Eclipse 2.1 Released

insomnia writes "Eclipse 2.1 has been unleashed to the world today. Eclipse is an open-source Java IDE environnement and I highly recommend it; developing under your favorite text editor feels like comparing Eclipse to the dinosaur age - I can't live without refactoring now. You can see what's new in this release here."

Comments

Good stuff

[PhilipChapman]

I really liked eclipse 2.0, with the improve c# plugin, but that gtk-2.2 progress bar bug was a pita...I tried one of the rc's and it was fixed though. Look forward to using this version.

Re:Good stuff

[Randolpho]

Yes, very good stuff. I'll gladly love nearly every new feature.

But.....

Still no drag and drop editing? I'm dissapointed. That's the one feature I've been pining for. :(

Java

[wordisms]

Is java really worth developing for? I think it is great for its ease of programming and library support, but it's requirement of running on virtual machines leads to huge memory requirements for the simplest programs, and GC while nice, can lead to slow apps.

Why would anyone want to write a serious "enterprise" application in Java vs. say C++??

Re:Java

[Dr. Bent]

My company's entire business model is centered around making enterprise applicatons in Java. It's extremely efficent and performant for server-side apps and web services. We also have Java client side apps that are as fast and memory efficent as any of our competitor's products (that are not written in Java).

Java will run as fast or as slow as you make it. We've re-written C applicatons in Java and actually made them run faster by improving the architecture. If you try to write a Java app using C/C++ programming techniques, it will suck. If you take the time to learn how Java is supposed to work, you'll be 10 times more productive and create a product of equal (or better) quality.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

Is java really worth developing for? I think it is great for its ease of programming and library support, but it's requirement of running on virtual machines leads to huge memory requirements for the simplest programs, and GC while nice, can lead to slow apps.

I would not recommend Java for small programs. But my company sells a scientific application that is written in Java. It handles large amounts of data and applies clustering algorithms that are computationally intensive. Compared with the sheer amounts of work that our own code is doing, the VM overhead is hardly noticeable. Our customer base is evenly split between academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Almost a third of our installs are on the Mac, and there's a few percent who are using Linux. The rest are running Windows.

Our leading competitor sells a Windows-only product. We have three times as much market share.

Why would anyone want to write a serious "enterprise" application in Java vs. say C++??

Because C++ sucks.

Re:Java

[BitwizeGHC]

Actually Java sucks because it doesn't do enough of those things you mentioned.

You want a serious enterprise language? Try LISP or Smalltalk.

Re:Java

[methuseleh]

I'm no programmer... I can hack out ugly code in PHP, Perl, and JavaScript, and that's about it. And I can't answer your question w/ regards to developing in Java...

But... I do know that Eclipse is a general-purpose IDE which happens to be written in Java... You can use Eclipse to develop in other languages by installing the appropriate language plug-in.

I just installed Eclipse last week & I'm going to use it for PHP development...

Re:Java

[rjha94]

its not a question of whether people would like to write enterprise applications in java. most of the consulation industry atleast is already doing that.

I am sure language per se can not be such a deciding factor when designing enterprise applications and the fact that it runs on VM or the fact that users of app would have to purchase Big IRON machines to run it. No, there are never the deciding factors!

Java is certainly not suitable for certain kind of applications but so is any other language. and this false 'macho' sense that i am doing it on metal in 'C/C++' is well false, thats all. [ there would be thousands of instances of brain-damaged C++ code written by brain-damaged programmers!]

Its not that just writing it in C/C++ makes you a more capable programmer! Java is much more cleaner. Things that suck most are primarily in libraries.

And, anyway, extending the logic, why not write everything in assembly ? or make your own ADDER from NAND gates ? or do you know how the electrons tunnel through to make a transistor work ?

Re:Java

[SamBeckett]

Your c++ page certainly shows a certain maturity about you. Bjarne was right on with his response to your email.

Re:Java

[addaon]

Gee, I don't normally troll so blatantly, but you're an idiot. Mods, please mod this down, but not before giving me a fair hearing by reading that link of his. All the way to the painful, immature, and ignorant end.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

You think that's my page?! C++ didn't even exist back when I was in high school.

I especially liked the part where he explains to Bjarne why JavaScript has a better type system.

Re:Java

[Baki]

The bank where I work (30000 employees) uses only mainframe (PL/1) and Java. Gradually mainframe functions are moved to very large (partitioned) Sun servers running solely Java software and Oracle databases.

All business logic for this large enterprise is being developed (or redeveloped) into Java. This has been going on for 3-4 years, and has already proven itself very much.

For "enterprises" the fact that you need 50% more RAM and 20% more CPU compared to C++ is insignificant. UNIX hardware is very cheap compared to mainframes, and especially compared to people. If you get better code that is easier to develop and maintain, it is by far worth it. Also Java offers lots of rich standard API's (in J2EE) that "everyone" uses, avoiding difficult choices and gambles if you base your software on the 'correct' standards.

Since banks often rely on 3rd party software/components (e.g. that implement some reporting according to international banking standards) and all vendors offer components that fit into the std. Java frameworks, there is hardly another option.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

See above; it's not my link. I found it and thought it was funny.

Re:Java

[graveyhead]

Your c++ page certainly shows a certain maturity about you. Bjarne was right on with his response to your email.

I have to agree with this. It seriously must be a troll, but whatever I can't let that stand.

It is unbelievable how rude some people are. I read this guy MillionthMonkey (240664)'s fscking page thinking I might get a well-reasoned report on why, exactly, C++ sucks, possibly similar to the XML sucks article /. posted a few days ago by Tim Bray. Instead what I get is the rantings of a kid barely (if at all) out of college who is complaining more about problems with his school than with the actual limitations of the C++ language. I would have even been willing to put up with "feature X in Java is a great replacement for feature Y in C++ because [insert plausable reasoning here].

It is simply un-fricking-believable that this goddamned script-kiddie can have such disregard for nearly 20 years of computer science, and a language that is virtually ubiquitous. Hey Monkey, if you can't learn C++ (I learned it on my own no teacher required, it's not all THAT hard) I suggest you give up the profession for something a little less stressful. Shoveling shit is nice and doesn't make you do that really hard thing... you know, using that brain.

I cry for the future of my profession :(

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

I wasn't trolling, I just thought the kid's letter to Bjarne and the response he got were amusing.

You're the third person who thought that was a link to my own page. I guess I have to start using those smileys in my posts.

