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Java IDEs for the PC

A survey of Java integrated development environments for Windows 95

By Chuck Mcmanis, JavaWorld.com, 08/01/96

I found it strange that Java, developed by Sun engineers on a Unix platform, would get development tools faster on alternative platforms (Mac and Wintel). It quickly became apparent, however, that the toolmakers on those platforms had designed their systems to absorb a lot of rapid change as a survival measure. The fact that Java was at least visibly very similar to C++ made adaptation easier than one might expect. Since I use a Windows 95 box to develop Java classes, my quest for an IDE focused on offerings that worked well on this platform.

The two popular commercial Java IDEs that are available (released products as opposed to trial software) are the Borland 5.0 C++ IDE with Java Enhancements and the Symantec Cafe Java development environment. Two other IDEs are working their way toward release status -- SunSoft's Workshop, Microsoft's Visual J++ environment (formerly called Jakarta), and one environment that is being shown in its alpha state called "Project Eleven" from Visix. There are some freeware and shareware tools; some of the newer ones such as WebIDE and Kalimantan showing great promise. WebIDE is implemented inside a Web page! None have reached the refinement of the GNU C/C++ tools or the level of the commercial offerings yet, but they show the strong commitment on the part of the Java community to provide quality, usable tools for free.

What do I do with an IDE? I use an IDE for three development activities: developing new utility code for applets and applications, developing utility classes for applications (mini-applications), and developing classes for Web pages (or applets). The challenge is the different environment requirements of each activity.

I rate the IDEs by my ability to get productive work done while using them. The baseline case is using a text editor like PFE (programmer's file editor) 6.02 with key bindings to run the Java compiler, interpreter, and appletviewer.

Let's consider the canonical IDE, which contains an editing feature, a project management feature, a compilation environment, and a debugger.

Compilers

Both Borland and Symantec have their own Java compilers. Rather than using the javac compiler that is supplied by Sun (and written in Java), these two compilers are written in C and C++. This is a good thing because, while it was a useful exercise to write a Java compiler in Java, for development work you don't want to pay the speed penalty. The other advantage of writing your own compiler is that you can produce error messages that the IDE can parse such that the editor is automatically positioned over the offending line in the source code. Both environments get a "thumbs up" in the compilation department.

Both Borland and Symantec let you run the appletviewer from the IDE to "test" your code. Unfortunately, neither implementation is very good. (Both use the Sun appletviewer code, which means that Sun's implementation isn't very good.) The code was written to work on a command line, not in a graphical IDE. This creates two shortcomings: First, the error messages are sent to standard out (the command window), and second, you don't get to use the "dump state" key. The Borland environment also gets negative marks for putting the item to actually run the appletviewer under a pop-up menu labeled "View."

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