Netbeans 5.5 litmus test..

Netbeans 5.5 is fast,responsive and makes best use of desktop real estate.

Netbeans (against Eclipse) .. warning: a bit of rant follows.

I created a new class, added a method and typed something like this

public void litmusTest() throws CustomException {

Red underline appears for "CustomException" - Error, yes accepted.
But where is the option to create "CustomException" on the fly?

In eclipse a bulb appears on the left gray marin, clicking which presents you options to create a "CustomException" class that extends Exception - some additional intelligence going on - and really very useful to a rapid dev. environment. WHERE IS THIS FEATURE IN NETBEANS? I had been looking for something similar across last 2-3 releases.

Another random problem.The File header documentation appears below the import statements by default.

something like ..

import java.io.File;
/*
* NetBeansLitmus.java
*
* Created on November 18, 2006, 2:07 PM
....


I am open to any IDE but I guess nothing wrong in being inclined to one that is more intutive..

Eclipse - better usability than ever

While I was stuck with an old version of WSAD at work, a lot of action had been happening on IDE world.

Netbeans is going to come with version 6.0, on which ton of editor improvements are promised.

Meanwhile, I had been doing my fun stuff on eclipse. I have version 3.2.1, and there are very noticable improvements in simple things as:

the intelligent auto completion/import feature when used for commonly used class as "List" inserts Java instead of alphabetically preferred java.awt.List. Who is using java.awt.List anyway? - way to go.

Somehow, I always liked slickness of swt over swing in case of IDEs. But still, I am waiting to see what netbeans 6.0 has got. The matisse GUI builder in Netbeans was an unprecedented improvement in Java IDE history and it for sure has whet my appetite.