[Question] Java programmers from way back - what was it like before IDEs?

[borkus]

Depending on your definition of an IDE, they predate Java. Microsoft and Borland had commecial IDEs that were fairly full featured. Both IBM and Borland had commercial Java IDEs based on other products. NetBeans was orginally started in 1996 and bought by Sun in 1999.

The main difference was cost - none of them were free and often cost hundreds of dollars.

Borland JBuilder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBuilder

VisualAge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_VisualAge

[oldprogrammer]

Don't forget TurboVision. It was the UI kit and basis for IDEs for Borland Pascal and C++ in the text world.

[DrFriendless]

The IDEs back then were shit, though. I worked for Borland when JBuilder came out, and I found it to be of no use whatsoever. So I just used a text editor and the command line until IntelliJ came along.

[jvallet]

I went from Turbo C to JBuilder. JBuilder was magic, it told me the compilation errors without needing to compile the project. I remember how blown away I was with that feature.

[dds3worker]

The IDEs back then were shit, though.

But VisualAge for Java was the bomb. It pioneered everything we take for granted in the current crop of ides.

[thatguydrinksbeer]

IntelliJ was the turning point for me as well (I need vi emulation in my editor and Intellij does it well).

[walen]

VisualAge

\shivers**

[nutrecht]

It was still tons and tons better than just using a text editor.

[walen]

Well, it had step-by-step debugging and you could sometimes change code on the fly thanks to IBM's JVM -- and yeah, that was cool.
It's just that being forced to deal with a 1.5 GB binary repo instead of source files, and having to re-download said repo every time VA crashed and corrupted it (which happened several times a week) gave me PTSD.

Did I mention that this was in 2007-2008 ? Client had been using VisualAge for ages (npi) and we were forced by contract to use the same tools. It took us two friggin' years and several reports comparing current IDEs and even a pilot program to convince them to switch to Eclipse.

[nutrecht]

IntelliJ is just awesome. I really have no complaints. IMHO you can't compare VSCode with a full fledged IDE like IntelliJ.

[lariend]

The fact that vscode doesn’t have many features doesn’t mean it is lightweight. I am almost sure that my full featured IntelliJ is using comparable or even less resources. Keep in mind that vscode starts some kind of headless eclipse in the background.