So Long To The Solo DeveloperSo Long To The Solo Developer

Borland Software Corp. last week debuted JBuilder 2006, a new release of the integrated Java development environment with advanced peer-to-peer collaboration capabilities.

Development tools from major vendors frequently provide team collaboration capabilities, such as checking code in and out of a central repository. But JBuilder 2006 will let two geographically separated programmers share a screen and work simultaneously on the same code, identifying bugs or correcting glitches.

Being able to work on shared code in real time "is a tremendous addition" to the development toolset, says Kevin Dean, application services manager for Dolphin Data Development Ltd., a contract developer for manufacturing and logistics applications.

Dean's development team is widely distributed geographically and infrequently meets face to face during the course of a project. "People working on different pieces of code--the user interface versus the back-end business logic--can work together to debug how [the software pieces] work together," Dean says. JBuilder 2006 also will be useful as a development teaching tool, he says.

A bare-bones version of JBuilder, the foundation version, is available for free download. A developer's version is priced at $500, and an enterprise version is priced at $3,500 per seat.