A Little Bit of Java

I just wrapped up the second phase of the first significant Java project I’ve done in a long time. In general, I try to be technology-agnostic but, due mainly to customer demand, I find myself working predominantly in .Net. As a result, I find myself treading water a little bit when I have to work with Java.

I did this last project in NetBeans 6.1 and was generally pleased with it. I was originally an Eclipse fan but have been less and less happy with it with each release. But my real problem is that I need to get more comfortable with the workflow when working with Java and Java tools. This last round of coding was a little more “cowboy” than I am typcially comfortable with.

This time around, I was working with ArcIMS (ugh), JSP and a couple of custom servlets. I found NetBeans integration of Tomcat to be pretty seamless, yielding a test/debug experience similar to that you get when developing ASP.NET in VS2005 and VS2008. I see hooks to integrate with SCC systems such as CVS and SVN. We’re currently using VSS (again, mostly .Net work) but I’ve been meaning to set up an SVN server. This may give me the little extra push I needed.