Re:Java

[graveyhead]

Well then, my apologies to you.

sed 's/MillionthMonkey/andraskonya@hotmail.com/g' $last_slashpost > $next_slashdotpost

:)

Re:Java

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I sure hope that wayback machine is still doing its thing in another 4 years when that kid graduates from college. He's sure done a good job of demonstrating his ignorance. Just read his rant on why mozilla is just a way for AOL to steal from opensource programmers. His stuff is just too funny that there is no way it could be a joke.

Re:Java

[Billly Gates]

That is unprofesionaly and rude. If I dislike something I would never insult the author if he/she did alot of work towards it and knows a hell of alot more then I do about the subject.

Especially I would not insult someone that can code rings around you and the kids website. If you do not know much about c++/c then don't bitch. You have no idea what your talking about. Also the kids website mentioned he had a poor instructor who could not even read c++ code. This might have something to do with it.

I know python and javascript and I am learning c++ and perl now. C++ is an incredibly powerfull and langauge. I had no idea I could declare an identifer as type "register" and bypass the ram and use the cpu registers directly! Try that in any other language? For writing cad apps this is essential for speed.

Also I love calling functions by reference and using type "const" identifers to get the speed advantages of using call by reference and protecting the original values. In most programming languages if you use call by reference you could corrupt the orginal value and fuck up the program. Tail recursion is also cool and I am learning that now. Alot of goto statements in c could be gone with it.

C++ rocks and power comes complexity. If you want to create apps simply and quickly use VB. If you want to learn cs and hard core programming learn c/c++.

Re:Java

[Elendur]

"After all, I must be a complete idiot since it's not like I have made my own website or anything, oh wait, I did!"

This is classic.

Re:Java

[WasterDave]

Sir,

An excellent troll, you are to be commended.

Seriously. It looked really clunky to me, but you hooked 'em AND the daft fuckers got modded to +5.

Sweet.

Dave

Re:Java

[TummyX]

I have my doubts as to whether he'll actually graduate.

Re:Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know if it is the incompetence of my teachers and peers OR that C++ sucks ass that I cannot get anything to work.

Or maybe it's the third option: that you're a moron, and should stick FORTRAN or BASIC.

Re:Java

[Groo Wanderer]

" Is java really worth developing for? I think it is great for its ease of programming and library support, but it's requirement of running on virtual machines leads to huge memory requirements for the simplest programs, and GC while nice, can lead to slow apps."

A quick check of pricewatch shows that a 512MB stick of DDR2700 is $49. So for less than $100, you can have a gig. Ram isn't an issue any more. 2GHz+ CPUs are floating in the low hundred dollar range, so CPU power won't be an issue by the time any program started now is released.

A quick look at what java is used for shows it isn't made for prepackaged, store bought programs like Photoshop (Sklyarov), Warcraft (BNetD) or Word (to many to mention, the messages probably cap at a gig in length). These are the domain for C. Java is used for business logic, multi-tiered client/server programming, and interfaces for knowledge workers. That is where it rules. It has connectivity, net-awareness, security and a general lack of bugged code built into it's genes in a way that other languages simply never will.

When you write in java, most of the crap simply isn't there. You can write components easily, and deploy them across a corporation with a large, hetrogenous computing infrastructure with little if any porting. This is what gives CIOs wet dreams, and saves cubic dollars for companies. Add that to the fact that you can run it on damn near everything from a cell phone to a sun 15K, and you have a good deal of flexibility.

You are looking at this from a perspective of someone writing an app for a user to run on a PC. This is a very valid programming model, but not the one that java is aimed at. While it will work, you are missing out on what makes java shine.

-Charlie

Re:Java

[JaJ_D]

Why would anyone want to write a serious "enterprise" application in Java vs. say C++??

Pass

But you could always try asking some of the plethora of the massive global banks (i.e. MSDW, CSFB, UBS, HSBC, Lehmanns, Barcleys, RBOS, HBoS, LloydsTSB, DKW, DB, etc...) who use it for many things including real-time global trading systems

Or go onto any jobsite (i.e. Jobserve) and search under "C++" and then "Java" and see the numbers (when i did 29th/03/03 at 11am uk time the numbers were 1201 [java] and 1251 [c++])

Or troll on comp.lang.Java.* (or /.) with a "Java sucks C++ is better" and see what happens

:-)

Re:Java

[master_p]

Oh man, the world is really headed for destruction!!! :-) With clueless guys like you, I am certain of it...

C++ does not suck, it's your puny little brain that sucks and does not understand some basic programming principles. I can be 10 times more productive with C++ and Qt than Java, simply because C++ provides meta-programming with templates...my app would be faster, and the malloc problems are pure fud if you have a little experience!!!

The only problem with C++ is that it lacks a good set of libraries for GUI, databases etc. But Qt is a godsend lib, and with it you can truly see the power of C++!!!

I don't work for Trolltech, but I am so much amazed with Qt that I can't stop admiring it.

Re:Java

[AndyS]

I used to think like you, but now I disagree - malloc problems in complex applications aren't always simple. If you want massive code reuse you end up unnecessarily copying, or generally doing large amounts of allocation/deallocation. It's pretty hideous.

Some of the problems can be fixed by massive redesign, but half of the time this simply makes the application harder to understand.

Re:Java

[dehuit]

I had no idea I could declare an identifer as type "register" and bypass the ram and use the cpu registers directly! Try that in any other language? For writing cad apps this is essential for speed.

You can't. You can only give a hint to the compiler to use a register. But modern compilers know much better which variables to put in registers, so they just ignore the hint.

Re:Java

[Midnight Thunder]

Another advantage is when your company gets bought out and the hardware politics change. The company I work for develops large scale server solutions for transactions (I won't mention the industry). Up to now we have been running on Sun machines. The new parent companies now insists that all servers be Intel based. They originally mandated the OS should be MS-Windows, but they ended up accepting Linux. Having already had to bang my head in the past porting C/C++ code from one Unix to another, moving the Java code was a godsend in ease.

As I once said to someone else, porting code is hard work and expensive. In relative terms upgrading the hardware to the best out there without caring for your porting issues is very cheap. Not only that but you also minimize downtime.

Use what you want and understand everyone else's reason for using what they want.

Re:Java

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Moron alert.

The fact that the parent is moderated up really says something about Slashdot mods. I mean come on, this person acts like they are 12 years old.

