Java Development Tools
Over the years, different development tools have come,
and gone, and a few have stood the test of time. In the early years
Visual Cafe was the Java GUI development IDE of choice, and there even
existed a reasonable Microsoft Java IDE, VisualJ++. With the advent of
open source IDEs of good quality, the ability to plug in your own tools
has been made far easier. From being nice things to explore, these IDEs
have become mainstream quality products, which will only cost you the
configuration and learning curve time.
Open Source IDEs
Eclipse
The Java server application IDE of choice. Not so good
at visual GUI development, but nice support for J2EE and the like.
Netbeans
A nice IDE, with
good GUI development support.
A Java editor for code oriented development.
ArgoUML
A nice alternative to commercial UML tools (such as
Rational
Rose and
Together),
which supports round-trip engineering in Java, and most UML diagrams.
Commercial IDEs
Borland JBuilder
IBM
WebSphere Studio
Microsoft
Microsoft if phasing out support for Java, and here you
will find information to assist you on phasing out MSJVM-dependent
applications. As expected, Microsoft advises you to migrate to C# or
C++. If you are relying heavily on MS-dependent extensions in your
application, such as using native dll calls, this may be a reasonable
road. If not, there are many all-Java alternatives.
Microsoft
Java Virtual Machine Support
Overview of tools
A list of other tools can be found
here.
