, Imagine the following structure

Project
|-- src
| |-- org
| | |-- netbeans
| | | |-- MyClass.java
|-- build
| |-- classes
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- MyClass.class
|--doc
| |-- api
|-- test
| |-- org
| |-- netbeans
| | |-- MyClassTest.java
|-- database
| |-- org
| |-- netbeans
| | |-- database
| | | |-- CreateMyTable.sqlj
|-- resources
| |-- dev
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- itt
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- uat
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties
| |-- prd
| | |-- org
| | | |-- netbeans
| | | | |-- config.properties


When I am running on my PC the MyClass.java, I am using the src and resources/dev as source directories. Everything that are in the sources directories will be in the jar file.

Also, I like to keep somes classes in a totally separate directory, because they are special classes,

• like classes that use JNI.
• like classes that need to be "precompiled" by xdoclet, for example
• like sqlj classes that need the sqlj precompiler

Also, when I have to write somes tests for my web project, I like to have a directory containing HTTPUnit tests and another directory for JUNIT tests.

Both are tests for the same project, but having not the same purpose

But now, they decided to add the following constraints one source directory for one project. (if we ignore the fact that your tests are in a separate directory).

But, personally, I liked to have more than one source directory in the same project.

I really don't want to create a project, only for somes classes.

The problem is that I have no solid arguments to really have more than one source directory in the same project.

That's the reason I need your help.

If you are using more than one source directory in your project, could you post here the reason why.

If you are never using more than one source directory in your project, could you also teach me how to change my way of building a project ? Brabant Vincent

NetBeans at FOSDEM

The 21 and 22 February, in brussel, belgium, were organized the fourth session of FOSDEM.

Ian Formanek, of NetBeans, had two sessions planned for FOSDEM 2004.

During his talk, Ian did a presentation of new features integrated into NetBeans IDE 3.6 Beta but also, and that was a sneak preview, features integrated into NetBeans IDE 4.0.

Especially the Ant Based Project Management System.

Normally, I would be there, but it was finally not possible for me to be present. So, if you were in the audience, can you give me your comments, and say me what you think about NB4.0 and the Ant Based Project Management System.

Thanks a lot.

Brabant Vincent

Will the future release 3.6 permit to NetBeans to stay in the race or is it too late ?

NetBeans team announced some weeks ago the near future of NetBeans. Already last month it was possible to test the new window systems integrated in the trunk release.

Very nice result. You can

• Drag & Drop windows, Tabulations, as you want.
• maximize the editor,
• change order of tabulation, ...
• see if the method is well an overriding method
• manage tasklist

A lot of nice and very useful enhancements have been done.

But I would like to know if it's too late for netBeans or not.

I can affirm that it existed before Eclipse and that it exists after Eclipse.

Now, the competition is harder than before. Users can choose between good, open source IDEs, even pay a little to have IDE like IDEALJ.

NetBeans must reply to attacks from Eclipse to survive.

Recently, announcement was done that NetBeans is delivered with a new window system. And I think personally, that it's a success. NetBeans seems now to be faster than before, not as ugly than before, even with the Metal Look & Feel.

But I had a question in my head: Is it too late ?

I think that no. It's not too late.

NetBeans is really a good product and has nice features that others don't yet have. Just some details that make the difference. That's why we continue to use it. The major problem, is that you need to know keyboard shortcuts to use those functions. Some very nice functions are only available via keyboard shortcuts, but never by mouse or in the menus.

How many people, when using a graphical IDE, are reading the keyboard shortcuts help section to know the features integrated in a product ? Not so many. And that's why NetBeans can be seen as a poor IDE. But, if you take time to learn it, you will discover all advantages of thoses features.

The big problem with NetBeans is the noise. Nobody speak about NetBeans. But everyone talks about Eclipse. At Javapolis, there were stands of Sun, Novell, Compuware, Bea, TeamStudio, hp. Sun was promoting the Java Desktop, Novell was promoting the exteNd Compuware was promoting their MDA Driven IDE, OptimalJ. Bea was promoting weblogic, TeamStudio was promoting his Java suite

• Sun develop Java Studio and Java Studio Creator (Rave) on top of the NetBeans IDE
• Novell use the netbeans IDE for exteNd (read Sprout 9, the monthly newsletter of NetBeans
• Compuware developped OptimalJ on top of the netbeans IDE
• TeamStudio has modules for NetBeans
• Hp maintains the OpenVMS version of NetBeans
• Even BEA is developping a marketing tool by using NetBeans platform

And a lot of other companies are using netbeans modules, like the MDR module, used by a UML tool

And not one of those four companies, even Sun, at their stand, did even a little advertizing for NetBeans. Totally Incredible.

