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Java Forum / General / July 2007

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What's NetBeans written in?

Thread view: 
VijayS - 13 Jul 2007 11:15 GMT
I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?

Why is NetBeans so much faster than Eclipse (in terms of UI
responsiveness, compilation, etc)?

We're having a heated internal debate about which IDE to use in-house.
Up till now, we've used textpad+ant.

Extensibility is one of our key reqs, but both IDEs fit the bill
there.

I appreciate any help,

Thanks,
-Vijay
Philipp Leitner - 13 Jul 2007 12:27 GMT
> Why is NetBeans so much faster than Eclipse (in terms of UI
> responsiveness, compilation, etc)?

Is it? I always shyed away from Netbeans because I had the impression
that it was so terribly slow (on my slightly outdated iBook G4) ...
granted, Eclipse also doesn't win a price on general responsiveness,
but it at least feels a lot quicker than Netbeans on my machine.
Tom Hawtin - 13 Jul 2007 13:41 GMT
>> Why is NetBeans so much faster than Eclipse (in terms of UI
>> responsiveness, compilation, etc)?
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> granted, Eclipse also doesn't win a price on general responsiveness,
> but it at least feels a lot quicker than Netbeans on my machine.

NetBeans is written in Java. I find it horrendously slow (5.5 and 6.0M10).

The original poster appears to be using an Intel Mac. AIUI, SWT has
always sucked on Macs. I don't know if it is any better or worse on
Intel vs PPC Macs. On Linux you might find Eclipse installed on an old
barely functioning GNU "Java", which you'd expect to be slow.

IIRC, the Eclipse compiler is often said to be faster than javac. AIUI,
Eclipse will compile in the background, so you don't have to wait for
ANT to chug away as you do on Eclipse.

YMMV

Tom Hawtin
Lew - 13 Jul 2007 13:44 GMT
>> Why is NetBeans so much faster than Eclipse (in terms of UI
>> responsiveness, compilation, etc)?
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> granted, Eclipse also doesn't win a price on general responsiveness,
> but it at least feels a lot quicker than Netbeans on my machine.

Maybe NetBeans is just plain better written.  I've always preferred it to Eclipse.

There are more metrics than UI speed.  The consistency and ease of use of the
UI are arguably much more important.  To my mind, NetBeans is much easier to
use and has a richer feature set.  It's much easier to deploy apps via
NetBeans, for me, and to deploy and connect to app servers, databases and the
like.  By comparison I find the Eclipse UI much more recalcitrant and hard to
navigate.  Both IDEs tend to hide important aspects of the build, such as
library inclusion, from the developer, but both export the needed libraries to
the deployment artifacts.  NetBeans also has that nice Matisse plugin for
developing Swing apps.

NetBeans also has better features for folding in the Struts or JSF frameworks
and for SOAP Web services development.

But lest we fall into the trap of fighting
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_wars>
developers should be free to pick their own editors.  They all emit text, and
all feed the same project build process, so at the project-management level
the differences vanish.

Signature

Lew

Lew - 13 Jul 2007 13:36 GMT
> I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> Extensibility is one of our key reqs, but both IDEs fit the bill
> there.

Why not let each developer pick their own IDE?  Why the dictatorial approach?

Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  All IDEs
emit text in the end; if a developer prefers vi and they meet their deadlines
and quality goals, more power to them.

Don't shackle your developers.

Signature

Lew

David Segall - 13 Jul 2007 15:58 GMT
>> I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?
>>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>Why not let each developer pick their own IDE?
> Why the dictatorial approach?
Because Java is a third generation language and a fairly primitive one
at that. By dictating the IDE a company can obtain some of the
advantages of a higher level language while retaining the underlying
portability of Java.
>Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  All IDEs
>emit text in the end; if a developer prefers vi and they meet their deadlines
>and quality goals, more power to them.
If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
emits will not include the text required for me to continue using
Matisse.
Arne Vajhøj - 14 Jul 2007 01:32 GMT
>>> I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?
>>>
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> advantages of a higher level language while retaining the underlying
> portability of Java.

By convention third generation languages are called
high level languages.

>> Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  All IDEs
>> emit text in the end; if a developer prefers vi and they meet their deadlines
>> and quality goals, more power to them.
> If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
> emits will not include the text required for me to continue using
> Matisse.

Is that vi's or Matisse's fault ?

