Gone for a little while...

I am going to be very busy with school for the next little while so sorry if you won't hear from me...It is taking me a long time to get a new microphone and server so hopefully they will be available soon. On a side note NetBeans 5.5 is awesome and i recomend you go try it (it is still in Q-Builds). Anyway i will try and blog as often as possible.

Quiet

Over the past week I have been pretty quiet (I guess you could say lazy). I have been on march break and have been just loving it! I have been spending most of my time learning more about developing NetBeans modules. I very much like this type of work. Anyway there has been a lot going on in the NetBeans world (C++/C pack, enterprise pack, ect..). I looking forward to the 5.5 and 6.0 releases of NetBeans. They will be great!! Anyway it is almost 1:00 AM and I have to wake up in the morning so this is going to be cut a little short. Now for a short update...I am still waiting to get a server (it should happen this week hopefully) and that mean I will be start up my podcast. About the flash demo I said I was going to have ready for last week, it never happened because the audio is not very good quality so I am going to pick up a new mic and re-record.

Eclipse (The Super Power in the IDE War) is Having Trouble Keeping up with the Fast Pace of NetBeans

Ian Skerrett has shared false information regarding Eclipse and NetBeans. Eclipse said that NetBeans use went down 0.2% and that they are still at the top of the on going IDE war. The results where based on a online survey of 621 developers. Below is a graph of the amount of unique accesses to the NetBeans update center. (note: each NetBeans IDE has it's own unique ID and is not effected by DHCP). The hits to the NetBeans update center does not include people who are behind firewalls or people who disable their update functionality in NetBeans or people not connected to the internet.

Anyway I don't want to pick on eclipse...They do have a great product with some (very few) features that beat NetBeans. One thing where NetBeans is far ahead is in it's GUI builder Matisee. Btw a new plugin is coming out for eclipse that integrate the amazing NetBeans Matisse GUI builder. You can check this out here. This brings up the topic of how Elcipse can't even think up there own idea's they have to steal the code from NetBeans. Any way there are quite a few other reasons NetBeans is better that Elcipse (Swing vs. SWT, Mobility Pack, the new enterprise pack, Ant build system, ect...). At the end of the day it is good that eclipse is around because it let's developers choose what tool they would like to use. Competition is a good thing because it make tools better. Don't expect the IDE war to end anytime soon!!

NetBeans has a lot of momentum and has came leaps and bounds from 3.x and even 4.1. Don't expect NetBeans to slow down!!

For more information visit: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roumen?Entry=netbeans_growth_questioned#comments
http://cld.blog-city.com/what_form_does_success_take__a_clear_picture_of_success_with.htm
http://ianskerrett.blogspot.com/2006/03/eclipse-gains-market-share-in-2005.html

Groovy

Today I tried out Groovy. I was very impressed with how I could use a scripting language with and on top of the Java platform. I was using the new updated nbm's from project Coyote (the nbm's were updated to 5.0 by Roumen Strobl). Project Coyote has basic support for Groovy and Jython but need many more features (code completion, syntax highlighting, ect...). Some day I would love to see java with a dynamic language of it's own and groovy is looking like a great choice.

Photo's from Mt. St.Anne Quebec

Beuatifull painting on an old building in Quebec City

One of my favourite parts of the part at Mt. St. Anne

Me Coming out of a Chocolate shop in Quebec City

Chalets in front of Mt. St. Anne

Place where we stayed

Picture From the top of the Mountain

the main gondala at Mt. St. Anne

Blue Skies infront of the biscotte (a small eatery)

Road leading up to Mt. St. Anne

I'm Back

I am back from my holiday with my family. It was a great relaxing time and very fun. I will have some pics posted once I get a-hold of some from my dad's digital camera. This week I should be able to get my UML demo finished. I will also have a new server and will have it set in about one and a half weeks. Along with this I will be starting my own podcast. The first episode will be release probably by the end of the month. So stay tuned for some new things coming on rekahsoft.blogspot.com.