Netbeans is cool for Rails Development, but ugly compared to Textmate.
Published: August 29th, 2007Don’t use Netbeans if you can use Textmate.
So, thanks to this article on the opinion that “Netbeans is the best Ruby on Rails IDE”; I found out that it’s cool, but really bulky coming from Textmate.
After being surrounded by the blissful simplicity of Textmate, jumping into something so clunky was an immediate turn off.
Sure the cool, and probably more useful features of using Netbeans over Textmate may be worth-while to many developers, but I’m already doing great developing projects on Textmate. Honestly, the reason I bought a Mac was for the sole reason of having a beautiful coding atmosphere; mainly Textmate.
Netbeans has a lot of potential, it truly does. The features it has as an IDE can far out-weigh the benefit of using Textmate, but people like me are very visual and need a beautiful interface to work with, otherwise it’s a real turn off. If the guys working on Netbeans hears this plea, try to remove the bulk out of the IDE. That’s almost like an oxymoron, but if anyone could do it, it’s you guys.
This is very bulky in my opinion, especially compared to:
Ah, so much better!
Besides, I couldn’t really live without some of the bundles that Textmate has, especially the RSpec bundle, and HAML.
edited on august 30th 2007
Can’t Netbeans import textmate bundles ?
Also I din’t get what you wanted to point out with the screenshots.
Hi Daniel,
would you mind telling me what features you need from the RSpec bundle? We’re bundling RSpec with NetBeans now so if there are snippets or actions that you need we should be adding those. (Currently there’s just basic support for running rspec tests and having rspec failures show up as red warnings in the editor footer.)
Hey Tor,
I’d really like to be able to use anything from the RSpec bundle in Textmate. I think the entire bundle is really helpful.
If you want some more feedback I’ll share with you. I would really be more inclined to use Netbeans if the interface was a tad smaller, the entire ui is just so bulky. I know that’s probably asking a lot, but I can pretty much guarantee you a slicker interface would be completely bad-ass.
Another thing that I use heavily is HAML/SASS. It’s an alternative to RHTML that is gaining popularity at a rapid rate, if you could integrate that bundle as well, that would be amazing.
I truly like Netbeans, I just can’t see myself using it unless it had those bundles, and a smaller interface.
Thanks for the comment,
Daniel
Daniel, thanks for stopping by my site.
I dig what you’re saying and when I first saw netbeans (I was a textmate user) I thought quite the same. However, I loved the features so much, that I grew less bothered by the apparent clunkyness of the ui.
That said though, I actually find netbeans has more finesse and style than textmate, except it’s hidden deeper than the instant appearance of the gui. I actually find myself finding textmate really clunky and ugly these days - you can ask my missus, she always hears me cussing it’s find dialogue and getting p’d off with it’s indentation engine.
I do agree that texmate has got that gorgeous cocoa look.
However, you can seriously tone down the clutter of netbeans gui. Just look at this pic
http://www.lifeonrails.org/images/articles/netbeansbare.png
Here you can see it almost as stripped as textmate.
To be honest, I’ve been so in love with netbeans functionality that I never thought to do this before, but I love it even more now, so thanks for your blog article :-)
Infrid,
Thanks for the response. I see what you’re saying, and that screenshot looks fairly nice. Still, those “big bubbles” are such a nasty appearance to me, I don’t know why - it’s really getting to my skin.
Also, the dialogues in Netbeans are slower than they are in Textmate. Textmate feels more snappy, no?
I would have to admit that Netbeans has some sweet things that Textmate doesn’t, especially with the subversion interface.
I took a look at Netbeans after that article as well! I’m completely sold, and I’ve been sneering at apps that aren’t “Mac-like” since Word 6. I did have to immediately turn off the toolbar, and turn the windows into palettes … but it’s really a nice environment.
Either using web apps has shot my standards to hell, or the extra features of Netbeans won me over. I think it’s the latter. That, and I was getting so tangled up in Textmate’s ever-opening tabs that I’d gone back to BBEdit (its distinction between project browser and actively-editing files is handy).
There’s just no way I can call Textmate an IDE now.
wow, netbeans does look pretty bad with all that aquaey stuff in OSX. Looks very clean and nice in linux though (after killing the toolbar)
Ready. Set. Go.
In terms of the formatting, you're allowed to use markdown, textile, or basic html; it's truly up to you -- what strikes your fancy?
You don't have to worry about your e-mail address being sold to a russian-spam-mafia. I'm only going to use it for my own weird needs; like asking you out for a date on a lonely night of coding.