Re:Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he's sharp enough to have sucessfully trolled a good chunk of slashdot. That site is absolutely hilarious.

Re:Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Count your lucky stars, you are living in utopia. At the super-big-megalith bank that I work with, everything is still done in COBOL.

My coworkers have children my age (I'm just out of college) and I suspect many of them think I'm a young whippersnapper out to take their jobs. Won't be surprised if I get canned in the next year.

Re:Java

[rossifer]

Then you don't understand the power of flexible deliverables. The .class file strategy along with the .jar concept basically blows lisp and smalltalk out of the water when it comes to product delivery time.

Admittedly, there may be a way to rethink lisp and smalltalk such that compiled code can be easily separated and independently manipulated, but enterprise Java applications are just so much easier to manage largely because of the strategy chosen for breaking up deliverable units.

As for syntax, I tend agree with you, both lisp and smalltalk have more powerful language metaphors than Java (and other C derivatives). Though, that can be a two-edged sword (have you ever tried to read newbie lisp? :)

Regards,
Ross

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

Especially I would not insult someone that can code rings around you and the kids website. If you do not know much about c++/c then don't bitch.

Oh please. It was a joke in response to the parent. The kid is obviously a moron.

C++ is an incredibly powerfull and langauge. I had no idea I could declare an identifer as type "register" and bypass the ram and use the cpu registers directly! Try that in any other language?

Like C?

You generally shouldn't use the register keyword. It interferes with compiler optimizations and the compiler can usually do a better job of mapping variables to registers than you can.

Tail recursion is also cool and I am learning that now.

I know the IBM Java compiler implements tail recursion. I don't know if Sun's compiler does.

Re:Java

[smallpaul]

I hate C++ as much as the next guy, so I was hoping to read that Andkon page and find a good, well-thought-out flaming, but really it was pathetic. No real technical points whatsoever. Its embarassing that you use that as your justification for using Java over C++. There are many good critiques of C++ out there. This is not one of them.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

I hate C++ as much as the next guy, so I was hoping to read that Andkon page and find a good, well-thought-out flaming, but really it was pathetic.

If you clicked on that link hoping to get a well thought out argument about why C++ sucks, you have my apologies. I should have explained it was a joke because now I've got people who think I wrote that page myself.

Re:Java

[0x0d0a]

Why would anyone want to write a serious "enterprise" application in Java vs. say C++??

(a) Most of the time, computers are powerful enough for the task, and using Java shortens development time

(b) Most programmers are pretty piss-poor (especially "business", "database" and "web" programmers), and using Java makes things easier for them.

(c) Freaking big set of libraries.

Obviously, if your thing is writing codecs or high-load servers, Java isn't all that appropriate. But if you're writing a lightweight client or a distributed app, it can be convenient.

That being said, I've never seen an application where I wouldn't prefer to use an equivalent C program.

GC nuts say that you can get good performance with GC. I'm pretty sure that it isn't GC that makes Java so slow -- Ocaml uses GC, and it runs about as quickly as C.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

C++ does not suck, it's your puny little brain that sucks and does not understand some basic programming principles.

I posted the link as a joke. A guy I work with found that letter to Bjarne Soustroup and thought it was funny, and I thought it was funny too, in a Beavis and Butthead sort of way.

C++ is a fine language. The only things I don't like about it are

• The lack of library standardization (this has become less of an issue now that STL is supported by most environments, but is still an issue for GUI libs- although Java has its own problems in this area)
  
• The preprocessor- there have been many times in Java where I wished it had a preprocessor. But people seem to abuse the preprocessor when coding in C++. You never know what you're looking at.
  
• The flexibility of the language- C++ has more language-level features than any other programming language I've ever seen. I think if you're working on a project by yourself, C++ is a great choice. But in large C++ projects, too many cooks can spoil the broth. The language just offers too many features and usually most of them are inappropriate in a given situation. You need to build up a lot of experience in C++ before anyone can trust you with it. Unless you're really good at interviewing programmers, C++ can be a dangerous choice for a large project simply because a bad or inexperienced programmer can introduce so much damage.
  

This is not to say that a language is only good if it is tolerant of bad programmers. The job market is bad enough that there are lots of resumes from good programmers on our desks. But sorting these people out isn't easy.

Re:Java

[0x0d0a]

Java will run as fast or as slow as you make it.

Oh, bull and shit. I heard that same line from Sun for *years*. First it was "Yeah, Java may *seem* to be slow as hell, but that's because VMs aren't mature enough". Then it was "Yeah, Java may *seem* to be slow as hell, but that's because you're not using a JIT/native code compiler". Then it was "Yeah, Java may *seem* to be slow as hell, but that's because you're using yesteryear's computer and don't have enough memory". Now it's "Yeah, Java may *seem* to be slow as hell, but that's because you're using bad programming techniques." It's pretty clear to everyone involved except (a) people that have committed to the "Java can be fast" line and (b) Sun salespeople that Java *is* slow as hell. Doesn't mean that it doesn't have good uses, but it's not for high-performance stuff.

We've re-written C applicatons in Java and actually made them run faster by improving the architecture.

Yes. And you could have done the same rearchitecting of the code in C, and had even better performance.

If you try to write a Java app using C/C++ programming techniques, it will suck.

Oh, like having actual allocation and deallocation going on? Yeah, you can get better Java performance if you create all your objects in a huge pool and then just hand around references to the thing. It's also a pain in the ass.

If you take the time to learn how Java is supposed to work, you'll be 10 times more productive and create a product of equal (or better) quality.

Uh, huh. As evidenced by all those high quality horizontal Java apps. Oh, wait.

The only place I see Java being popular is in vertical market stuff, where you need fast development time. Java does speed up development, I'll give it that. It has a nice library set, and a clean syntax.

But when it comes to speed...no, Java is a dog, no matter how you paint it. And uses more RAM than just about anything else.

Re:Java

[0x0d0a]

I thought that something inherent to the JVM design made tail recursion difficult, if not impossible. I know an ML fan who was complaining about how unsuitable the JVM was as a target for his language because of the inability to do tail recursion.

Might be something to do with the security model...

Re:Java

[Dr. Bent]

Yes. And you could have done the same rearchitecting of the code in C, and had even better performance.

