Why should we have to tune the JVM’s memory parameters to run NetBeans acceptably?
Many Java developers have at least some experience with the NetBeans IDE. Although I prefer Eclipse for Java development, I do try to use NetBeans occasionally to keep up to date with their developments. The last time I tried it, the results were rather terrible. I found NetBeans 6.0 Beta 1 to be extremely slow, even on a modern system with a multicore CPU and gigabytes of RAM. It wasn’t just a matter of it not running well for certain intensive operations. It was sluggish and barely usable for even just editing text.
In response to my earlier article, a number of people suggested various JVM parameters that could be altered to improve the performance of NetBeans. And just today I noticed another blog post about setting such JVM parameters to improve the runtime performance of NetBeans. Now, I haven’t tried such tuning myself, to see if it would improve NetBeans for me. At this point, I don’t care. I have no reason to use NetBeans, as Eclipse works far better.
However, I think it’s pathetic that we have to resort to tuning JVM memory usage parameters just to run NetBeans in a somewhat-usable manner. We’re not talking about some multi-protocol, high-scalability application server software that handles thousands of simultaneous users, where such tuning is understandable. We’re talking about NetBeans, which is basically a glorified text editor. Given the immense processing power offered even by PCs from five years ago, there’s absolutely no justifiable reason why we should have to be manually setting such JVM parameters.
I’ve never had to manually set such parameters when running Microsoft’s various Visual Studio incarnations. I’ve never had to set them when running Eclipse, or JDeveloper, or JBuilder. Other modern IDEs, offering a comparable feature set and some even developed using essentially the same technology as NetBeans, manage to run fine without manual tuning.
The NetBeans developers really must re-evaluate the performance of their software. At the very least, it should not be necessary to resort to tuning such a large number of Java virtual machine parameters to get even just acceptable, let alone good, performance out of NetBeans.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
But Eclipse can require memory tuning parms as well. I think what you’re pointing out is that it’s a shame that many programs using Java require memory tuning. Memory tuning should be relegated to optimization, instead of a pre-req to run the program in the first place. It’s a Java problem; Eclipse, NetBeans, any web container you might use, etc all inherit the problem from Java.
March 10th, 2008 at 5:23 am
> But Eclipse can require memory tuning parms as well.
Sure, it *can* but it generally doesn’t. Out of the box, Eclipse runs reasonably well. The author’s point here (which you appear to have completely sidestepped) is that Netbeans doesn’t.