But do you know how exactly powerful is NetBeans ?

just look at the photoalbum demo to discover it then.

Also don't forget that behind the name NetBeans, you have two products: the platform and the IDE.

• the NetBeans platform can be used as base to build any application you want.
• the NetBeans IDE can be used as base to develop any IDE you want.

So when I see the pre-alpha release of NetBeans 3.6, and when I see the features that NB4.0 will have. I am confident that NetBeans is always in the race to be one of the best Java IDEs, if not the best one.

So, please, take time to look at the future NB3.6 release. Look at the new features. Try it by yourself !!!

I saw the new Java Studio Creator in action (codename: Rave) at BEJUG

I missed the one concerning OptimalJ (based upon netBeans) of Compuware, because it was at the same moment of the conference concerning JSF, presented by Craig R. McClanahan.

But At the end of this afternoon, I followed the conference given by Robert Brewin, the Architecht for the Corporate Developer tools organization, at Sun, concerning the project Rave.

Robert begins by explaining that people needed a visual tool, where you can build your application visually, but where you can also modify the source code freely, if you want. He explained that people want to be able to develop application that are not vendor dependent, but that are based upon (future) java standards, like JSP, JSF, ROWSETS, ... and can be deployed easily on any server.

He introduced the planning of Rave, by saying that Rave 1.0 would permits visual development of JSP/JSF applications.

He also said that Rave 2.0 will permits visual development of rich (Swing) client applications.

He demonstrates how to visually build a little web application having two JSP pages, with somes elements therein (a listbox and a table on the first page, a table on the second page).

It was amazing: You drop a JSF Table element in the JSP page. Then you drop the table of your database in that JSF Table element and it customize automaticaly the rows with data format of your database table.

Then, you can click on the table, and construct visually your select, (like within MS ACCESS) and saying which column must be displayed. The table displayed in your JSP is then updated to display only selected column.

You have also the possibility to build visually the workflow of your application. You see then little representation of your jsp page with clickable elements. When I click on the button, I can then link it to an empty place, outside of the jsp page, and automatically, it created a second JPS page and then he could give a name to the link, ... p>You have the notion of palettes, where you can pick amongs JSF composants, ... Also amongs little piece of code, contained in the palette of clips. Just Drag and drop from youe editor to add the selected code into clips paletter, to be able to copy it later in another editor.

It was running like a charme. You really had no impression that it was an heavy application, at any moment

Somes people in the audience really enjoyed this demo. And I was happy to constat it because I knowed that it was builded upon the netbeans platform.

But (there is always a BUT), I was also very surprised with the followings :

1. I could see therein the new windows manager just introduced in the trunk release of netbeans (the pre-version of NB3.6 planned for Q1/2004) (Robert said that Rave was based upon NetBeans 3.4)
2. The recently enhanced propertties editor introduced recently in NetBeans is also integrated in Rave.
3. Rave integrate the notion of projects. Or that has been dropped from the NB4.0 planning.

The two first constatations lets me perplex, because, if you read newsgroup of NetBeans, you really have impression that it has been developped from scratch by netBeans developpers, and never I read that it was Rave code given back to the netBeans community.

At the end of the presentation, we had possibilities to ask questions:

someone starter by asking if Rave was based upon Eclipse or NetBeans. And when Robert said that it was builded upon NetBeans, it was really like he was a liar. Nobody trusted him. That application, that seems so nice, so beautifull, so well-responding can't be based upon the ugly, and slowly appication that is NetBeans. That is impossible.

It shows that Sun AND the netBeans community must do effort to fight against the problem of allergy that java developers encounter when they ear about NetBeans.

Another guy also aked him then, if it was a swing application. And when Robert said that yes, a new astonishment occurs in the audience. Can a Swing application be nice ?

It really seems that everyone in the audience was disappointed that it was not based upon eclipse. During the demo, the excitation of audience was growing, and it dropped rapidly when Robert said that it bas based upon NetBeans.

Then someone asked for the price. After a (long) moment of hesitation, Robert speaked about the price of MS Products and finally said that price of Rave would be lower than 400$,.

After the presentation, I had the occasion to speak with him. And I asked if the netBeans Community will have back developments done in the rave application.

He said that every enhancements/modifications of the netbeans IDE code will be given back to the netbeans community, because they are obliged to do that to respect the Sun Public Licence. But ONLY enhancements, NOT new features, like the visual jsp editor. By saying that they were obliged to give it back to the netbeans community, Robert seems very annoyed like if he prefered that Rave product stay a closed source product.

I also asked if Rave 2.0 will use the form editor of netbeans, but he said no. The Form editor is too limited for what they want to do for Rave 2.0. Will Rave 2.0 have a two way editor ? Will it be given back to the netbeans community ?We have to wait until next year to know what it will happens.