On the two re-architecture projects I've worked on, we considered implementing our improved design in C++ (no classes in C, so that wasn't an option). However, we found that it would have been cost prohibitive, due to portability and maintence costs, and the limitations of the STL vs the Java 2 JDK. So, yeah, we _could_ have done it in C/C++, but we wouldn't be selling it now, we'd still be writing it.

Yeah, you can get better Java performance if you create all your objects in a huge pool and then just hand around references to the thing. It's also a pain in the ass.

Object pools are a bad idea in Java, but I can't even count the number of C/C++ programmers who I've heard say thats what's needed to "fix" Java. I'll say it again...If you take the time to learn how Java is supposed to work, you'll be 10 times more productive and create a product of equal (or better) quality.

Uh, huh. As evidenced by all those high quality horizontal Java apps. Oh, wait.

Considering Java has 54% of the software development market, I'd say there's probably more Java out there than you think. It's just mostly on the backend, so you don't see it (unless you bother to look).

Is a for() loop in Java faster than in C? No. But if raw performance was the only consideration, we'd all be writing in assembler. Development costs, maintainence costs, deployment costs, portability, security....in all these other respects, Java beats C/C++ hands down.

Re:Java

[0x0d0a]

Object pools are a bad idea in Java, but I can't even count the number of C/C++ programmers who I've heard say thats what's needed to "fix" Java.

I didn't say Java needs to be "fixed", just that it's not a high performance language. And the person who told me that he ended up having to use object pools on his project (urging my comment) to get enough performance was a PhD specializing in computer language design.

Uh, huh. As evidenced by all those high quality horizontal Java apps. Oh, wait.

Considering Java has 54% of the software development market [fawcette.com], I'd say there's probably more Java out there than you think.

Dammit, I said "horizontal Java apps", not vertical market stuff. Yes, most development is in vertical markets (even if most *installed copies* of software and the most money are in horizontal markets). The needs of vertical markets generally put emphasis on short development time, not performance. If you're paying at least tens of thousands of dollars for your code, you don't have a problem putting a few extra thousand into hardware to shorten dev time. That doesn't support the performance argument.

we'd all be writing in assembler

While I agree that there's a point of dimishing returns in dev time/performance, I'd like to point out that it's currently pretty damn hard to outperform a compiler. Maybe for a few instructions, you can pull it off. I remember Rasterman (Enlightenment, imlib) writing how he couldn't manage to outcode gcc any more with hand-tweaked assembly.

However, consider this. How often do you buy or seriously upgrade a computer? Every three to five years is pretty par for the course, and probably on the conservative side. So you're buying a new computer that's got maybe at *most* eight times the processor power, and maybe a little less than than in memory increase. Java software that I've used tends to be in that ballpark next to the closest C equivalents (particularly in memory usage). So basically, you're throwing out that last upgrade you did if you're chosing to use Java-based software.

Development costs, maintainence costs, deployment costs, portability, security....in all these other respects, Java beats C/C++ hands down.

I'll agree when it comes to development costs. Maintenance costs can go either way -- minimal maintenance ("library foo broke") is certainly better with Java. I've found that if you need to add a not-originally-anticipated feature to code down the road, you're much better off with C -- Java (and even C++) put an emphasis on heavy design at the start, which can result in pretty code -- as long as you don't have to change your design much. I hate the term "extreme programming", but the constant revision that it references fits C much better than Java. Deployment costs -- I'd have to say C/C++ wins if you're not using natively-compiled code (because you have an extra dependency on a JVM), and otherwise the two are the same. I'll give you portability and security (though most of the security problems in C code stem from *old* C code with statically-sized arrays...modern C tends to look more object-oriented and have better library functions available to avoid sticky situations -- take a look at glib, which I love dearly).

I tend to be cynical about Java. Java has several notable characteristics. It's quite inefficient when it comes to CPU cycles and memory usage. It's very easy to write distributed apps with it. It has a lot of libraries for common business-task related code. It's also developed and promoted by Sun, a company that makes money by selling hardware. So, yes, Java "scales" well. It's very attractive for business apps, so businesses buy it and use it...and then pay out the nose for the associated hardware platform. More load? Just buy more hardware!

Re:Java

[ryepup]

I wonder how many posts it will take before you just say "fuck it" and let all these people believe thats your C++ page. I thought it was funny as hell, especially Bjarne's response. That was great.

Re:Java

[MillionthMonkey]

Well, it looks like I put out all the flames... and my original post is still at +5 despite two "Troll" moderations.

I should have realized that link would be a magnet for C++ programmers, and that people might think I wrote that stuff. I had just assumed it was obvious that it wasn't me when I clicked "Submit".

Have you seen some of these responses? It's almost as if these C++ guys have no sense of humor about their language! :-)

Re:Java

[master_p]

I apologise for not understanding the joke.

I would like to say a few words though about C++: the one thing that counts is the design. If things are designed well enough, no programmer can make a mess of it. It's not a matter of language, it's a matter of engineering.

Too many features never hurt anyone, since there is no obligation to use them in the first place. The preprocessor is hardly needed. No proper C++ lib needs the preprocessor except for compile-time stuff like _DEBUG and the like.

That C++ is difficult is a myth. OOP needs discipline, that's all. I've seen a great deal of problems with Java, too, due to lack of design.

Re:Firstis Postis

[Anonymous Coward]

You have become more powerful than I can imagine!

Eclipse, Java ...

[joeflies]

Is the name "eclipse" a not so subtle reference to overtaking the Sun?

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[jpt.d]

but my friend, {solar} eclipses only overtake the sun for a short time, and then fade into the abyss. It is the Forté of the Sun that keeps it going bright. The Java Warriors of Solaris will shine bright again!

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Soko]

Seems plausible.

I saw nary a Sun logo on the eclipse.org page of consortium members.

With IBM, HP(Compaq) and several other *nix vendors - as well a several application vendors that drive Sun harware sales - in the consortium, you'd figure they'd be in from the get-go.

IMHO, this just goes to show that Sun doesn't truly get what OSS is yet (Open Office being the exception to the rule), and what it could do for them. If they would release Java as a true open standard, they'd end up looking like the proverbial cat in the bird cage.

Soko

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, this is the sole reason this name was chosen. (I am an ex-IBMer)

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Paradise Pete]

It is the Forté

As the word is properly pronounced like fort, not for-tay, there's no point to sticking an accent on there.

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Michael Crutcher]

There's a real simple reason that Sun isn't involved with Eclipse: Netbeans. Netbeans is Sun's open source java ide, of course they're not going to support a competing open source ide. I think that they true openess of the language has absolutely nothing to do with it.