Arne
Lew - 14 Jul 2007 14:51 GMT
Lew wrote:
>>> Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  
>>> All IDEs emit text in the end; if a developer prefers vi and they
>>> meet their deadlines and quality goals, more power to them.

David Segall wrote:
>> If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
>> emits will not include the text required for me to continue using
>> Matisse.

This is an argument against using a single IDE, not in favor of it.  The
trouble with standardizing on an IDE instead of just a platform and a language
is that you get IDE depencies in your product, a Bad Thing.

> Is that vi's or Matisse's fault ?

Good question.

It should be a matter of policy that no one can check code into the repository
that breaks the build (compile step).  It should be a matter of policy that no
IDE dependencies exist in the code repository.  The right way to build a Java
program is from source, a pure text medium, using Ant.  vi is certainly
capable of emitting all the text needed for a successful build, in the hands
of a competent developer.  Ditto emacs, JBuilder, JEdit, NetBeans, Eclipse,
OAD, WSAD, yada effing yada.

Management needs to get it, and get off the developers' backs about such
stupidity as mandating an IDE.

Signature

Lew

David Segall - 14 Jul 2007 16:00 GMT
>Lew wrote:
>>>> Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>trouble with standardizing on an IDE instead of just a platform and a language
>is that you get IDE depencies in your product, a Bad Thing.
Not really. If your IDE vanishes then, with a little effort, you can
transfer your source code to punched cards and run it on any platform
that supports Java and has appropriate hardware. Meanwhile you can
enjoy the huge gains that a modern IDE provides. It only requires that
the project team agree on some standard software. That software will
range from source code control to 4GL development tools and an IDE is
a convenient way of integrating them.
Lew - 14 Jul 2007 18:42 GMT
Lew wrote:
>>>> Project builds should be done via Ant anyway, not through an IDE.  
>>>> All IDEs emit text in the end; if a developer prefers vi and they
>>>> meet their deadlines and quality goals, more power to them.

>>> If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
>>> emits will not include the text required for me to continue using
>>> Matisse.

Lew wrote:
>> This is an argument against using a single IDE, not in favor of it.  The
>> trouble with standardizing on an IDE instead of just a platform and a language
>> is that you get IDE depencies in your product, a Bad Thing.

> Not really. If your IDE vanishes then, with a little effort, you can

It's that "little effort" that I seek to avoid by not forcing the build to
depend on any given IDE.

> transfer your source code to punched cards and run it on any platform
> that supports Java and has appropriate hardware. Meanwhile you can
> enjoy the huge gains that a modern IDE provides.

Of course you can, and should, just not by dictating to the professional what
tools will give them the most of those gains.

> It only requires that the project team agree on some standard software. That software will

Au contraire, it not only does not require that, but requiring one specific
IDE could tend to mitigate the gains you get from IDEs.  More effective is to
require a certain performance goal, and leave it to the highly-trained
professionals how best to achieve that goal.

Mandating a particular IDE for software developers is like mandating a
particular brand of hammer or other tool for your carpenters - you could do
it, but there really is not a benefit and potentially some detriment.

The best compromise is to insist that anyone /can/ build the project
effectively using the standard IDE.  So while I might hare off and use
NetBeans to build my J2EE assignment (and will do so, given the choice), any
team member can open it in the team's standard IDE, say Eclipse, and
successfully build and test my code.  The organization can also cluck and tell
me that I'm on my own with NetBeans but they'll willingly support Eclipse.
And fire me if I slip my deadlines.  Thus, freedom with an inducement to stay
with the team choice.

> range from source code control to 4GL development tools and an IDE is
> a convenient way of integrating them.

I am with you on the benefits of IDEs.  Use'em myself, ayep.

Signature

Lew

Olle - 18 Jul 2007 08:56 GMT
> Not really. If your IDE vanishes then, with a little effort, you can
> transfer your source code to punched cards and run it on any platform
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> range from source code control to 4GL development tools and an IDE is
> a convenient way of integrating them.

Any modern IDE should NOT add non standard files that the project
depends on (all other IDEs whether or not they call themselves modern
or not are not modern). And has been said before in the thread: the
build process should be totally IDE independant, for example Ant based
(even though most modern IDEs can call any build program from within).

The only two modern IDEs I have found and used are Eclipse (free) and
IDEA (commercial) all I have tried others tend to try to make the user
dependent on it. Both are good, but if you have the money I would
recommend IDEA.

