Netbeans - a first really serious look

I have just started seriously using Netbeans for the first time - I've been forced to because it's what the client uses.

And I have to admit, that having used Eclipse up till now, I am definitely not enamoured with netbeans at all. In fact it has done nothing to recommend it. I constantly find myself going... oh, I wish I was using Eclipse.

Netbeans fans might be crying foul right now... and they have a right to, let me record some of my initial frustrations...

1. No inline variable
2. No inline method (though there is an extract method, called introduce method).
3. When you use the template short cuts (for, create field etc) the tab does not leave you where you want it to
4. It hides a lot - we're doing web service development - all the ant xml files which are used to compile and build, you don't see.
5. No call hierarchy
6. Search facility is nowhere near Eclipse
7. No Quick diff comparing repo version with local version (via the ruler)

A good way to explain netbeans is to say it is opinionated software (I remember someone describing ruby on rails like that) - iow, it's great, if you obey the rules and if you want to stay within the confines of what it wants. I don't like the ant scripts it generates and uses to build - I want to roll my own, as eclipse will let me and thus customise them the way I want to.

So what do I like about Netbeans?

It has very strong integration with glassfish - tells you a lot about the running glassfish server you're using to deploy to. I also wish I could use the collaboration stuff, because I've seen that it is very good.

I'm going to have to continue using netbeans so I'll see if my opinion changes... I'll wait and see.

Why don't people understand the computer?

I am always fascinated when I observe people using a computer's user interface, even when using the user interface of the popular video game, guitar hero.

I have played guitar hero with a lot of "normal" (non computer) people and have found it interesting to observe their interactions with it. This process has enlightened something else I have been spending a lot of time thinking about, and that is why people cannot understand/use a computer.

And Guitar Hero is a good example. Even something as (I think) simple as the user interface of guitar hero causes people to go... I don't know what's going on, I can't use this. From my point of view, it could not be simpler, everything is self explanatory and right before you. It gives you all the feed back and guidance you need to quickly navigate around - and I therefore cannot at all, understand why they find it so difficult - I just can't get into their head and understand.

Until now when I finally understand why they find it so difficult.

For these people, the user interface of guitar hero might as well be Chinese - that would be just as comprehensible to them! I understand the language of the computer - they don't, and it is a question of language. They don't speak "computer", or should I say "read computer" since the "computer" language is only a read language. You can definitely get different abilities in this "computer" language - the people I'm referring to here though have no clue. And so it makes sense that people can be "computer literate", able to read computer - it's a very appropriate label for someone who knows their way around the computer.

The conclusion to all this is that whereas before I could not understand why people cannot understand the simplest of interfaces, and these people are not uneducated, now I fully understand why they cannot operate the interface. They need to understand the language it's communicating in.

Development On a VM - who needs a desktop?

Recently, in our dev shop, we have taken delivery of a rather high end server class machine. We installed linux on it and VMWare. It is, needless to say, way faster than any of our desktops.

We created a VM, installed ubuntu on it and then added that as a hudson slave. With that VM, the time for the simple compile job is down to 13 seconds from 45 seconds (gives you an idea of how fast it is).

We created another VM with ubuntu and I started tinkering around on that VM. I installed eclipse on there and started using it for my development by exporting the desktop to my workstation. The remote desktop equivalent in VMWare is very good - more than adequate responsiveness etc. My personal laptop/desktop is now just being used as a dumb terminal...

The advantages of developing this way:

1. Hardware upgrade costs are significantly reduced - don't upgrade your developers hardware when next upgrade cycle starts - let them keep their current hardware (and use it as a terminal) and give them a VM to develop on.
   
2. Maximum value is extracted from available hardware - I reckon we could put about 4/5 developers on our new server, depending on size of applications being worked on. This will mean that the server hardware will be very well exercised, a lot less wasted CPU cycles
3. Configuration and down time are almost non existent - new developer arrives, just provision a new VM from the image and he's up and running. Developer's image gets corrupted, same solution.
4. Significant cost reduction - because economies of scale can be leveraged, and hardware is better utilised, hardware costs are significantly reduced.

The only disadvantage of this solution is the lack of mobility - you need to be within a fairly fast network of your beefy server for this to work, let's hope that line speeds can be made fast enough to handle this.

For dev shops which issue laptops is less of a solution, but if you have a location full of desktops, don't upgrade them, just use them as dumb terminals and virtualise their requirements.