Customer Reviews
WTF? 
2000-07-10
You know the theory. Heads up programming will replace heads down programming. Everybody will use beans at design time. Guess what? Its another science project with more hype than reality. After 4 days of fiddling, I finally got an Visual age to author a bean that adds two numbers. Another fine productivity breakthrough. The visual age product only shows one method/property at a time in the IDE. What were they thinking? This is probably the worse IDE I have ever tried....And I have evaluated *MANY* of them.
One of the best java development environments arround 
2000-06-13
I have been using Visual Age for Java for a while now (since version 1.0) and have found it to be evolving very well.
It currently supports all the major Java standards from Enterprise java beans to Java Server pages and all this within the most consistent user interface I have seen in this sort of environments. It integrates very nicely with other IBM tools like Websphere studio, without locking you in.
The projects, packages, classes and interfaces are stored in a virtual workspace. This resides in a special file, which is the only drawback to the product (you cannot access the files except from within VAJ unless you export them), but that's the price you pay for extensive search capabilities, versioning and integration.
An excelent product overall.
Best IDE for JAVA 2 Enterprise Edition 2001-03-22
Well I used Visual age for java 3.0 on my previous project ... and it was very nice ... It's very easy to create EJBs .. JSPs and testing all those in this IDE it self. .... and I read this book to find out all answers and possible soultions to problems I faced ... It's a nice book and Nice IDE too...
I recommand it for all those who want to use or using J2EE .. Check it out and find how ease is to create J2EE applications.
Brilliant IDE, but requires a different development style 2001-01-09
Visual Age (latest version is 3.5) is a very productive Java environment, but prepared to change the way you work. It's greatest strengths are: - A great debugger that lets you edit, recompile, inspect variables while you're running your program. It's hard to oversell how great this is -- but it if you are in to XP, you'll like this - A great repository that keeps versions of your methods and classes while you work so you can easily find older versions of things that worked before you 'fixed' them - A rich collection of class, package and project browsers. If you're used to a one-screen-at-a-time IDE, you'll take a while to adjust. - Good feedback on errors (once you've compiled your method)
But there's some catches that really bug people until they get used to them: - VA views development as a method-by-method process; each time you exit a method you save it - The code repository is not file-based, but is logically organized around projects, packages and classes. You'll need to export and import to see it as files. - The UI builder is fine for building widgets, but a lot of people don't like how it handles events with its bean wiring. (My advice, use the UI painter, but code the controller-specific behavior the old-fashioned way)
Finally, there are a couple of things it needs to improve: - integration with other source control is less than perfect - it doesn't support JDK 1.3 yet
Bottom line is that it's the best out there
Better than notepad.... but barely 
2000-10-19
The only real advantage to using Visual Age for Java is its support for team development. Compared to most environments, this IDE is simply behind the times....
The some of the good features are that many people can work on the same class at the same time without any problems, it gives you one function (not one class file) to work on at a time. Integrated JAVADOC and quick and easy formatting.
Some of the bad things are that the IDE does not assist the developer with things that people have come to expect, like drop down lists and the Navigation is very difficult at best!
Overall.... If you have to work in a team, this is something you might want to look into, if not, most other IDE's are better.
IDE which puts VJ++, JBuilder, and the rest to shame. 2000-08-09
Even though it is litered with IBM technology integration, Visual Age for Java is the best rapid development environment imaginable for Java 1.1.8. If you want Java 2, they have that as well in the form of an early adopters version on their site. Keep in mind that IBM just recently came to an agreement with Sun Microsystems over use of it's Enterprise Edition of the Java platform (1.2.1), so you should soon see that added to this IDE as well as a seperate download for IBM. If you are using Websphere, Visual Age for C++, DB2, or CICS, this package is a must for your business. Buy a lot of licenses, when a developer sees this on your computer he's going to want a copy of his own!
IBM VisualAge for Java - tried it - loved it! 
2000-08-02
I have tried several IDE's for Java ( J++, VisualAge, Java Workshop, Forte'). I found VisualAge to be very friendly - AND - the apps ran as expected. I have a few quibbles. I'm not too sure about the multiple window environments called browsers. There seems to be one for everything with only some differences between them. In addition, I'd like to see it generate an HTML trial page to test run the app as there are differences in runtime output/interaction in a JSP page and the applet viewer. The online documentation search engine sucks. I had lots better luck over at Sun's java site finding what I needed (thank you Sun). Overall, though, I rate VisualAge as my primary Java app builder IDE - no question on that.
