Re:Hard disks
by
Hop-Frog
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's not JBuilder. It's a new IDE from IBM/OTI. The base platform is open source (OSI approved, I believe), then companies add their proprietary plugins on top of that (like IBM and Rational). Or you can use a variety of free plugins.
The concept is basically the same as NetBeans--it just seems (may not be true) that a lot more companies have decided to back Eclipse. The Eclipse folks just took a different path for their IDEs. Very cool that we have a choice between so many good IDEs that are open source.
Eclipse, Vim, and Netbeans
by
revscat
·
· Score: 4, Informative
First off, nice post. It helps that I agree with just about everything you said. When you compare Eclipse with Netbeans, Eclipse is much faster, no matter how you measure that: load time, compile time, reponsiveness of the GUI, etc. Plus, it doesn't have every single possible bell and whistle available pre-installed. I hate the fact that Netbeans loads every single Java thingamajig that has ever been invented. So Netbeans is out.
I still enjoy Vim, but I have Eclipse configured so that I edit Java files with the Eclipse editor, but XML and.properties files are still opened with Vim. It also helps that ^S not only saves, but compiles the current file. Another strong point of Eclipse is the robust history mechanism is has, sort of a built-in single-user CVS. Want to be able to compare your current code with what you saved last Thursday? No problemo.
All in all, nice IDE. I never liked Netbeans and most of the other free Java editors (such as JEdit) are just enhanced text editors with no real benefits over Vim.
Re:Installation, bugs, first impressions
by
its_me_ken_lai
·
· Score: 3, Informative
On Windows (NT 4.0 SP6), I didn't get any errors except when I tried to build some big projects (Out of memory error), adding "-vmargs -Xmx256M" to the startup command fixed that.
54MB is huge, but the convenience that the editor brings make it worth the download.
Best thing I like so far is the organize imports feature (it automatically finds classes you have used in the library and and writes import statements for you automatically), no more api lookup and then copy/paste the package names, and it writes the import statements with each class that's used listed line by line so you know exactly what classes you're using in your code.
Only thing I don't like now is the lack of external directory classpath support. Java allows classpath that ends with a directory but Eclipse forces you to jar up your libraries, which is not a major problem in itself but just inconvenient.
Speed is definitely acceptable (on Windows at least). Of course it's no vi's or notepad's speed but then again which IDE is?
Swing in Java 1.4 has improved by a huge amount. I suspect that they have handed off more of the real work to the AWT level, but how ever they have done it, it is a great improvement.
-- Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Here are screenshots
by
boa13
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I too was quite surprised about the missing screenshots. So, I made some screenshots of Eclipse/Motif. Copy them as long as you want, I hereby give away any copyright I could have had on them. Besides, they won't stay forver on my web space, as soon as I need the space, they're gone.
I have saved my mistakes. Now look at the ToDo list. And look at the red zones in the right editor sidebar, too. You can click on them to get quickly to the erroneous lines.
Impressions of eclipse (a few months with it)
by
Necroman
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I do have to agree with boa13, Eclipse lacks some features that are nice when developing java as a side project or for school. If you were to have to design some large complex GUI interface, doing it in Eclipse would suck big time. But first I'll do some history.
As many of you know, Eclipse is written and developed by IBM, all open source (YAY!!). IBMs last product was the hideous VisualAge for Java. This IDE was an abomination to the world of programming. I was forced to use it at school, and I will never forgive my instructor for that. You were stuck in one view, which was nothing like a file view (they ducplicated the view in Eclipse, but it works a lot better now). Getting VisualAge to show you an entire file was a pain in the butt, and if you were able to get to that point, if you messed up any syntax in that file (such as messing up a class declaration or having one to many closing brackets) VisualAge would not let you save the file nor tell you what was wrong. Next with it, all the Java files were hidden in one large database file that VisualAge maintained, exported also sucked.
