| well I'll repeat
for the newbie, who wants to concentrate on the language it's just unnecessary distraction.
that's why I think that IDE like CodeWarrior (RIP :-( ), Xcode Elipse are just the best for the newbie people you open IDE, you ask to create simple project and you're ready to go, to experiment, to learn you even don't have to think about what javac is and what is command line java tool is! just press one button and run (and here where IDE like Eclipse have a problem you MUST do something special to build jar file so newbie should start to be scared with jar, manifest and all that "nonsense" :-)
you won't teach 3-4 year old how to add / subtract starting with how to digits look like, it's possible but it's not necessary.
also I didn't say that ant isn't necessary but with my almost 12 years java experience I didn't use it too much I was using make, I had big CW projects, Xcode projects and was pretty happy without any ant/maven e.t.c. I can tell you more ant/maven (just like make) in many cases just bring really unnecessary complication to the things and people spend many efforts to fix unreadable make file and little more readable build.xml files, instead of concentrate on the real problems (I have very good example - RXTX project)
and again it's just a tool, even if it's a standard tool then it's JUST a standard tool
if somebody else set ant build.xml file for me, fine I don't have any problem to use it, as I did in the past (and do it now) but I can say I could do the same thing without ant and without any productivity loss
I think it's very good that there are tools such an ant, maven, make e.t.c. so people can use whatever they like but nobody should force anybody to use it.
ant isn't any official standard, many people use it and they are happy with it and I'm happy that they are happy :-)
I know what ant is , but decided not to use it and I'm happy too
With all due respect, why do you believe a "newbie" is better qualified to make this decision than the experienced programmers at Apple?
that is interesting question I'm experienced programmer too and I dare say not less than experienced programmers at Apple I would vote against replacing Java tool project template build system from jam to ant. it looks like Apple made some compromise - Xcode still has Java tool target as jam target, not ant based. that is acceptable (to me at least)
but still I don't think that I should force people (even if those people are newbies :-) ) to use ant (I would give them a choice), especially if there is a something much simpler (and IMHO) better solution for newbie that use small simple projects (they can use ant implicitly of course but newbie shouldn't be concern about HOW java program is built I repeat only at that point in the learning curve, later they will need to learn everything related to the building/deployment process)
besides, programmers are not right people to decide what is a best set of the tools for the newbies teachers are, marketing people are they can listen programmers opinion of course but programmers shouldn't decide what is a best way to teach people how to program. (it's a rare combination: good scientist/professional and good teacher at the same time Richard Feynman, for example, was such an exception)
but that's just my opinion
On Mar 16, 2008, at 5:31 PM, Sherm Pendley wrote: On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Dmitry Markman <email@hidden> wrote:
Personally i think that it was a mistake
to create default Java tool template project as ant based
Um - no.
Xcode isn't the only game in town for Java development. Java developers use a variety of tools, and the Java community has collectively settled on ant as the "rosetta stone" that allows all of those different tools to work together. Since they all can use ant as the "under the hood" build tool, it doesn't matter if you're using Xcode, someone else is using Eclipse on Linux, and a third team member is using NetBeans on Windows.
that means that people who are new to Xcode or
Java or both must know something that is not necessary for the beginning
and it has nothing to do with Java as a language per se
Ant *is* necessary for a Java developer. It's not part of the language, but it *is* part of the overall environment.
ant it's just a tool for building applications and as such is
something secondary.
It's not "just a tool," it's the standard tool for building Java applications.
that ant just unnecessary "scares" newbies that's all
With all due respect, why do you believe a "newbie" is better qualified to make this decision than the experienced programmers at Apple?
sherm--
|