🚀 go-pugleaf

Methinks perhaps Brad's point is completely missed here. He is _not_ saying
that he is a Java pro, and knows more than Team Borland, although the fact
that he knows Delphi well would indicate that he is certainly an IT pro
(and, by the way, certainly an ardent Borland supporter). It also would seem
very apparent that he intends to continue his pursuit of knowledge in the
language. That would indicate to most folks that he intends to go out and
get the documentation that he needs. The comment about "thinking straight"
and purchasing documentation was entirely unnecessary pedantry.

But, he is making a very valid point that Java is extremely difficult to
learn using JBuilder given its informational shortcomings. In fact, learning
Java with JBuilder is an order of difficulty higher than Delphi (or any
other visual language, including C++ for that matter), not because of
language complexity, but because of the lack of contextually sensitive help
and the flaky behavior of the IDE when automatically generating code. Now I
can understand behavioral problems given the maturity of the language, but
not the de facto lack of coherent, up-to-date information in the IDE.
In Delphi, when you have a problem with a method, you simply highlight that
method and hit F1. You will frequently then get a list of classes to which
that method belongs to select from, or, since Delphi is procedurally enabled
(the case with most widely employed languages except Java), you will go
directly to the help text for that method. You can't do that with JBuilder.
I completely understand that something like toString() may not be able to
list all the classes to which it belongs, but the text can certainly make
that fact easier to infer. Currently, it doesn't even get you into the ball
park.

Code examples have seemed to have completely escaped the notice of the help
writers as well. The get/set paradigm is one of the characteristics of Java
requiring intimate familiarity, yet there is an incredible paucity of
concrete examples in the help text. If there were, I think Brad would be
already well on his way to a more salutatory attitude toward JBuilder than
he is currently. Wandering around looking for concrete examples in
demo/sample directories is not the way to get familiar with the more
fundamental principles of a language.

It's far easier to acquire a healthy attitude toward programming using the
other IDE's than it is using JBuilder. Don't get me wrong. JBuilder makes it
a lot easier for me to code and I appreciate the effort by the Borland folks
in making the product available, but developer acceptance is a difficult
thing to acquire under the best of circumstances. I think that Brad is
basically attempting to show that Borland needs to take a slightly different
tack, more in line with the basic philosophy that produced their other great
IDE's.

Paul Furbacher <pnf@home.com> wrote in message
news:39E91A3F.436DBCD1@home.com...
> "Bradford C. Miller" wrote:
> No, let's not wait -- let's just start thinking straight, here.