Ok, so IBM decided drop Visual which was a $800 program or so for professional. Eclipse offers a wide range of features and settings. From here out, I'll be comparing Eclipse to VisualCafe (which I have used most to VisualAge). Eclipse has a decent line formatter that I have been very happy with. It is nothing robust like JIndent, but that is something I hope they would improve upon. Most of the auto formating features are comperable to all other IDEs I have ever used. As far as hotkeys with eclipse, some of them are not as intuitive as others. There is a common hotkey (ctrl-tab), which most IDEs will switch between open files, and eclipse does not follow this; they use ctrl-F6 (dunno). But after you get past that, most of the hotkeys are pretty good.
Speed: This is one thing I have to say I enjoy over VisualCafe. There is the use of SWT vs AWT, which does help a lot. But as far as how it handles the class/method browsers, it works quite a faster. It seems to pick up errors quickly and compiles just like anything else out there.
Eclipse has some other fun built in features such as CVS browser (I think), pluggins, and lots of different views to choose from, all of which are quite customizable. For the Java Virtual Machine, you can choose between 1.3.1 and 1.4, which can cause problems if you have to change code that was originally written in 1.2 or 1.1.7 even. When compiling code, it is smart and will only compile changed files, or code in other files that has been affected.
My use of Eclipse: I work in a dept of about 50 Java developers, which I am now trying to move to Eclipse. Here we do all of our visual development by hand, as to be able to get the exact behaviors we want. I work with projects that have 1500+ files in them, and a few files that are 7000+ lines. Eclipse handles the files well for browsing, but when it comes to a 7000+ line file, it can tend to lag a little (on my P2-233Mhz machine). At any one time Eclipse is running, it seems to use around 60-70 megs of memory, 20 more then VisualCafe, but should not be a big deal for most developers out there.
Eclipse seems to be a very good IDE, and I have been happy with how it has performed. I have been using snapshots for a few months now, and it has become more stable, and I have yet to have it crash on me since its release (in that whole day Friday). Eclipse is a well suited IDE for large project development, as well as small, but seems to be designed to help with large projects.
I am looking forward to more fixes features that IBM and partners will release with Eclipse (such as being able to print SELECTED text).
-- Its not what it is, its something else.
Re:You can't even open a file!
by
revscat
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Part of the reason this is done is because Eclipse maintains a history of your files, a la CVS. So if you want to compare what your file looked like last Thursday to your current version, you can. The import requirement bugged me at first, too, but it's really not that big of a deal, especially once you start doing all of your work with Eclipse. After that you just create files in the project and build an Ant script to push them to wherever they need to go.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not JBuilder. It's a new IDE from IBM/OTI. The base platform is open source (OSI approved, I believe), then companies add their proprietary plugins on top of that (like IBM and Rational). Or you can use a variety of free plugins.
The concept is basically the same as NetBeans--it just seems (may not be true) that a lot more companies have decided to back Eclipse. The Eclipse folks just took a different path for their IDEs. Very cool that we have a choice between so many good IDEs that are open source.
First off, nice post. It helps that I agree with just about everything you said. When you compare Eclipse with Netbeans, Eclipse is much faster, no matter how you measure that: load time, compile time, reponsiveness of the GUI, etc. Plus, it doesn't have every single possible bell and whistle available pre-installed. I hate the fact that Netbeans loads every single Java thingamajig that has ever been invented. So Netbeans is out.
I still enjoy Vim, but I have Eclipse configured so that I edit Java files with the Eclipse editor, but XML and .properties files are still opened with Vim. It also helps that ^S not only saves, but compiles the current file. Another strong point of Eclipse is the robust history mechanism is has, sort of a built-in single-user CVS. Want to be able to compare your current code with what you saved last Thursday? No problemo.
All in all, nice IDE. I never liked Netbeans and most of the other free Java editors (such as JEdit) are just enhanced text editors with no real benefits over Vim.
On Windows (NT 4.0 SP6), I didn't get any errors except when I tried to build some big projects (Out of memory error), adding "-vmargs -Xmx256M" to the startup command fixed that.
54MB is huge, but the convenience that the editor brings make it worth the download.
Best thing I like so far is the organize imports feature (it automatically finds classes you have used in the library and and writes import statements for you automatically), no more api lookup and then copy/paste the package names, and it writes the import statements with each class that's used listed line by line so you know exactly what classes you're using in your code.
