Anyone familiar with Visual Age?

[kamper]

Ok, so I just started a new job as a java programmer and much to my horror I'm using a java version that has been oficially retired for some time (1.2) and an ide that has been unsupported for almost 2 and a half years.

I can live with it, but the one thing I'd like to figure out a little better is Visual Age's code repository model. Because it's been dead for so long I'm having trouble finding documentation on it and the help files don't seem to have been installed on my workstation. Does anyone have any experience with VA or know of any good documentation/tutorials?

 

[Spydermag68]

Goolge is your friend

I had to use VA for C and TPF coding at a job I had several years ago. It was a pain to work with.

 

[znaps]

I've used it a lot, but not all the features of it. The repository system is called ENVY and I liked it a lot.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Spydermag68
Goolge is your friend

I had to use VA for C and TPF coding at a job I had several years ago. It was a pain to work with.

I have googled . The most relevant things I had found were IBM's site with tutorials on how to migrate away from VA, some college class tutorials and reviews saying how good VA is.

However, your link was the kick in the pants that I needed and I have now found a few resources buried a little deeper on IBM's site and thanks to znaps and the word "envy" I have something a little more specific to search for. Thanks guys

And for the record, I think the whole ide is a piece of s*%t and it's only saving grace is its tight integration with the app server. I think the repository model is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, partly because it makes code discovery extremely difficult. If the ide was smarter (more like eclipse is now) then I could use it to do nice searches, or if I could actually have java files on my hard drive then I could at least resort to grepping. As it is now, it seems like a whole lot of work has been done to make it more complicated by dividing the view into minute pieces like member variables and methods but nothing has been done with those brains to make navigation easier.

Enough ranting though, because I've only used it for a short time so far and it's a dead product anyways (or so I hope).

 

[znaps]

You'll like it when you get used to it. Being able to version and compare with any little change you made previously all inside the IDE is really useful. When I began using Eclipse I searched all over for a similar system but couldn't find one. A local CVS NT server is the closest I can get.

 

[kamper]

I can get along fine doing visual diffs of previous versions using eclipse and cvs. Eclipse has a built in cvs client and a built in visual differ, but in my last job I used WinCVS and Araxis Merge which combine very nicely. Unfortunately, Merge is proprietary. I imagine I'll get used to VA but there's no way I'm going to like it. It's far too deficient in the actual navigation and editing processes compared to Eclipse.