What is the best IDE for development on the BlackBerry? [closed]

Question

I know the blackberry has a custom IDE but if memory serves me it's quite a sub par IDE. Does anyone know if there's a different IDE out there for the device?

Answer 1

For 'native' BlackBerry app development (i.e. Java app development), there are basically 4 options:

1. RIM's JDE - pretty much a terrible editor, but the most stable, most feature-full (from a BlackBerry perspective) solution.
2. RIM's JDE Plugin for Eclipse - you get all the niceties of the Eclipse environment, but there are a lot of problems.
3. Netbeans with the Mobility Pack - I haven't really seen anyone use this for a while, but a few developers swore by it a couple of years ago
4. Custom Eclipse/JDE environment - using ant scripts and RIM's JDWP debugger interface (the component package section on that page). This used to be the only way to go for Eclipse development for BlackBerry before the JDE Plugin

Options 3 and 4 I haven't seen used for a long time, not sure if they're still viable - though I don't see why #4 wouldn't be.

I used #4 for a long time, until RIM put out their plugin. While there are still a lot of problems with it, for me the productivity gains of working with something like Eclipse outweigh them.

So either 1 or 2, with the caveat that you should chose one or the other for your whole team, as they're really not compatible with each other (differences in project structure and how they handle resources). You can move from 1 to 2 easily, but not really the other way around.