Constantiner's blog

Last week I’ve decided to give a try to IntelliJ IDEA. I’m a big fan of Eclipse IDE and platform and enjoy it a lot in my Java development but… But in real life I’m not only Java developer but Flex developer as well. So I had to use Flex/Flash Builder. And new version of that tool (Flash Builder 4) doesn’t fit my expectations. As far as the price for Builder and IDEA is almost the same why not to try an other option?

The first impressions about IDEA was “Why is it so ugly and unusable?". All this Swing vs good looking SWT in Eclipse with native behavior. As a Mac user I’m care about look and feel of applications which I’m using on everyday basis. And for me it is a huge weak of IntelliJ IDEA. Just take a look on screenshot from IDEA help and you can understand that point:

An example of tool window in IntelliJ IDEA

The pic is from IDEA manual. You’ll be surprised but that thing with “Local” is just tab And that kind of ugly things are everywhere. When I’ve asked IDEA users about how they live with that tool windows or context menus with improper behavior they answer: we never used that panes or menus. We are using keyboard shortcuts.

As for me I’ve never remember all the shortcuts for all the software and technologies I have to use in our changing time. Just some essential set. Yesterday I’ve used technology A and IDE B and it will change tomorrow very easily. And all I need is convenience. Both with keyboard shortcuts and with context menus. And of course with my mouse/trackpad pointer

So the first impression is IDEA was designed by programmers and for programmers. In the worst sense of that. But don’t forget — it is just first impression. And maybe IDEA’s intelligence (everybody is talking about it) will compensate that look-n-feel weaks. Will see. Anyway I already had to switch off parsing JPA queries in my @NamedQueries section because this intelligent IDE can’t work well with valid JPQL statements

Nevertheless now I’ll talk about how to set the proper user name for JavaDoc/ASDoc @author section when you create a new class. If you’re Windows user the solution is over there. For Mac it is pretty simple too excepting one annoying problem…

Well first locate your IntelliJ IDEA app in Finder. You can jump there right from Doc with Show In Finder context menu item. Then in App’s context menu select Show Package Contents and locate Info.plist in package’s Contents folder. Navigate to VMOptions key and add to key’s value the following:

Code:

The problem is if your name contains space like in my case (Konstantin Kovalev). I’ve tried using quotes etc. without any success. The final solution is using unbreakable space. You can find and paste it easily in Edit>Special Characters… of your favorite text editor. Then just enter in search field “space” and select unbreakable. It works for me.

But maybe you know more proper way to do that?

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All the latest Flash platform related news are about Adobe’s rebranding of Flex Builder which is now Flash Builder. You can read more from Serge Jespers, Lee Brimelow, Duane Nickull, Mark Doherty, Tim Buntel or Ryan Stewart and the Lee Brimelow’s FAQ. And I’ve decided to share some thoughts about this decision.

As we know Flash was born as animation technology and then become RIA platform with its own scripting language etc. To be precise the RIA definition itself is derived from Flash MX. So we have animation platform with some interactivity (ActionScript) and very great IDE for animation (timelines, tweens etc) but EXTREMELY poor for scripting with very basic code editor and procedure code in frames across application movie.

Time by time the situation is changing. Flex technology with declarative MXML was launched earlier than MS’s WPF with XAML (and MS possibly didn’t think about WPF/E aka Silverlight that times). Flex was right targeted for developers to develop APPLICATIONS (not movies). Right, developers-developers-developers just before MS’s XAML/.NET based family with great designer/developer workflow.

But anyway who knows about Flex? Before >=2 version almost nobody knows. A lot of Flash developers can’t adopt this new technology for number of reasons. And the situation was broken after Flex 2 was released. We can call it as the victorious procession of Flash platform for developers. But who knows about this procession outside Flash community? A much less amount of people than we can expect.

The most people just things nothing if I represent myself as a Flex developer. They don’t know about the subject and even don’t care. And if I try to explain my specialization in terms of Flash platform they become excited — oh yes! It is great tool for animations, rich banners, YouTube and promo sites. But what you say? You write code? ActionScript code? How very interesting. But ActionScript is very poor programming language, you know? What? It now supports classes? And even some other cool features? Great! But what about IDE? MS has great Visual Studio for their WPF and Silverlight but Adobe has just Flash IDE with just VERY BASIC code hilighting. It is funny you know? What? You have Flex Builder which is Eclipse based and has some code editor which is not so powerful as JDT but has a couple of features? Really? That’s cool, guy! Sorry, I’m hurry now. See you!

It takes a long time to divide Flex as developer centric technology from Flash as technology for creative people. Ok. We have Flash platform as an umbrella for all this family. Flash (means timeline and poor code editor)? Platform (WTF?)?

In other side everybody knows Visual Studio. And calls it great (I can’t share it — in my opinion VS is not great as code editor but can be with ReSharper for example). And new Silverlight technology (developers, developers, developers!). Nobody can doubt Silverlight is great for developers. And it has really great designer/developer workflow (which Flex Flash will have only with Flex Flash Catalyst released). Maybe it isn’t great for animations but who cares?

Ok. What we have now? We have Flash IDE and Flash Builder IDE (looking forward for questions from customers and colleges about what is difference and why Flash Builder IDE has advanced code editor but can’t compile fla-files and Flash IDE can compile them but useless for serious coding?). And we have Flash Catalyst which can use projects imported from Flash Builder IDE but can’t share the same project and can’t edit fla-files. And have one ugly child aka Flex SDK which is what? How to explain colleges and customers why Flash Builder IDE hasn’t timeline and can’t build flas but can use something which called Flex SDK (why Flex? why Flash?). And in other hand Flex SDK can be used to develop only in Flash Builder IDE and Flash Catalyst but not in Flash IDE. And what about beginners? Why Adobe going to drive them mad?

Well, Silverlight has ONE brand (which was divided from WPF). Maybe they won’t attract a lot of creative persons aka designers and animators but they have good positioning. So now Adobe tries to do the same using Flash brand. Which become well-established for creative persons but not for software or enterprise developers (sorry for that f-word enterprise word). And never will. It is much more effective to use Flex naming for all the Flash platform parts in this situation (hope creative persons won’t bear a grudge for it and won’t become MS persons ). Yes Flash is de-facto standard for web animation and MS is very poor about creativity. So I hope Flex player can be successful.

Or maybe it is better to introduce some new generic brand for Flash, Flex and AIR (the whole platform)? Anyway Flash Builder is way to nowhere.

Anyway it is just only my opinion

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