Java and Developers are Winners of IDE Shootout

July 12,

On a recent July evening in Cologne, Germany, more than 70 developers gathered to witness an unprecedented event: four rival IDEs—NetBeans, Eclipse, Oracle and JetBrains—together on one stage. The IDE shootout, the first of its kind, was hosted by JUG Cologne.

Representatives from each IDE were given 30 minutes to make a presentation about the merits of their product. Roman Strobl, the first evangelist to take the stage, spoke on behalf of NetBeans.

Strobl launched his talk with an attention-grabbing demo of the platform-based application blueMarine, a digital photo management system built on the NetBeans Platform by developer Fabrizio Giudici. Using the integration of blueMarine and NASA's World Wind Component to show 3D images of the Alps and Cologne, Strobl explained that creating similar applications was possible by reusing existing Swing components.

The NetBeans segment continued with quick overviews of the top five features of the IDE: Matisse, Profiler, Java EE 5, Mobility and Ruby. A demo of Matisse highlighted its support for databinding and Swing application framework, while the NetBeans Profiler effectively zeroed in on a memory leak introduced into an application. Strobl was also able to give the audience a preview of improvements to the NetBeans 6.0 Editor with a look at some of its intelligent editing features.



Wayne Beaton and Frank Nimphius proceeded Strobl with presentations for Eclipse and Oracle, respectively; The St. Petersburg team of Maxim Shafirov, Mike Aizatsky, and Ann Oreshnikova, speaking for JetBrains, were the final presenters. The individual IDE demos were followed by an hour-long discussion between evangelists and audience members.

As planned by event moderator and organizer, JUG Cologne leader Michael Hutterman, there was no declared winner among the IDEs.  In a post-event report, Hutterman noted that the event achieved its goal—a non-competitive discussion among the top IDEs.

The clear winner, he wrote, was the Java community.

Read More About the Shootout

Photos from the Shootout

“JUG Cologne - IDE Shootout” (Roman Strobl, NetBeans)

“IDE Shootout: Roundup” (Michael Hutterman, JUG Cologne)

“Cologne JUG IDE Shootout” (Ann Oreshnikova, IntelliJ IDEA)

“JUG Cologne: IDE Bashing - And the Winner is ….” (Frank Nimphius, Oracle)

“IDE Shootout: Evangelists Duke it out at Cologne JUG” (Kirk Pepperdine, TheServerSide)