CleverSig myCleverSig = null;

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[ahaning]

Ah, but it is pronounced like for-tay when you are referring to music.

Michael Jackson is not my for-tay.

Mushrooms and anchovies are not my fort.

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java Warriors of Sun. I suddenly had this very odd mental picture of a bunch of wacked out overcaffinated Sun programmers with swords.

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Paradise Pete]

Michael Jackson is not my for-tay. Mushrooms and anchovies are not my fort.

Neither one of those is a good example of the proper use of forte. On the chance that you are not trolling, here is the definition.

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[ahaning]

No, I was not trolling. But thanks forte^H^Hthe compliment. ;-) (and the link)

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[Paradise Pete]

But thanks forte^H^Hthe...

:-)

-Pete (hope you find Sabrina, btw,)

Re:Eclipse, Java ...

[ahaning]

Sabrina isn't mine, but I saw someone here referring to her as his. I've also seen a bit of her on America's Most Wanted and we got one of those "Have you seen me?" things in the mail once. I've not once seen any of those people, that I know of.

Since she appears to belong to a fellow Slashdotter, I thought I'd put that there. So many people put http://www.slashdot.org as their homepage -- that's silly.. I already know about Slashdot.

Anyway...the typo wasn't completely fabricated. I actually did type forte when I meant for the, at first.

Uhh..so how's that for going off topic...

Sounds nice but...

[ExEleven]

Im totally addicted to vi.

Re:Sounds nice but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you fire up VI and write a plugin to add VI keybindings to Eclipse? Emacs bindings already exist..

Wow.

[Samrobb]

That's all I can say... they've certainly packed an awful lot into this release. The JDT team, in particular, seems to be consistent about picking up some of the best features of other IDEs and editors and incorporating them into Eclipse.

If you do Java development, I'd recommend giving Eclipse a try. I've been using it for about a year now, to do plugin developent for Eclipse itself, and I'm still finding out new tricks and shortcuts to make my life easier.

If you do C/C++ development, check out the CDT project. While the current incarnation (1.0.1) of CDT is definitely usable, there's a lot of work going on to expand the capabilities of the C/C++ support and bring it up to par with the Java development tools - adding in things like incremental compilation, source navigation/browsing, refactoring, and all the other IDE goodies that Java devlopers already enjoy.

Plus - there's over 250 plugins available for Eclipse, including things like an RSS channel monitor for slashdot in your IDE.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, great

I wish it wouldn't be that picky when it comes to GTK versions. Runs fine on RH8. Core dumps consistently on Mandrake 9.1

Re:Wow.

[adamy]

Try it with the Motif libraries and Qt instead. THats how I got it to work on Debian.

Re:Wow.

[maitas]

Actually, I wouldn't recommend Eclipse, unless you want to develop Windows only applications. The GUI API is created for every taget platform, so the final code wont run without modifications in other hardware than the one you used to create the program. So, you program in JAVA using Eclipse and lose the greates thing about JAVA, code portability!!
On the other hand, netbeans (www.netbeans.org) creates 100% portable code.

Make your choice.

Re:Wow.

[Samrobb]

The GUI API is created for every taget platform, so the final code wont run without modifications in other hardware than the one you used to create the program.

Only partially true. Yes, SWT is platform-specific - that was a design decision made by OTI to deal with the (then current, and still current) problems with Swing performance. If you use Eclipse or SWT, you're restricted to only being able to run on a subset of platforms...

• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• Linux (x86/Motif)
• Linux (x86/GTK 2)
• Solaris 8 (SPARC/Motif)
• QNX (x86/Photon)
• AIX (PPC/Motif)
• HP-UX (HP9000/Motif)

So, really, it's hardly as limited as you make it out to be. On top of that, as an open source project, all the code is available - if you have a need to port SWT to run with a specific windowing system, you can do it. It's my understanding that the OS X port is at least partially a result of this kind of effort.

Right now, I'm working on a cross-platform product that we build under Linux, and runs under Windows and Linux (GTK and Motif). We also build a Solaris test version. Should we want to support AIX, OS X, or HP-UX, that's a simple and straightforward addition. Considering that with Windows, Linux, OS X and Solaris we can probably cover 99% of the workstation platforms our clients use, SWT is hardly a liability.

OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[cabra771]

The last three stories have no # of replies on the front page. Am I the only one seeing this? Has slashcode been updated and got a few bugs? Anyone?

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Happening to me too.

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[ottffssent]

And here I thought there were no replies to the WinXP story because nobody cares. *sigh* I can always hope, right?

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[Adam9]

Also.. the number of comments from the other stories have not changed as well. I'm guessing they made the front page semi-static for some reason.

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[tulare]

Ah, hell, and I thought I was going to get frist post! Oh, well.

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[AirLace]

The idea is to get an indication of how much people are influenced by the possibility that their comment will be a first post or come near the top of the pile. If you look at the total number of comments for these kinds of stories, you'll notice there are more comments on the articles without a comment tally. The collected data will be useful in the fight against first post spam and trolls.

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It has had a bug for several weeks now (going on months) where if the story has more than 400 to 500 comments, it is impossible to get a nested listing of them. This is the third time I've commented on this, and I'm fairly certain this, like the others, will be totally ignored.

Re:OT: but what's up with slashdot?

[Pflipp]

I'm guessing they made the front page semi-static for some reason.

Because it was posted on Slashdot (somewhere %), it runned the risk at being slashdotted, so they put in a static page.

Finally!!!

[jzs9783]

Having worked on WSAD at IBM using Eclipse 2.0.1 for development, I have been waiting for this release for quite some time! The main improvement I noticed in RC1/2 was significant speed improvement, especially upon loading.

People may think Java is dead, but it is far from it, and Eclipse will keep those who must (or want to) code in it very very happy. If you know the features, it makes life so much easier. You can have your VI if you want, but when developing REAL applications you need more than a text editor if you want the software released before it's obsolete. I strongly urge you to just test it out and give it a chance - it is by far the best IDE I have ever used.

Re:Finally!!!

[Malcontent]

How is it when not doing java?
I use Jedit right now for almost all my writing and programming. It's great for XML/XSL, perl, python, PHP and it even has some odball plug ins like memento which is a small PIM and code2HTML which I use way more then I ever thought I would.

Is Eclipse as good as Jedit? Better? I love jedit but I'll switch if it's better.

