Write gui programatically, or using an advanced gui editor (Java Swing)?

Question

I am planning to write a Swing-based application (using Netbeans 6.8).

It seems that Netbeans has a very advanced GUI Editor... Still I have my doubts regarding the code generated by it. Additionally I don't like the fact the part of the code is locked (still I understand the need).

Has anybody used Netbeans GUI Editor with success ? Does it "scale" ?

Answer 1

Yes, the NetBeans GUI builder is one of the finest around. I was particularly impressed with how well it handles the infamous GridBagLayout.

Borland JBuilder was in my experience the very best round-trip GUI editor; if I remember correctly, it produced code without "locked areas" and would usually continue to work gracefully with GUI code that you had manually tweaked.

Still, I have yet to find a Java Swing GUI editor that doesn't occasionally choke on a complex layout, i.e. enter a state where further editing is no longer feasible and/or requires some backing up or fixing.

Thus, I prefer to hand-code all my GUIs. Heinz Kabutz of JavaSpecialists tells me his GUI editor is vim. However, I admit that most of my other friends and colleagues consider me crazy for doing this.