GUI Builders

Anima

Just wondering what peoples opinions are on GUI builders such as the one built into Netbeans or Eclipse (only 2 I've used). Time saver or just makes a mess of things?

Tbh I don't like the code output they produce and often you waste more time using the menus in the builder then just coding it yourself.

pauldiv

I guess you are using Java?
I have used Netbeans and Eclipse before and thought Netbeans was good.

The documentation is great and there are a lot of guides on the Netbeans site.
If I was doing Java I would learn this GUI builder inside out first then look at using Eclipse. The last time I compared the two I looked at the Netbeans offering and just felt that it was better for students and learners.

Eclipse is a huge project and I kept getting lost in their site.

I dont know what you mean about the code output. Is it the formatting or is there lots of extra code spat out by the bulders?

I have also used Visual Studio for C# programming and it outputs a lot of GUI code that appears superflouous but is used by the runtime.

Most of the extra code could be ignored and the programs were easily debugged and deployable as desktop applications. Very neat.

I did a Java project once and coded the GUI by hand in Notepad and needless to say it was very hard going.

Anima

outputs a lot of GUI code that appears superflouous but is used by the runtime

Yeah thats what I mean about the code output. Sometimes it seems to do things awkwardly which for me makes it hard to debug when things go wrong. I suppose it takes a bit of getting used to. I agree though I like Netbeans over Eclipses version.

I don't mind doing it manually for small apps but I find the layout managers to be quite fiddly and it takes a bit of maneouvering to get it the way you like. I suppose thats one benefit of the WYSIWYG editors.

DeJaMo

You'll find most companies use GUI editors for the simple reason - they save on time and effort. I'm a senior programmer and mostly deal with Java Swing and J2EE front end technologies. I would never ever write code myself when the editor will do it for me, only in extreme cases would I go into the code to fix stuff... editor choice doesn't really bother me but sometimes your restricted to use whichever one your company decides on...

euph

I used a builder called Jigloo (eclipse plugin) for a 3rd year project application. Quite easy to pick up, free for not commercial use. Code it produced was quite clean (although I didn't push it to any limits).

pauldiv

DeJaMo wrote: »

You'll find most companies use GUI editors for the simple reason - they save on time and effort. I'm a senior programmer and mostly deal with Java Swing and J2EE front end technologies. I would never ever write code myself when the editor will do it for me, only in extreme cases would I go into the code to fix stuff... editor choice doesn't really bother me but sometimes your restricted to use whichever one your company decides on...

Yes if you are using Java Swing a good IDE is essential because the project I hand coded was an electronics tutorial that used Swing components like sliders to continuously update the screen in response to user input.
I started with notepad and then moved over to JCreator. That helped with the project management but I still found it very time consuming when coding.

By hand coding I needed to study the Java Swing libraries in depth and became a better programmer for my efforts but now I would use any good GUI builder to put a java or c# project together.

I hand code in php when building web sites and use a great editor called PSpad. I find this way of working is faster when you modularise everything and use includes. I am looking at Dreamweaver to see if I can find a good reason for using it.