Re:Finally!!!

[oops]

Who thinks Java is dead ? Certainly not the agents who phone me on a daily basis with their client's requirements!

Re:Finally!!!

[dubious9]

Eclipse isn't an all purpose editor like jedit. When I'm doing development, I do all my java and ant build files in Eclipse and have another jedit open for editing input files, xml, or anything else I need.

I strongly suggest you try eclipse over jedit development. With plugins, Jedit may do almost everything that eclipse does, but eclipse does them more smoothly and cohesively. Right now thought its only for java/c/c++ (even COBOL!) but that won't stop people for writing plugins for everything.

Re:Finally!!!

[j3110]

The new version of eclipse (2.1) does a better job than 2.0.*. Or at least the latest stable RC builds are :)

Comparing jEdit to Eclipse is difficult though. jEdit has so many friggen plugins it's almost detrimental :) jEdit takes longer to load because of this. Eclipse has much better ANT integration in this release as well. So you can do XSLT on just the XML that changes with ANT. You'll have to rely on yet more plugins to Eclipse to get any language other than XML, ANT's xml, HTML, and other Java related file formats. I don't think it supports JSP out of the box, but I could be wrong.

CVS support is slightly better in this release as well.

The actual Java editor has reduced my keystrokes for symbols by a factor of 1.8 or so :) When you open anything {,(,",' it will automatically make the closing tag where you would expect as well as try to keep you on the right tabbing. All this is configurable by the default coding style settings under Windows->Preferences.

Eclipse is a wonderful IDE in it's own right, but I wouldn't through away a good editor as well. You may find yourself only using jEdit for things not supported by Eclipse, since Eclipse is the easiest to use between the two.

Basically, my suggestion to people in your class is give Eclipse a good few days of work. Let it manage your classes for a while. Once you have a lot of classes, you absolutely can't live without the refactoring support. You can tell Eclipse to rename a class, and every class it has control of that uses that class will be changed to use the new class name.

Eclipse is by far the best IDE I've seen in a long time. The Netbeans people are working hard to catch up. They are making leaps of progress on their performance issues. I think before long we'll have some competition in the Open Source Java editor market.

For those of you who don't know why SUN isn't working with the Eclipse people, it's because they are working with the NetBeans people. It's an Open Source editor that rivals with Eclipse. Eclipse is part of IBM's WebSphere product as well, so IBM has a very real reason to want their editor to be the best. If SUN helped out the Eclipse project, they would be playing favorites pretty much.

Re:Finally!!!

[gl4ss]

how about j2me? does it integrate to midlet development easily?

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse 2.1 now has an XML editor, too.

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is info on how to do that on the Eclipse Wicki. Or for a commercial product (freely downloadable) based on Eclipse, try Device Developer.

Re:Finally!!!

[lfourrier]

it had before:
create a plugin project, fire the wizard, choose xml editor, and you have one
just associate it with your xml files, and your done.

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who develops real applications and always uses vi and Makefiles, I don't see how an IDE could possibly increase my productivity. Interface builders might, especially when using GUI toolkits that require a lot of code to use (which is usually due to poor toolkit design or language restrictions).

The overhead of looking up documentation and creating Makefiles is negligible.

I have tried Eclipse, my main impression was that it is slow. I haven't seen a fast, non-trivial Java GUI yet.

Re:Finally!!!

[supercargo]

I am a big jEdit fan from a while back, and before Eclipse, it was my preferred ide. The plugin architecture is incredibly elegant. It's still my favorite editor, but I don't generally use it for the same reason IBM wrote their own widgeting toolkit: Swing is just too slow.

I use jEdit on a 2Ghz, 1G ram machine, and it _still_ takes ~10 secs to get to the editor (I've got about 10 plugins loading). On top of this, right-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer->Open with jEdit... (great integration, btw) takes a full second and flickers a bit. A second doesn't seem like much, but SWT apps are instantaneous and they don't flicker at all. Swing was a great idea that didn't survive its execution.

A guy posted on the jEdit mailing list about porting to SWT, and the response was that aside from the enormous effort involved (Swing has a richer API with different event handling characteristics), it would vitiate all their great work to this point. Whether that's true, I wish someone would pick up at least the core to port to SWT, a fast jEdit is my dream editor.

As for Eclipse vs jEdit as a project development environment, there is simply no contest. Eclipse is at least as customizable and the stupid parts of coding get more effortless with each release. Project management bits, what is unquestionably the finest CVS/General Source Control integration anywhere, and hundreds of plugins (of which mine is one) make Eclipse the all-conquering IDE. When introduced customizable key bindings, that was my last tie to jEdit for Java development (jEdit still has a better key bindings interface); I now can ctrl+j move to the left and barely suppress a smile.

Re:Finally!!!

[s88]

If you are serious about "waiting for this release for quite some time!" you should look into using the stable development releases.

I have been using 2.1 for many months now.
And since I use it every day, all day, I can point out the bugs early on, and make sure they don't still exist by the time it goes into release.

For the most part you will find the Stable builds are indeed very stable.

Scott

GTK plugin

[Salsaman]

Is the GTK plugin any easier to install yet ? Last time I checked, you had to jump through a number of hoops to get it installed.

It would be great if it were included as a default plugin.

Re:GTK plugin

[burner]

GTK plugin? I'm confused. I use the GTK2 version of eclipse daily (and have since some time last spring). To what GTK plugin are your referring?

Re:GTK plugin

[Salsaman]

I am talking about the GTK/Java plugin - i.e. you can develop swing using gtk components.

Re:GTK plugin

[burner]

Do you have a URL for this? I've heard about an AWT peer implementation on GTK, but nothing that was ready for real use, but this is different from a gtk implementation of swing.

I'd be really interested to know what this plugin is all about.

Emacs for the new millenium

[Sanity]

This looks like Emacs for the new millenium - namely a powerful editor that occasionally gets confused and thinks that its an entire operating system.

