Hello,
i have to work away from my desktop computer from time to time (for instance on trips). It is a low end laptop. I can use Eclipse but it is awfully slow.
Is there a better choice? If possible not something like vi oder emacs.
Laptop:
512 MB DDR RAM
Intel Pentium M 760 2.0 GHz
Windows XP SP3
There is no possibility to add more RAM
How low end is it? I used to use IntelliJ Idea and loved, it also ran faster than eclipse for me. DrJava is also very small and light weight. But personally I prefer vim + javac the best. :)
Netbeans is a little less sluggish than Eclipse, but it's a huge memory hog.
Emacs is always a fine choice too.
Is there a chance of upgrading the laptop's memory? CPU doesn't matter much, but IDEs are nearly always huge memory hogs (even EMACS was considered that in its time).
I'd say that you can run eclipse quite well in 1GB (maybe even 512MB) using windows XP, if you don't do huge projects and don't run any other massive apps at the same time.
I haven't tried it yet, but recently stumbled upon JCoder, which is a Java IDE written in C++. Minimum memory requirement stated is 512MB.
Also, you could consider running an older version of Eclipse, and/or trying to tune Eclipse to run better on your hardware. A Google search for "Eclipse performance tuning" is turning up a bunch of pages with suggestions that may be applicable.
you can use netbeans with only the modules your using (same thing with eclipse) or geany (using linux?) not a ide but a really nice text editor with ide functionalities other option is using netbeans/eclipse older versions that are way more efficient
The older versions of IntelliJ IDEA like 3,4,5 can run easily on that memory - provided you don't have a huge project, and are willing to miss out on some features in the new versions.
Text editor plus the Java console are your best tools if you are on a low end computer and you don't need debugging and such.
It really depends on your project more than the actual piece of hardware, so you need to think about it with pros and cons.
Good luck.
Get more memory if you can.
SciTE, JUnit, Ant and jvisualvm used to run fine on my notebook, which had 768M, or the 2GB/1GHz netbook I now use. On the rare occasions you must use a debugger, then there's always jdb. The problems I've had with IDEs on notebooks are more to do with screen estate rather than performance. OTOH I gave up on Netbeans as its text editor was too slow on a 'standard built business desktop' machine last time I was contracting.
I actually don't consider that a "low end" machine.
I've used Eclipse and NetBeans on a P3 1.2 Ghz 512M RAM laptop, and they both run. They are a bit sluggish, but usable. Between the 2 I'd say NetBeans was less sluggish, probably because there aren't as many UI elements and frames all over.
My primary home laptop is a Toshiba 512M Pentium M 2 Ghz, and Eclipse runs fine on it (So does Visual Studio 2008).
It seems with these big IDEs, RAM > CPU at influencing speed.
Edit: it may be worth noting that my P3 1.2 Ghz laptop is running Ubuntu and my Pentium M 2 Ghz is running Win XP.
Eclipse is noticably faster in Linux. I once tested large project build times in:
WinXP running Eclipse -vs- WinXP Running VMWare Workstation Running Ubunty Running Eclipse
Suprisingly, Ubuntu in VMWare was consistently much faster, about 30-sec faster over what was a 7-minute build process on Windows.
You Could try JEdit, while it is not a true IDE, it does support a ton of Java centric functions like source formatting, syntax highlighting, and a java debugger, and bunch of other functions all of which can be added/subtracted via a plugin system. I've used it in the past when I wanted something with more power than notepad, but less bulky than Eclipse.
It's all open source and free, and portable to most systems since it is written in Java.
First of all, memory is the problem.
Linux performs fairly well with low memory, but pc isn't great and mac is abysmal! (if you have 512M and less than 4gb hard disk free, it will barely work at all! This is because the mac allocates it's swap from "Free space" on your hard drive)
Macs are easy to upgrade though. I got 4gb for my laptop at fry's for less than $100, and the slots are inside the battery compartment. After the upgrade, my bottom-of-the-line mac has never once given me a single time to be concerned about its' performance.
PCs are more difficult than the mac, but vary based on model.
Okay, so let's say you don't want to upgrade.
The most important thing to do then is to be sure you have a local copy of the Javadocs. You'll miss them VERY QUICKLY if you don't have eclipse/netbeans.
After that, who cares what editor you use. Personally I'd use the built-in editor because I'm not actually that impressed with coloring and auto-formatting.
If you need context coloring, I guess vim would be the most light-weight editor with a Java mode (at least I believe it has one). JEdit is fairly light-weight, and so is emacs and I know they both have java modes.
For builds just use ant or maybe maven, building in the IDE is nice but overrated.
The biggest thing, as I said, is always have the javadocs on a browser bookmark.
gvim + ctags + ant
You will run out of memory if using almost ANY modern AppServer anyway.
I hope you're not.
I have been using E Text Editor, a port of TextMate and am loving it. Comes with built in syntax highlighting, snippets, can download TextMate bundles and fully customizable/extendible in ruby.
A nice lightweight editor is Notepad++. Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendlyness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.
I occasionally use TextPad for simple Java programs. It's very lightweight, free (well, nagware, but inexpensive to buy) and has a simple to use compile and run option. Also syntax highlighting, though I've never used it.
The important question is what features you think should be in a good IDE.
Code completion? JavaDoc in mouse overs? "Go to definition"? Built-in debugger? Syntax highlighting? Incremental compilation?
A good place to start, would be to get the code to build with ant as it allows you to move this out of the IDE where it hopefully needs less space to run.
I believe the requirements of older versions of JBuilder were quite low. You might want to buy a used one for this purpose.
I guess it is the JCreator Pro.. The free version, JCreator lite is OK but have limited capabilities.