Borland Software last week unveiled the latest update of its flagship Java IDE, JBuilder 9, and disclosed plans for an upcoming line of development tools for the .NET Framework. Version 9 of Borland’s venerable JBuilder development environment adds Web services support enhancements and a new integrated solution for developing mobile and wireless applications to run on many devices.
Borland Unveils .NET Tools, JBuilder 9
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Superior to VS.net.. A little late to the game, but always comes up hitting homers.
Better help, better ui, better wizards, better logic, better organization. Go Borland!
I tried JBuilder 8, but didn’t like it as much as Eclipse for my needs. And from the looks of the changed list, it doesn’t look like JBuilder 9 won’t fare any better for me. Of course, if anyone wants to prove me wrong…
I couldn’t find the requirements for the upgrade on the Web, if there is an upgrade. The “Personal” edition is a scam, it’s restricted to non-commercial use. I might consider upgrading to the professional edition if its below $200 and accepts Visual Cafe as an antecedent (or whatever its called).
Personally, I prefer Netbeans over JBuilder and Eclipse. I find it very intuitive and “alive”. It’s the best tool I used for JSP/Servlets, XML, Swing interfaces and coding in general.
Eclipse is my second choice. It’s away better than JBuilder (which I tasted the Oracle’s version – JDeveloper). There’s plenty of plugins for virtually any kind of job. The only drawback I found is the lack of code completition (which I began to rely when programming in Java
).
For me, JBuilder it’s bloated both in interface, features and memory.
Anyway, never liked Borland Developer Tools except for Turbo/Borland C(++) but I’m looking forward to the .Net tools.
The Personal edition was introduced into the JBuilder lineup specifically for OSS gurus who, in an on-line poll a few years ago, suggested that their only use for cross-platform Borland tools (before Kylix) would be GPL’d software.
At the time, Borland was casting itself as ready to leap into the Linux and OSS market, and the only way to do that was to offer a free development tool that no-budget OSS projects could use.
Anyhow, nobody needs RAD GUI’s and the like anyway. I’ve found that JBuilder, Visual Cafe and JDeveloper all introduce siginificant code bloat and use proprietary libraries. I prefer pure Swing written in a text editor, myself.
Of course, as an old Borland fan (learned to code w/ Turbo Pascal 7), it’s nice to know they’re still in the game. I look forward to see how they leverage their new .NET against Mono.
Is that they will make screwed up products and try to sell you the garbage. Borland C++ 5.0 was pretty good, but rather buggy. Borland C++Builder 3.0 was an utterly bad VB ripoff. Delphi may be getting ok.
The best two products that Borland ever made is Turbo C++ 3.0 and Turbo Pascal 6/7. I do not think I have ever seen a borland product get any better since.
I am not pinned down on windows to care much anymore though. Long live Apple!
I just tried the VS.NET 2003 online demo, and all of the functions are collapsible in the main editor view (like in a treeview). Does any other editor have this feature? Just curious.
Jeffrey: Yes Turbo C++ was great, that’s what I used for several years when I first started programming.
The only drawback I found is the lack of code completition (which I began to rely when programming in Java
).
I think you lost me.
Which IDE doesn’t do code completion?
Scintilla/SciTE can do this as well, http://www.scintilla.org
I was refering to Eclipse.
See http://www.anjuta.org which is base on Scintilla (see above)
jEdit has code folding as well. Also Boa, which is a pretty nice Python IDE.
Forgot http://www.intellij.com/idea/ (TreeView, Code Folding and many other features).
No Swing GUI graphical design support but a great IDE too.
Of course Eclipse has code completion. Just press Ctrl+Space after the . 🙂
Didn’t know that! Thanks!
I just love Borland for their JavaBuilder, because is object oriented, just drag and drop to it. I see eclipse for example, and I need to write all the code. Tell me if I’m wrong…
Maybe not, but I would check the license before ordering Personal Edition online, cuz it might impact OSS as well. Borland has a history of playing nasty licensing games with their development tools. This smells like paying US $100 for a trial edition.
Indeed, JBuilder has a visual builder for building Swing apps. and Eclipse doesn’t. However, there are some people working on various plug-ins that do this. Most important, some people are working on a SWT/JFace GUI builder (as an Eclipse plug-in).
Anyway, IBM’s WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), which is built upon Eclipse (and it’s not free) has this ability (and others).
Please note that it’s only fair to compare JBuilder Personal to Eclipse. JBuilder Enterprise Edition should be compared, IMHO, only to WSAD.
bit of a borland delphi fanatic myself… as powerful and fast as you need it to be, and the compiler speed is unreal. looking forward to seeing how their .NET tools shape up.
JBuilder is nice, and I would be using it still. However, we’ve moved to NetBeans and haven’t looked back. We simply couldn’t afford the pricing of JBuilder…it is way too much money! Don’t even get me started on JDataStore…a really nice java db…but licensing (deployment) that is far too unreachable.
Come on Borland, you’re shooting yourself in the foot here!
PD