My Conclusion

Rave (Sun Java Studio Creator) seems to be a very good product. I can only congratulates Rave Developers team (it seems it's not the same as the netbeans one) for the nice product they produce. But a demo is always just a demo. So wait and see.

But, now the java product line of Sun is really not clear. Sun handle three products based upon the netbeans plaform :

• the NetBeans IDE that has been clearly oriented as a Java IDE
• the Sun Java Studio (aka Sun ONE Studio (aka Forté For Java))
• the Sun Java Studio Creator (aka Rave)

I want an IDE that manage his projects by using Ant !

But, you are not developping with Ant, you are developping with an IDE

And when you write your project in the IDE, you can compile it, test it, debug it, deploy it.

And then, you want to put in place the daily build.

And therefore you have to build your ant build.xml file from scratch. Even if your IDE is already configured to compile, build jar, war, zip, docs, test reports, ...

Why are IDEs not using Ant to build the project ?

Then, you will have possibility to reuse what the IDE has automatically done for you.

Why not, have IDE where you can import an existing Ant project ?

That IDE would be able to create his internal structure of the project from the Ant Build.XML file.

I know that today, with NetBeans 3.5, you can compile your class by calling an Ant target. You can run your class by calling a Ant target.

Why is it very interresting ?

You are sure that the way your IDE is compiling, executing, testing your project on your local PC, is exactly the same way as the nightly build that run on the server.

But it's not yet sufficient.

Did you remember my preceding blog concerning freedom of codestyle?

Imagine now that when you use the action Commit in your IDE, it launch the target commit of your Ant file.

You can customize that target to

1. execute jalopy,
2. run checkstyle,
3. run PMD,
4. run somes metrics
5. run somes JUNIT test
6. and then
   • refuse to commit
   or
   • accept to commit
   depending of the result of checkstyle, for example, or if junit tests are broken or if metrics are bad.

It means that you are sure that the code you commited in the repository is well-formated, has up to date javadoc, is following your standards, ...

It can only enhance the quality of code commited in the CVS repository.

That would be a nice enhancement, because, today, no versionning tools permits you to refuse commit depending of somes criteria.

By having all IDE using Ant build.xml file, you will be able to work in a team where everyone can choose his IDE. You will assure that commited code is compliant with your rules.

I am happy to learn that NetBeans 3.6 will enhance integration with Ant.

What's happens with Marketing by Sun ?

• Before, you had iPlanet AppSrv 6
• then you had Sun One Application Server 7
• now, you have Java System Application Server 7/8.

Look at Java IDE:

• Before you had Forté For Java
• Then you had Sun One Studio
• Now, you have Sun Java Studio

Impossible in those conditions that people have good opinions of Sun and their products in general.

Each time you convince the commercial of your company to buy a Sun's product, it disappears of the catalog under the name.

So the conclusion of commercial is :

I don't want to buy product by Sun if they don't continue to give support to their product.

Sorry, but the product you wanted (xxx) disappears of their catalog. No more posible to buy it.

We dont want to take risk to migrate our development from Forté For Java to Sun ONE Studio.

I am really convinced that changing name of a product each time a new version is released is a very bad strategy for Sun, it it's a strategy !

Hoppefully that the future Java 1.5 is always named Java. And that the future NetBeans 3.6 is always named NetBeans 3.6

I want to continue to use my own style, even if I work in a team !!!

Why am I obliged to follow the team convention

public static final String hello = "HelloWorld";

final static public String hello = "HelloWorld";

Why am I obliged to declare variables of the class before the constructor and methods, and not after ?

Why am I obliged to put open brackets on the same line than the declaration method, If I prefer the other style where I put the open brackets on the next line.

Why have I to indent my code with 8 spaces, if I prefer two spaces only ?

Why, why, why ?

Because you are working in a team, and when you are working in a team, you are obliged to follow somes rules, otherwize it's the chaos.

I can agree with that, but I think it's possible to solve that in another way than oblige people to lose their freedom.

i agree that it's really important that the code you share with other people follows somes code style rules, otherwize, it will be a nightmare when you have to merge, or patch, or diff two different versions of the class.

So, hereafter my proposition of a way of work.

1. Take a source formatter product, like jalopy and customize it to format your code in your style.
2. Create also another customization file, respecting the code convention of the team.

So, each time you receive a source from someone,

1. just execute jalopy with your rules file and you will have a nice and readable source (in your mind).
2. Do, your modifications.
3. Before give it back to the team; reexecute jalopy with the rules file of the team, and you will have a ugly and unreadable source (in your mind) that will enjoy the others.

Thanks to the fact that jalopy can be integrated into NetBeans, it become really easier to do that. And by doing so, you keep your freedom of coding and your team leader continue to be happy

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