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Only one thing is evolving faster than Java, and that's Java development tools. It seems Java's rapid evolution, fierce competition and low barriers to entry have development tool makers struggling to capture developers' hearts and minds while the market is still young. As far as competitive advantage goes, that sounds smart, but the combination of short deadlines and rapid feature additions will almost certainly put a strain on quality assurance. You might keep that possibility in the back of your mind when you read the reviews below.
But the grace period for Java's infancy is rapidly ending. Professional developers, especially those working on mission-critical or RAD applications, expect more from programming tools. Unfortunately for Java, a robust tool is much too hard to find these days. To a degree, these tools are powerful enough to be usable, but stability is still not what it should be.
Some of our players have visited these pages before. We've previously reviewed two of the products featured below (see InternetWeek, Feb. 17), Sun's Java Workshop and Symantec's Visual Cafe. Both have broadened their feature sets considerably in new versions, however, and the other three, SuperCede, Metrowerks Code Warrior and Cosmo Code, are being reviewed here for the first time. Microsoft was preparing Visual J++ Version 6 and was unable to get us a review copy in time. Borland declined to participate.
We used all these tools in ongoing development projects over the course of four months, with varying degrees of success. While all of them proved usable and some stood out over others, we were still disappointed by the low level of professionalism these tools exhibited compared with competing development platforms for other, more established languages. The question is, are any of them ready for prime time?
Sun's Java Workshop 2.0
Sun's latest release of Java Workshop sports a new look and a number of new features that programmers will find very useful. Java Workshop (JWS) has come a long way since its first release early last year. That first release was attractive but short on a few critical items, namely features, speed and stability. Version 2.0 of JWS goes a long way toward improving these critical features, but trades in the appealing browserlike interface for a more...