And the crap about 3GL and 4GL belong to the 80:ies (maybe early
90:ies) A good IDE helps the developer and does not hide the details
from him/her.

just my 2 cents
Arne Vajhøj - 14 Jul 2007 20:16 GMT
> David Segall wrote:
>>> If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> It should be a matter of policy that no one can check code into the
> repository that breaks the build (compile step).

That is not what he is talking about.

He is talking about the fact that manually editing code generated
by a GUI builder will prevent other users from using the GUI builder
in the future, because the GUI builder relies on certain comments
and idioms.

Arne
Lew - 14 Jul 2007 22:32 GMT
David Segall wrote:
>>>> If another programmer changes my Matisse GUI using vi the text he
>>>> emits will not include the text required for me to continue using
>>>> Matisse.

> He is talking about the fact that manually editing code generated
> by a GUI builder will prevent other users from using the GUI builder
> in the future, because the GUI builder relies on certain comments
> and idioms.

I would call that an IDE dependency and consider the use of that GUI builder a
risk.

Signature

Lew

Roedy Green - 13 Jul 2007 17:18 GMT
>Why not let each developer pick their own IDE?  Why the dictatorial approach?

You do need a common code beautifier so that you don't get false
deltas on cvs checkin.  Eclipse and IntelliJ can be made to look
roughly the same, but not identical.  What is needed is a beautifier
plugin that works on all the major IDES and hooks itself up to
automatically beautify before checkin.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com
Matthias Buelow - 13 Jul 2007 18:06 GMT
> You do need a common code beautifier so that you don't get false
> deltas on cvs checkin.  Eclipse and IntelliJ can be made to look
> roughly the same, but not identical.  What is needed is a beautifier
> plugin that works on all the major IDES and hooks itself up to
> automatically beautify before checkin.

What kind of nonsense is that? It's not as if the editor would reindent
all the code upon loading a file -- if it does, throw it away faster
than it starts up.
Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 00:54 GMT
>> You do need a common code beautifier so that you don't get false
>> deltas on cvs checkin.  Eclipse and IntelliJ can be made to look
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>all the code upon loading a file -- if it does, throw it away faster
>than it starts up.

Let's say programmer A checks out the code and does some extensive
work with in IntelliJ.  Almost certainly he will hit Ctrl-Alt-R
several times to make the code comprehensible.  It will beautify to
IntelliJ specs.

Then he checks it in.  Programmer B checks it out in Eclipse and does
a simple modification. Hits the beautify button, which will beautify
to Eclipse standards -- potentially changing every line in the
program, changed or not.  He then checks it in.

Then programmer A checks it out again.  And tries to figure out what
Programmer B changed. CVS tells him every line in the program had a
delta.

If they both used a COMMON beautifier before checkin, CVS would report
only REAL changes to code, not ones artifacts of differing styles of
beautification.

Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 01:08 GMT
On Jul 14, 7:54 pm, Roedy Green <see_webs...@mindprod.com.invalid>
wrote:
> If they both used a COMMON beautifier before checkin, CVS would report
> only REAL changes to code, not ones artifacts of differing styles of
> beautification.

It sounds like CVS isn't very smart, and in particular doesn't know
semantically-significant whitespace changes from semantically-
insignificant ones. Perhaps this means they should choose a different
version control product.

SVN comes highly recommended with such features as:

"The diff engine internal to Subversion can now ignore whitespace and
eol-style when computing the diff."

(since version 1.4; http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.4_releasenotes.html)
Lew - 15 Jul 2007 02:55 GMT
> On Jul 14, 7:54 pm, Roedy Green <see_webs...@mindprod.com.invalid>
> wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>
> (since version 1.4; http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.4_releasenotes.html)

The cvs "diff" command, like the UNIX one it's based on, can ignore
whitespace, too, and has had that ability for as long as I've used CVS (over
seven years, now).

Signature

Lew

Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 22:27 GMT
>The cvs "diff" command, like the UNIX one it's based on, can ignore
>whitespace, too, and has had that ability for as long as I've used CVS (over
>seven years, now).

However that won't help you if IntelliJ has done any of a number of
transforms that are more that just whitespace, e.g. rearranger to
reorder methods, converting concatenation to .append, renaming local
variables...

You need something quite clever to filter what changes you want to
see.  The low tech way to do it is to beautify code to the same
standard on checkin.
Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Mike Schilling - 15 Jul 2007 04:48 GMT
> On Jul 14, 7:54 pm, Roedy Green <see_webs...@mindprod.com.invalid>
> wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> "The diff engine internal to Subversion can now ignore whitespace and
> eol-style when computing the diff."

