Customer Reviews

Borland JBuilder 6 Personal

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've used jBuilder3 for many years (and JB2 before that), so I'm familiar with Borland's Java products. I do single-station development, and decided it was time for a more stable IDE (JB3 crashes a couple times per day on large projects) and I also wanted to use JDK 1.3.1 so I got JBuilder6.

Well...Borland seems to want to make a much more agressive split between hobbyist and professional. Some of the more useful features I have gotten used to in JB3 are reserverd for Professional or Enterprise. I was extremely surprised to find that I can't even deploy applications or applets through JB6!! (you have to do it manually via Sun's jar tool at the DOS command line, which is a real pain) Also, some of the layouts that I have used for small parts of applications (e.g. XYLayout) have likewise been removed to Prof or Ent. This means a lot of retro-coding on my part. As I have just started using it, I'm not sure what else I'll run into, but I'm concerned.

So...is it a good IDE feature-wise? Yes, and I've used others such as IBM's Visual Java. The code-insight is useful, the ability to use different JDKs works nicely, and there are other nice touches that any IDE should have. I would just make sure that you check the feature matrix on Borland's website VERY CAREFULLY to make sure the features you expect to be present are actually there.

I bought the JBuilder 6 Personal version (Win,Linux and OSX) and installed it on a Mac running OS X (B & W 350, 704mb RAM). This is my first experience with a Borland product and it has been very bad.

I wish that I had never bought it.
GRIPE 1
You can't just install it from disk, even with the supplied security keys. You have to CONTACT Borland to get another encrypted key that you then have to use to finish the install.
I asked why I had to contact Borland to get yet another key and they told me that they wanted to make sure that I did not STEAL their product.

GRIPE 2
JBuilder (now that it is finally running), constantly crashes my machine and I know 2 other OS X users with new G 4's that are having the same problem. Borland is no help at all. Once they found out I was using a Mac I started getting the cold sholder.

GRIPE 3
Almost all of the builder screens are modal. This really causes a problem when you are trying to follow steps in the help section but need to use one of the wizard builders. Once you open the wizard, you can no longer access the help screens until you close the wizard.

GRIPE 4
While using the help screen I noticed that most everytime I clicked on the help screen the code that I had written on the "page" would revert back to the welcome code supplied with JBuilder. Once I clicked back on the page with my code on it, it would revert back to my code and the welcome code would vanish.
ALSO, the help window would revert back to the main help page, but when I clicked on the already open help page again, it would suddenly revert back to the help page I was on.

THIS RELEASE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BETA AT BEST!!!!
THIS RELEASE SHOULD NOT BE USED IN A SERIOUS PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT UNTIL BORLAND GETS ITS ACT TOGETHER!!!!

Borland JBuilder 6 is a solid development tool. While the Personal edition is just a base level tool, it gives you a chance to test drive JBuilder and upgrade to the Pro or Enterprise version. I've run it on Linux and Windows 2000 without any hitches. I've not heard of any problems with the Mac OSX, except for the other reviewer here. I do know that supporting OSX was a personal vision of JBuilder's chief architect, so if there are any problems, I'm sure they are being addressed. After all, JBuilder is written in 100% Java and Java code is Java code. If JBuilder runs fine on Solaris, Linux, Windoze, etc, it should run on Mac OSX as long as the JVM is good..

If you can do without the CD, download JBuilder personal for free (beer) on Borland's website.

You can get the JBuilder 6 Personal for free when you get the book Learn Java with JBuilder6 by Zukowski from amazon for less than fourty bucks, or you can download it free from Borland's website.

I don't know if I'd buy this from Amazon, Borland usually makes the Personal edition free after a while. I've been using JBuilder since 4.0 and though it's not perfect it is currently the best Java IDE around.
On Windows and Linux it's been very stable. If there are problems with stability (as the previous user indicates) I would suspect the OS X JDK. I'm not a really big fan of thier new installation hoops either.
The modal screens problem does suck but after programming some Java GUI I can see why it's this way and I'm sure Borland will fix it when the JDK allows them to.
Why do I like it?
it compiles FAST
the debugger very nice
the "find definition" feature is super nice
when I want the ide to be able to do something there's usually iether a way to do it or an add-on from a third party that does it (mobileset from borland, mousewheel support on the second CD in the box).

Why don't I like it?
the editor should be able to fold, and I'd really like to see macro support (it doesn't seem like they've done much with the editor since JB4).
Installation can be a pain (esp. on Linux), the new license stuff does seem really invasive.