Only thing I don't like now is the lack of external directory classpath support. Java allows classpath that ends with a directory but Eclipse forces you to jar up your libraries, which is not a major problem in itself but just inconvenient.
Speed is definitely acceptable (on Windows at least). Of course it's no vi's or notepad's speed but then again which IDE is?
Ken Lai
Swing in Java 1.4 has improved by a huge amount. I suspect that they have handed off more of the real work to the AWT level, but how ever they have done it, it is a great improvement.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Well, that's it! Enjoy! There's also an interesting wiki about Eclipse.
I do have to agree with boa13, Eclipse lacks some features that are nice when developing java as a side project or for school. If you were to have to design some large complex GUI interface, doing it in Eclipse would suck big time. But first I'll do some history.
As many of you know, Eclipse is written and developed by IBM, all open source (YAY!!). IBMs last product was the hideous VisualAge for Java. This IDE was an abomination to the world of programming. I was forced to use it at school, and I will never forgive my instructor for that. You were stuck in one view, which was nothing like a file view (they ducplicated the view in Eclipse, but it works a lot better now). Getting VisualAge to show you an entire file was a pain in the butt, and if you were able to get to that point, if you messed up any syntax in that file (such as messing up a class declaration or having one to many closing brackets) VisualAge would not let you save the file nor tell you what was wrong. Next with it, all the Java files were hidden in one large database file that VisualAge maintained, exported also sucked.
Ok, so IBM decided drop Visual which was a $800 program or so for professional. Eclipse offers a wide range of features and settings. From here out, I'll be comparing Eclipse to VisualCafe (which I have used most to VisualAge). Eclipse has a decent line formatter that I have been very happy with. It is nothing robust like JIndent, but that is something I hope they would improve upon. Most of the auto formating features are comperable to all other IDEs I have ever used. As far as hotkeys with eclipse, some of them are not as intuitive as others. There is a common hotkey (ctrl-tab), which most IDEs will switch between open files, and eclipse does not follow this; they use ctrl-F6 (dunno). But after you get past that, most of the hotkeys are pretty good.
Speed: This is one thing I have to say I enjoy over VisualCafe. There is the use of SWT vs AWT, which does help a lot. But as far as how it handles the class/method browsers, it works quite a faster. It seems to pick up errors quickly and compiles just like anything else out there.
Eclipse has some other fun built in features such as CVS browser (I think), pluggins, and lots of different views to choose from, all of which are quite customizable. For the Java Virtual Machine, you can choose between 1.3.1 and 1.4, which can cause problems if you have to change code that was originally written in 1.2 or 1.1.7 even. When compiling code, it is smart and will only compile changed files, or code in other files that has been affected.
My use of Eclipse: I work in a dept of about 50 Java developers, which I am now trying to move to Eclipse. Here we do all of our visual development by hand, as to be able to get the exact behaviors we want. I work with projects that have 1500+ files in them, and a few files that are 7000+ lines. Eclipse handles the files well for browsing, but when it comes to a 7000+ line file, it can tend to lag a little (on my P2-233Mhz machine). At any one time Eclipse is running, it seems to use around 60-70 megs of memory, 20 more then VisualCafe, but should not be a big deal for most developers out there.
Eclipse seems to be a very good IDE, and I have been happy with how it has performed. I have been using snapshots for a few months now, and it has become more stable, and I have yet to have it crash on me since its release (in that whole day Friday). Eclipse is a well suited IDE for large project development, as well as small, but seems to be designed to help with large projects.
I am looking forward to more fixes features that IBM and partners will release with Eclipse (such as being able to print SELECTED text).
Its not what it is, its something else.
Part of the reason this is done is because Eclipse maintains a history of your files, a la CVS. So if you want to compare what your file looked like last Thursday to your current version, you can. The import requirement bugged me at first, too, but it's really not that big of a deal, especially once you start doing all of your work with Eclipse. After that you just create files in the project and build an Ant script to push them to wherever they need to go.