That's common to many SCMs.  It would have to be much cleverer to ignore
changes in, say, brace style.  And should it ignore the difference between

   if (i > 5)

and

   if (i>5)

Perhaps for Java (though probably not).  Definitely not for a file intended
to be read by humans.
Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 05:28 GMT
On Jul 14, 11:48 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> That's common to many SCMs.  It would have to be much cleverer to ignore
> changes in, say, brace style.  And should it ignore the difference between
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> Perhaps for Java (though probably not).  Definitely not for a file intended
> to be read by humans.

Eh. Both of these:

if (i > 5) {
 return foo;
}

and

if (i>5)
{ return foo; }

become

if(i>5){return foo;}

when semantically-insignificant whitespace is eliminated and
semantically-significant whitespace (which would run keywords/
identifiers together or cause a // comment to run further if omitted)
is reduced to single spaces (linefeeds in the case of terminating a //
comment). (In this case the single space between "return" and "foo"
remains.)

You'll still get spurious deltas from changing

if (i > 5) return foo;

to any brace-using form of course. But simply reindenting everything
with your preferred tab width or whatever shouldn't cause deltas with
these options.
Mike Schilling - 15 Jul 2007 21:00 GMT
> On Jul 14, 11:48 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
> comment). (In this case the single space between "return" and "foo"
> remains.)

And who is to determine what "semantically significant" whitespace is?  It's
hardly the job of an SCM system.
Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 22:26 GMT
On Jul 15, 4:00 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> > On Jul 14, 11:48 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> And who is to determine what "semantically significant" whitespace is?  It's
> hardly the job of an SCM system.

Given that all the usual suspects (C, C++, and Java) treat whitespace
pretty much the same, and source files for these are by far the vast
majority of everything that ever gets checked into these repositories,
it doesn't seem unreasonable for "C/C++/Java awareness" to be in such
tools, certainly as a plugin or option. Basically, it can just
recognize these files by extension (.c, .cc, .cpp, .h, .c+
+, .java ...) and ignore whitespace except between keywords/
identifiers (collapse to a single space), inside string literals
(leave it alone), and the first linefeed after a // comment (collapse
the contiguous whitespace there to just the linefeed).

I'm also obviously not suggesting it genuinely modify the file in the
manner described; just treat it as so modified for diff purposes.
(This can of course be implemented using a temporary copy that really
is modified that way.)

Actually what I'd like to see is pluggable diff engines (binding to
particular file types) so various language-aware diffs could be
included. A smart diff engine for a specific language could do a lot
more than ignore semantically-insignificant whitespace differences.
For example, if it borrowed from eclipse a little a Java-specialized
diff could tell whether two source files were semantically identical
modulo bigger changes, like if (foo) { bar(); } vs. if (foo) bar();
and reordered imports. Plug this into a future super-SVN and it gets
used to decide deltas on all .java files checked in. Presto: no more
complaints about false deltas.

As for the GUI builders, smarter parsing might be nice, so those can
read any code that instantiates and invokes setup-type methods on
Swing components and parse some sensible representation out of it.
Alternatively, the GUI builder should generate an intermediate format
that a standalone tool can convert to a Java source file; the
intermediate format is treated as a project source file and the Java
file as an object file. Much the way bison and yacc sources and output
get treated by the C community.
Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 22:24 GMT
>"The diff engine internal to Subversion can now ignore whitespace and
>eol-style when computing the diff."

You also have false deltas of line breaks.  I got in terrible trouble
circa 1990 working in a company that gave the junior guys tiny,
low-rest monitors and the old timers giant high-res ones. The old
timers liked small fonts and very long lines. The new boys could not
read such code and would introduce line breaks. This caused false
deltas and territorial growling.

You also have reflowing of Javadoc with Eclipse.
Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Arne Vajhøj - 15 Jul 2007 01:21 GMT
>>> You do need a common code beautifier so that you don't get false
>>> deltas on cvs checkin.  Eclipse and IntelliJ can be made to look
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> only REAL changes to code, not ones artifacts of differing styles of
> beautification.

Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.

Eclipse has this style as default.

I would assume IntelliJ can also do that.

If not then developers using InteliJ should not attempt to
beautify the code.

