Development News

A few new things have come across my desk relating to the development world. Some of them encouraging, some of them not.

Netbeans 6.0 is final. I am installing it as I type this, and wait to see if it is actually, I don’t know, worth a damn. It’s the IDE of choice where I work, and thus far working with version 5 has felt something akin to being flogged. IntelliJ released version 7 a few months ago, and as always it impresses me with how many nods it makes to developers in giving them not only the ability to do things, but do them quickly.

The only redeeming quality in my mind regarding Netbeans is it’s GUI editor. A lot of purists will call me down for using an editor to write Java GUI’s but I say to hell with them. Swing code can get complex in a hurry, and I would rather spend my time actually writing functionality rather then wrestling with positioning a damn button. The only problem is that Netbeans adopts a “hands off” approach to some of its generated code, and when an IDE generates code and doesn’t let me tweak it to my liking, I start getting crabby.

The other thing I read is a post on AListApart.com about the HTML 5 spec currently in the works. Reading this article made me happy, since it looks like the HTML 5 spec is going to address a lot of headaches I’ve had with semantic markup, or the lack thereof in HTML 4. HTML 4 reminds me a lot of a lump of coal that has been my job to make a diamond out of. Technically, it’s possible, but not without a LOT of effort.

The certification track for Java version 6 is out, much to my chagrin. While I cant claim to have been hitting it hard, Java 5 has been the material I have been studying in preparation for my own certification exam. Now it appears I will have to ditch that effort and start over on a new spec. Thus far, there are some new things about 6 that look good. Fortunately, it would appear that 7 wont be out until early 2009.

Ah, the life of a coder.. Why the hell did I choose this profession?

*UPDATE* After wasting two and half hours, my verdict is thus: Netbeans 6 is a piece of shit. Not useless insomuch that it does things quirky, but useless in that it doesn’t do anything at all. The IDE spends more time throwing it’s own internal exceptions so that it cant even begin to be useful for editing a file. Call me crazy, but an IDE that cant open a simple Java file for edit is pretty fucking useless.

What kills me is that it’s not even a problem with the code I am opening, it’s the code of the IDE that’s blowing up. I even went so far as to make sure my current JRE and SDK were the most up to date they could be, and still no dice.

For example:

SEVERE [global] java.lang.ClassCastException: org.openide.filesystems.MultiFileObject$VoidValue cannot be cast to java.lang.String at org.netbeans.modules.editor.settings.storage.EditorSettingsImpl.getCurrentFontColorProfile(EditorSettingsImpl.java:233) at org.netbeans.modules.editor.settings.storage.SettingsProvider$MyLookup.(SettingsProvider.java:155) at org.netbeans.modules.editor.settings.storage.SettingsProvider$MyLookup.(SettingsProvider.java:145) at org.netbeans.modules.editor.settings.storage.SettingsProvider.getLookup(SettingsProvider.java:120) at org.netbeans.modules.editor.mimelookup.MimePathLookup.rebuild(MimePathLookup.java:101) at org.netbeans.modules.editor.mimelookup.MimePathLookup.(MimePathLookup.java:89) at org.netbeans.api.editor.mimelookup.MimePath.getLookup(MimePath.java:509) at org.netbeans.api.editor.mimelookup.MimeLookup.getLookup(MimeLookup.java:112) at org.openide.text.CloneableEditorSupport.getEditorKit(CloneableEditorSupport.java:1561) at org.netbeans.modules.web.core.JspEditorWarmUpTask.run(JspEditorWarmUpTask.java:177) at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209) at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
[catch] at java. awt. EventDispatchThread. pumpOneEventForFilters (EventDispatchThread.java:273) at java. awt. EventDispatchThread. pumpEventsForFilter (EventDispatchThread.java:183) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy (EventDispatchThread.java:173) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents (EventDispatchThread.java:168) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents (EventDispatchThread.java:160) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run (EventDispatchThread.java:121)

Sounds to me like crappy coding of the IDE to me…

I guess I should have known better…

* YET ANOTHER UPDATE * My curiosity wouldn’t let it go, so I started digging deeper into the IDE’s log file, and found several references to what suspiciously looked like was causing the problem. However, the area in question was so innocuous, that I could not bring myself to believe it. A few moments later, my suspicion was confirmed:

The culprit: Custom code formatting and coloring settings.

You read it right. Somehow, my custom settings for what frigging color my code gets displayed in caused Netbeans 6 to throw a wobbly. A simple case of deleting the settings and letting Netbeans recreate them, and everything is rosey again.

And to think: The people that developed this IDE in all probability get paid a lot more than me.

*sigh*

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