Is Developer Studio worth $99?

[jfrankman]

Since developer studio does not have a free trial download (unlike every other IDE available on the market) I will have to resort to throwing myself at the forum's mercy and asking for candid feedback. I have seen a couple webinars with the studio, and it looks impressive, but I am not about to spend $100 without some real world feedback. Any non-sales people please reply (HINT: if you are employed by JBoss/Redhat please don't reply to this post).

1. How much easier is it to develop and deploy Seam apps in JBoss Studio than MyEclipse?

2. How buggy is the IDE? How fast have bugs been fixed?

3. If you could go back in time, would you still plop the $99 down, or would you go somewhere else?

4. What are the most positive things about the studio?

5. What are the most negative things about the studio?

6. What was your biggest surprise after your first few hours of using this IDE?

[maxandersen]

I actually could tell you how to try out most parts of JBDS for free but you told me to not answer because of my affiliation...damn ;)

[mars1412]

AFAIC the answer to your subject is: yes

sure, there are still many things that need to be improved/fixed, but it's already very stable for a version 1.0

if you need details, just browse this forum or the jira's

[jfrankman]

Max,

I think was a bit too brash. Sorry. How can I try most of the things out for free? Will it take a lot of work to configure all of the plugins?

[maxandersen]

"jfrankman" wrote:

I think was a bit too brash. Sorry.

:)

How can I try most of the things out for free?

Download Jboss tools
Download Eclipse JEE
Download JBoss AS
Download Seam
Download testng
Downoad springide

Put them together and you have the same functionallity.

Will it take a lot of work to configure all of the plugins?

Well that is *one* of the value adds in JBDS - you don't have to for the above plugins.

The other value add for JBDS is that you get access to the JBoss EAP 4.x binary and finally you get (optional) access to use the Red Hat Linux binaries. The same binaries JBoss/Red Hat will provide support on.

If you do not care about the last part then the 99$ is about saving time and know you have a configuration that work well together without wasting time. And if we update something to make things work even better together you get those updates for a year.

Hope that sheds some more light for you.

[dtwaratvfa]

I'm still checking as to whether it's worth $99. However, you can call Red Hat and get a 30 day trial.

I'm doing this because I had been using the JBoss IDE beta. It worked ok but had a bunch of annoyances.

I tried just using the JBoss tools and it was still annoying for me. I'd hoped that this version would fix a weird eclipse Java 5 bug relating to enums (sorry, I don't have the number) but it hasn't yet.

I'd also hoped that the JSP editor would be better. It does seem better although I've not found detailed doc (just started looking) on how it works. There is some stuff in the Getting Started doc that is teasing me.

Any hints would be welcomed.

I've still got a week or so.

I really don't want to learn another IDE (Intelli-J) but my colleagues keep praising it to the rafters.

Are there any good sources for power developers?

TIA.

[refon]

Here a short not affiliated answer:

If your time is money, then the answer is straightforward: pay the 99$, start working.

Dealing with Seam I found it worth 99$ to work with JBDS only not to have to put all plugins together, the JBOSS AS out of the box integration is also nice.

By the way, I moved from IDEA IDE to Eclipse before discovering Seam and even dealing with JBoss. I had resources (memory) consumption problems at the time. Anyway in term of cost/value added IDEA comes at another price tag...

[maxandersen]

"dtwaratvfa" wrote:

I'm doing this because I had been using the JBoss IDE beta. It worked ok but had a bunch of annoyances.

JBossIDE is *old* so not really what you should compare anything with. Use JBoss tools for comparison.

I tried just using the JBoss tools and it was still annoying for me. I'd hoped that this version would fix a weird eclipse Java 5 bug relating to enums (sorry, I don't have the number) but it hasn't yet.

Which bug ? Any jira issue?

I'd also hoped that the JSP editor would be better. It does seem better although I've not found detailed doc (just started looking) on how it works. There is some stuff in the Getting Started doc that is teasing me.

JBoss Tools JSP editor is the same as the one used in JBDS so would need a tad more info to help...