This past week's java.net poll, which was somewhat playfully suggested to me by Java Champion Adam Bien via Twitter last week, had the result that I expected: NetBeans is developers' favorite Oracle/Sun supported IDE, with JDeveloper trailing by a long margin.
In case you don't know, Adam Bien really likes NetBeans. In September he wrote a post, Why Oracle Should Continue to Push NetBeans, that drew wide readership (and 28 comments thus far). So, that's part of why he told me he considered such a poll "somehow relevant."
Getting back to our poll, a total of 561 votes were cast, making this one of the more popular recent java.net polls. The exact question and results were:
What is your favorite Oracle/Sun supported IDE?
3% (18 votes) - JDeveloper
77% (434 votes) - NetBeans
2% (14 votes) - They're both good
6% (33 votes) - I don't know
11% (62 votes) - Other
As you can see, the voting indeed was not close.
The two comments that were posted were both related to the "they're both good" option. jwenting said "It's hard for me to decide which of them I like least, which would automatically make me like the other better."
On the other hand, melbeltagy considers both IDEs good, while also partially criticizing the premise of the poll:
It's not a matter of which one is better or which one I like the most. Each one of them serves a specific category of products. I mean that JDeveloper is the best IDE for the current Oracle products (Oracle DB, JBoss, and Oracle SOA suite, etc). On the other hand, NetBeans is the best IDE for Glassfish, MySQL, OpenESB, etc.. If this poll would be used for any reason in the decision, which I hope not, of which IDE would Oracle continue supporting; this would be wrong. In my opinion, Oracle/Sun should support and continue using Glassfish/JBoss, OracleDB/MySQL, JDeveloper/Netbeans, and the rest of the software stack that Sun currently supports and which we have no clue what would happen to them.
All very good points, in my view. In defense of our poll, I'll just say that java.net polls are not intended to influence any decision-making process whatsoever. And I don't think anyone -- Oracle, or even an individual developer -- would make a decision relating to JDeveloper or NetBeans based on this poll.
To reiterate, java.net polls are voluntary surveys, not scientific samplings of the developer community. Their results are suitable for casual discussion, but cannot be said to represent hard facts. Primarily, in my opinion, java.net polls are largely for fun. Hopefully, they stimulate some thought, and once in a while also some interesting conversation.
Also remember: java.net polls are "owned" by the java.net community, not by the editor. Whenever someone presents an idea for a poll, I try to create a poll based on that idea. I figure that if someone is interested enough in asking the community a question that they take the time to contact me with an idea, then it's my duty to take that proposal seriously, and try to frame it into a new poll as soon as possible thereafter. So, if you have an idea for a java.net poll, please consider submitting it to me, either using our Submit Content form, or by direct messaging me on Twitter, or via some other means.
All of this said, I still think this week's poll serves the purpose that Adam intended: it's an anecdotal statement of why the idea of significantly cutting back on NetBeans support, or dropping the project entirely, should give Oracle some pause: doing so might have some adverse repercussions within the Java community -- not a good thing, and also not what Oracle seeks.
My guess is that Adam hopes Oracle gives these results at least a glance. And I don't see why they wouldn't. But, making a decision based on this poll? Of course not...
New poll: most important java.net project
Our new java.net poll asks What's the most important java.net project going forward? This is partly a response to the sudden movement in the Oracle acquisition of Sun. With Oracle owning Sun (and hence, paying the bills for java.net), is there a specific java.net project that stands out in importance? Voting will be open for the next week.
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