But seriously, it looks good, and their replacement for Java's bloated and slow Swing GUI toolkit should be adopted by Sun yesterday.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[addaon]

Blech, no! Swing is about 10x faster than SWT on Macs. There is no inherent reason SWT is faster than Swing, it's just that the Swing implementations most people use (Sun and Blackice) suck rocks.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[Anonymous Coward]

If it don't have a webbrowser, its now where near Emacs.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[GeorgieBoy]

With respect to SWT, the Mac OS X port is VERY young compared to the Windows, Motif, GTK, and even QNX Photon ports. It will be faster over time. Still Apple did a great job on their Swing implementation, and if any Apple people actually worked on the Mac OS X SWT port (which none of them do), it could be much more competitive.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[jkauzlar]

I've read a few articles or comments about SWT vs Swing and decided to stick with Swing. From what I gather, SWT is attractive to people who are overwhelmed by Swing's complexity and wish to write a standard UI fast. Swing is extremely flexible and well-designed. If you have the time, you can do just about anything you can think of.

I'd stay clear of SWT if you think there is ever a chance you'll want to merge your code into a Swing app or if you think SWT may be limiting in the future. However, if you need to build a semi-standard UI quickly for a project that will never be upgraded or won't be around long, then SWT might be viable.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[21mhz]

SWT is going to move forward too, don't you think?

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[IamTheRealMike]

Of course, that's all well and good, but last time I tried to use Eclipse, you couldn't even edit the default keybindings.

I really like the idea of a decent IDE for Linux, but at the moment I'm torn between XEmacs and Eclipse, and XEmacs wins, simply because I spend most of the time editing text, not browsing object trees or whatever. What I'd love to see is for Eclipse to be able to embed the emacs editing engine. I don't think it's going to happen though.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[Anonymous Coward]

It never will get emacs, just because you can't program it in elisp!

(insert "Too bad!")

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[binarydreams]

They've added key bindings in 2.1. In fact they include a mapping for emacs. There are efforts underway to attempt to recreate vi/vim in the editor , but that goes far beyond simple key bindings.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[pldms]

With respect to SWT, the Mac OS X port is VERY young compared to the Windows, Motif, GTK, and even QNX Photon ports. It will be faster over time.

If you're finding Eclipse slow try editing Eclipse.app/Contents/Info.plist and change JVMVersion to 1.4.1. Seems to make a big difference on my machine.

(You need to have Java 1.4.1 installed, of course)

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[Anonymous Coward]

It "borrows" other browsers in its windows. For example, the Eclipse Help system uses IE or Mozilla "plugged in" on Windows.. on Linux it uses Mozilla.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[jkauzlar]

Yeah, but its unpredictable at this point. Better to stick with a standard that rely on SWT's moving forward.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[ChannelX]

Actually no Sun shouldn't have replaced Swing with SWT yesterday. SWT is pretty much designed for Eclipse and it works well there. Swing is vastly more complex and extendible than SWT. Swing doesn't have to be slow either. Like anything else there is well-written Swing code and poorly written Swing code. IntelliJ IDEA and JEdit are examples of well-written Swing code.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[Corporate T00l]

Then you should be happy with 2.1. Configurable keybindings is one of the most awaited features that's present in this version.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[CaptnMArk]

But SWT shows how slow and bloated Swing really is.

As much as I'd like a single GUI API for java, Swing is not going to be it if it doesn't improve considerably.

Finally Eclipse is catching up with Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I never liked previous versions of Eclipse just becuase I couldn't assign different keystrokes. It's also nice to see the battle between Eclipse and Idea since competition should drive a lot of cool features. I recently had to do a quick project in Visual Studio it just plain sucks ass compared to the Java IDE's now a days.

Re:Finally Eclipse is catching up with Idea

[Jim_Hawkins]

Which VisualStudio are you using? VS.NET is pretty damn nice...

(I've use Eclipse & Websphere on a frequent basis, so, I'm basing my opinion on the use of both IDEs)

Very Very Nice

[logicvice]

I recently switched over from NetBeans to Eclipse 2.0.x and am downloading 2.1 as I type. As far as Java IDE's go it is the best I've found. All the improvements in 2.1 are welcome. Using Eclipse is like having a well ordered workshop witj all the stuff you need close at hand. I think Eclipse has fewer features than NetBeans, but the features that are there are done better.

I still break out vi for basic text editing, but for Java coding this is where it is at.

Re:Very Very Nice

[erat]

I originally tried Netbeans but switched to Eclipse for a really lame reason: I think Eclipse looks less clogged. When running Netbeans I felt like too much was happening in one window, and I also felt like I needed a magnifying glass just to see all the buttons and such.

Since the switch, I have checked out a number of the plugins (there seem to be many more plugins for Eclipse than for Netbeans) and I must say I'm very impressed. Lomboz is way cool for building/deploying/running/debugging apps within Tomcat, DBEdit is great for dinking with SQL, XMLBuddy works well for XML editing, on and on... The Sunbow stuff for working with Cocoon needs help, and some plugins (Grand Rapid -- which gives you a web browser that you can use in a "view" -- immediately comes to mind) seem broken as hell, but still there's so much you can do with Eclipse you can waste days just exploring.

I'm sold... The pricetag is right too.

(Oh, one more complaint about Netbeans... On my Mac, I had to dink with all kinds of stuff just to get it installed, and even then things like code assist wouldn't work. Eclipse is self-contained; extract it into a directory and go. Gotta love that.)

Anyone used both IDEA and Eclipse?

[Craggles]

I'm using IDEA by IntelliJ, which is excellent, but they are getting a bit expensive, they just jacked the price up quite severely you don't even get point upgrades unless you buy a years subscription.

Anyhow, it looks like Eclipse is catching up very fast, has anyone used IDEA and the latest Eclipse? Can anyone comment on how they compare?

--
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell

Re:Anyone used both IDEA and Eclipse?

[nathanz]

While I haven't used the most recent version of Eclipse (2.0 was the last version I looked at), it's hard to believe it could be better than IDEA. For a long time I used a text editor, and it was good. I used IDEA for a couple days and found I couldn't go back.

The refactoring that people are raving about Eclipse just added has been in IDEA for over a year. Since then, they have raised the bar even higher. Some of it's features are so advanced, I really don't know how those crazy Czechs did it! It's support for Webapps and EJB's is excellent as well.

So IDEA isn't free... call me a turn-coat, but I don't care. It's the best $500 that I (er, my company) has spent.

Re:Anyone used both IDEA and Eclipse?

[enricod]

I use both, and I think that Idea is, my opinion, easier to use, faster, and really intuitive. It has, at the moment, more fetures, more refactoring tools, more keyboard shortcuts ...
The big advantage of eclipse is that is free (in speech and beer) and lot of plugins are coming out every day, and is getting better with every release

w00t

[tulare]

From the whatsnew:

Java stack traces in the console now appear with hyperlinks. When you place the mouse over a line in a stack trace, the pointer changes to the hand and the stack trace is underlined. Pressing the mouse button opens the associated Java source file and positions the cursor at the corresponding line.