Arne
Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 02:32 GMT
On Jul 14, 8:21 pm, Arne Vajh?j <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.

Linkie?
Arne Vajhøj - 15 Jul 2007 02:34 GMT
>> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.
>
> Linkie?

http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/

Arne
Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 02:45 GMT
On Jul 14, 9:34 pm, Arne Vajh?j <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> > On Jul 14, 8:21 pm, Arne Vajh?j <a...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> >> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.
>
> > Linkie?
>
> http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/

Thanks.

Huh. To judge by the "code example", it's nearly identical to how I've
always styled my code for decades, save two things:

I put a space between method name and ( in method headers (but not
method calls).

When coding C++, I usually write short little methods all on one line,
e.g. in an iterator of some sort I might write:

 inline my_iterator operator++ () { inner = inner->next; return
this; }

which is of course irrelevant to Java (and I rarely touch C++ these
days anyway now that JVMs can run Java as fast as native code).

(Obviously the above iterator would also have an operator bool to test
for inner becoming null, and would blow up horribly if not tested for
this. Equally obviously any Java equivalent I wrote would have
hasNext() checking for the equivalent of inner->next == null and a
next() throwing a suitable exception if already at the last element.)
Lew - 15 Jul 2007 02:55 GMT
>>> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.
>>
>> Linkie?
>
> http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/

"Now" being since 1999.

Signature

Lew

Arne Vajhøj - 15 Jul 2007 03:07 GMT
>>>> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.
>>>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> "Now" being since 1999.

"Now" was not intended to be in a "at the present moment" sense.

Arne
Mike Schilling - 15 Jul 2007 04:55 GMT
>>>> You do need a common code beautifier so that you don't get false
>>>> deltas on cvs checkin.  Eclipse and IntelliJ can be made to look
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>
> Now SUN has actually published a guide for Java style.

It's hardly exhaustive.  Take imports as an example.

   Are wildcard imports allowed?  If so, when should they be used?
   How should imports be ordered?
   Are blank lines allowed to separate groups of related imports?

(In case anyone cares, my answers are "no", "alphabetically", and "maybe"
respectively.)

Beautifiers that make diferent decisions here will create spurious diffs
that no SCM system will be able to eliminate.  And one of my most common
beautification commands is IntelliJ's "Optimize imports" which (with my
settings)  applies my rules.
Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 22:30 GMT
>I would assume IntelliJ can also do that.
IntelliJ has pages of options to control your preferred format.  Sun
is nowhere near as picky.

Then there is the standard ordering of declarations and methods.

Then there are the IntelliJ strict naming conventions. They go further
than I am prepared to go, though I am gradually bring my code up to
compliance.
Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Arne Vajhøj - 14 Jul 2007 01:29 GMT
>> I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?
>>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Don't shackle your developers.

I agree.

But a lot of team leads would sing the song about training,
help, project files etc.etc..

Arne
Lew - 14 Jul 2007 14:52 GMT
Lew wrote:
>> Why not let each developer pick their own IDE?  Why the dictatorial
>> approach?
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>
>> Don't shackle your developers.

> I agree.
>
> But a lot of team leads would sing the song about training,
> help, project files etc.etc..

Then the organization should fire that team lead and hire someone who knows
what they're doing.

Signature

Lew

Arne Vajhøj - 14 Jul 2007 20:18 GMT
> Lew wrote:
>>> Why not let each developer pick their own IDE?  Why the dictatorial
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> Then the organization should fire that team lead and hire someone who
> knows what they're doing.

I would think it is in the 80%-95% of places where such rules
exist ...

Arne
Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 01:01 GMT
>Then the organization should fire that team lead and hire someone who knows
>what they're doing.

The smartest boss I ever had was also so meticulous he drove team
members mad.  Further he could not appreciate that everyone was not as
brilliant as he was. He expected everyone to follow extremely
intricate code as effortlessly as he did.

Several times in my life I have had the exquisite pleasure to lead a
team of highly competent people who did not fight with me, but who
were not shy about pointing out my errors.  It is the most incredible
feeling to see finished code pouring out at a clip an order of
magnitude faster than I could possibly do it myself, all done the way
I would have had I the time and patience.

Being the boss is such a pleasure, I can see why incompetent people
love to try anyway.  

Signature

Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

blmblm@myrealbox.com - 15 Jul 2007 02:09 GMT
> >Then the organization should fire that team lead and hire someone who knows
> >what they're doing.
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> Being the boss is such a pleasure, I can see why incompetent people
> love to try anyway.  

