The Java NetBeans IDE has plenty of support for troubleshooting and optimizing applications. Its built-in debugging support allows you to step through your code incrementally and monitor aspects of the running application, such as values of variables, the current sequence of method calls, the status of different threads, and the creation of objects. In this sample book chapter, you’ll learn about NetBeans debugging features, so you can get your code working right as fast as possible.
I think it is the attention to detail that makes it such a nice distro to use everyday … everything just seems to work, everything seems to have a purpose and is logically laid out … can’t wait to see what Suse 10.0 holds in store
wrong thread me thinks
Does Netbeans have the ability to let the user type in a variable and immediately see its value or execute a line of code like the Immediate window in VB or the Display window in Eclipse?
Yes.
Of course the scoping tends to be a more more complicated than VB, but the NB debugger is pretty good.
I think I still prefer the Eclipse debugger…much easier to follow and very robust.
Java debugging is still difficult, for two reasons: There is no interactive top level, and there is no way to easily reload arbitrary code at runtime (HotSwap has limitations and does not count). In fact it is hard to see any advantage that Java has over more advanced languages such as Lisp and Smalltalk. Today I read a weblog entry about a guy who set up an elaborate XML/Spring-based framework just so that he could add new “Command” objects to this web app without recompiling. He still had to restart his container (which takes several minutes with JBoss!) If he was writing his web app in Common Lisp, the language would already offer first-class functions (no need for command objects) and he would never have to restart anything, since code can be reloaded.
Howdy all
Lisp is an entirely different kettle of fish to Java, functional vs well the mongrel that java is.
There are quite a few languages that allow one to change the source code and the code is imediately executed in the run time, I`m at a loss to remember the languages but maybe an avid reading can help me out.
The other thing that makes java anoying is threads, while they are exceptionally easy to use, viewing multiple states/code paths accross perhaps dozens of threads is a nightmare.
Howdy all
Just thought of something (very early here .. 9 am!) he should of used reflection, this allows loading of arbitary classes from a string name or param list etc, hmmm I might go try this it`ll be handy one day.