But would an incompetent person get pleasure from something useful
taking place faster than he/she could do it myself?  and it's just
cynicism to suppose that the appeal of managing is the opportunity
to push people around?

(Good story, though.)

Signature

Decline To State
(But the e-mail address in the header should work.)

Twisted - 15 Jul 2007 02:34 GMT
On Jul 14, 9:09 pm, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> In article <3joi935kjen2uu9ajalq8kuqg3rp1jn...@4ax.com>,
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> cynicism to suppose that the appeal of managing is the opportunity
> to push people around?

It's different reasons for different managers. Good managers are
probably like Roedy described. Managers whose real love is pushing
people around are generally going to be bad managers.
blmblm@myrealbox.com - 15 Jul 2007 03:02 GMT
> On Jul 14, 9:09 pm, blm...@myrealbox.com <blm...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > In article <3joi935kjen2uu9ajalq8kuqg3rp1jn...@4ax.com>,
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> probably like Roedy described. Managers whose real love is pushing
> people around are generally going to be bad managers.

Yeah.  I think I had should have some more caffeine before sending
that post out into cyberspace -- "could do it myself" when I meant
to write "could do it himself/herself" [1], not to mention that
I didn't really get across the point I was trying to make, which
had to do with the appeal of management to incompetent people.

I think you're probably right [2], though -- "good manager"
probably implies "motivated by what Roedy describes", while
"motivated by a love of power" probably implies "bad manager".
I doubt that the converse of either statement is invariably
true, though.

[1] Lew may want singular "they" here -- but neither "themselves"
nor "themself" sounds quite right.  Recast the sentence in the
plural, I guess.

[2] We agree on something?!  Sort of a :-).

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Lew - 15 Jul 2007 03:06 GMT
> Yeah.  I think I had should have some more caffeine before sending
> that post out into cyberspace -- "could do it myself" when I meant
> to write "could do it himself/herself" [1], not to mention that
...
> [1] Lew may want singular "they" here -- but neither "themselves"
> nor "themself" sounds quite right.  Recast the sentence in the
> plural, I guess.

I'd use "themselves".  Managers have split personalities anyway.  One for
their superiors, and one for their minions.

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Lew

Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 05:40 GMT
>It's different reasons for different managers. Good managers are
>probably like Roedy described. Managers whose real love is pushing
>people around are generally going to be bad managers.

When I have had things really click, there a virtuous circle.  I am so
happy with the people working for me helping me get so much done, that
they work even harder to amaze me. I just beam with pleasure at them.
Everybody takes joy in the productivity of the entire team and it acts
like an oil to rapidly decide how to do a compromise.

Then you start getting comments from them outside about the unusual
productivity of the team, and get a real team spirit going.

I remember one team guy I had who could never for the life of him have
figured out WHAT to do, but once clearly directed, he could implement
it so fast it seemed like a magic trick.

Another of my angels was a guy I had to only explain the general
principles of what I considered a good solution, then he would
constantly come up with better ways to do things.

With a team, you have a hodge podge of skill sets. Part of the game of
being boss is giving people tasks they like and/or are good at.  

The error I see bosses often make is over-using seniority to decide
who does what.

It always helpful to look at problems from the boss's view point if
you are an underling and from the underling's point of view if you are
the boss.
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Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Roedy Green - 15 Jul 2007 05:30 GMT
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:01:39 GMT, Roedy Green
<see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>The smartest boss I ever had was also so meticulous he drove team
>members mad.  Further he could not appreciate that everyone was not as
>brilliant as he was. He expected everyone to follow extremely
>intricate code as effortlessly as he did.

The employee from hell was on a team I was not leading.  We both
figured it was time for some refactoring. The boss said no, we could
not take the time just now.  I accepted the boss's decision, given it
was his money, he did understand our concerns and he had access to
other considerations that I did not.

However, the other guy went ballistic and wanted to stage a sort of
coup.  I refused to go along. He felt betrayed. He became furious with
me for not supporting him and started phoning me and haranguing me on
my every shortcoming.  I eventually could not handle this and had to
resign.

It is quite a different skillset to play on a team and to develop by
yourself and to be the boss.
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Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com

Mike Schilling - 13 Jul 2007 16:05 GMT
>I always thought NetBeans was a C++ app, but is it really Java?

Definitely Java.  It's open source; if you like, go to their website and
download the source.


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