I'm probably a big dork, but I've never seen this feature before, and I'm sure of some great uses for it!
Downloading...

Re:w00t

[Osty]

I'm probably a big dork, but I've never seen this feature before, and I'm sure of some great uses for it!

I thought that was standard functionality for a stack trace in an IDE? Visual Studio has done this for years, though without the hand/underline highlighting. IMHO, if you're going to put a stack trace in an IDE, this is a required feature. Otherwise, why would I use the IDE for debugging in the first place?

And just to pimp my own favorite IDE (well, it's not so much an IDE as it is a full-featured editor and program analyzer, but that's fine by me since I do builds via the commandline) is Source Insight. The killer functionality here is the ability to jump through relationships in the code without having to compile. The editor will keep track of relationships, so even if you have half-written code that doesn't quite compile yet, you can still browse through it and follow the flow. Plus, it's easily extendable for other programming languages (out of the box, version 3.5 supports C/C++, C#, Java, ASM, HTML, XML, Perl, Batch script, JScript, VB, VBScript, and a lot more, and there are modules available for SQL and others). Let's see Eclipse or Visual Studio keep track of thousands of files in a large project (I've used SI to keep track of relationships in upwards of 9000 files at one time, with anywhere between 50 to 100 of the files open at any given time, without any performance issues at all).

Source Insight isn't free, but the price is reasonable ($250, and you can get a site license if you're a company) and there's a 30-day free trial so you can evaluate whether it's worth $250 to you. Even if you don't like it, it's certainly worth checking out. I guess I should probably also note that it's Windows-only.

Re:w00t

[Mindbridge]

This feature has actually been available in older versions of Eclipse (2.0) -- I use it when necessary. You can double click on an exception trace in the console output, and it will take you to the code.

The difference in 2.1, I think, is that the places where you can click are now explicitly underlined. It is also possible that the recognition of those places has been improved. In any case, if I understand correctly, this is an old feature with better UI.

Re:w00t

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, it talks about stack traces *in the console* (i.e., in an Exception trace dump -- something that isn't even supported in C++. Or at least, wasn't supported back when I was still using C++).

Re:w00t

[Evil Grinn]

Java stack traces in the console now appear with hyperlinks. When you place the mouse over a line in a stack trace, the pointer changes to the hand and the stack trace is underlined. Pressing the mouse button opens the associated Java source file and positions the cursor at the corresponding line

What would really rock would be if it could do the same for stack traces appearing in ANY window. So if one of your users sent an email with a stack trace in it, you could click it and go to the source.

It only happens when logged in.

[joelhayhurst]

If you log out and view the front page, the number of comments appears normally.

Eclipse vs. Idea

[aquarian]

As it stands, Eclipse has more features than Idea, plus a whole bunch of plugins. Eclipse has tools for working on big, complex projects. Idea shines as a more basic editor, where it leaves everything else behind. It's just much more nicely done, with a much cleaner interface. I especially like how it automatically adds import statements, AFAIK the only IDE that does that.

The best way to find out which is better for you is to download both and try them.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[bzzzt]

Eclipse does add import statements, but only if you use the code-completion feature to select a class.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[oz_ko]

I haven't used Idea yet though I don't think they will be able to keep up with free and open source.

The new features planned for version 2.2 will surely blow them out of the water.

I think IBM have done a fantastic job to date and I hope it keeps up.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[iapetus]

Actually the CTRL+SHIFT+O (organise imports) shortcut will add imports for all classes that need them, prompting you to select when there are multiple possible imports that would work for a given class name. It also removes redundant import statements.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I've been using Idea for over a year now. Every time I download Eclipse and try to load existing projects, all hell breaks loose.

My projects in Idea can be migrated to any open environment, the build system is pure Ant with Ant tasks like XDoclet and Middlegen. Everything works from a command line the same way it works in Idea.

That being said, I use multiple output and source paths. Eclipse doesn't seem to get this very well. I really seems to want to control my build process. Unfortunatley that won't work well. I have packages with Classes in two seperate physical directories, one auto generated by Middlegen and Xdoclet and one hand coded. I have seperate output paths for my EJBs, Utility classes and Servlet stuff. These then all get packaged into an EAR.

When I can make sure Eclipse doesn't get in my way I'll probably switch. I can't use some of the EJB features in Idea cause it doesn't handle XDoclet or multiple paths for EJBs. It looks like Idea doesn't want to work with me on some of these advanced features, so I don't use them anyway.

We'll see who winds up winning, but I'm not sold on Eclipse yet.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[the eric conspiracy]

I use multiple output and source paths.

So do I, and it seems to work quite well within Eclipse.

I really seems to want to control my build process. Unfortunatley that won't work well. I have packages with Classes in two seperate physical directories, one auto generated by Middlegen and Xdoclet and one hand coded. I have seperate output paths for my EJBs, Utility classes and Servlet stuff. These then all get packaged into an EAR.

Since Eclipse 2.1 has very good integration with Ant I have a very hard time understanding why this would be an issue. I do all of this, and more including deployment to and restarting a remote server from within Eclipse.

Re:Eclipse vs. Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used both WSAD and IntelliJ idea. Believe me, IntelliJ is much, much more intuitive. I've only been using WSAD for one month and am working with folks who have been using it for about 1 year.... and they're having as many problems as I. :-)

WSAD, though has tons of features based on the plug-ins. It's hands-down better than Visual Age which I've also used.

If IntelliJ had a WAS plugin emulator of some kind then I think it should be the ide of choice. However, if you're using WAS then WSAD seems to be the logical choice.

IDEs vs. Text Editors

[eenglish_ca]

I have gone backwards in terms of developing software when it comes to using an IDE. Although I don't develop using Java I do work with C++ on a variety of platforms with several IDEs and text editor. When I began I used bloodshed's dev-cpp then moving onto M$'s VC++ as my projects required a better compiler and ide to handle all the files. Now, have gone back to using text editors, notepad and emacs, because I am using the compiler tools, flex and bison, in some of my work. In some ways a basic text editor is easier to work with, of course the nice color coding makes reading your code easier but really your code, when properly formatted(indenting and so forth), should be easy to read in a text editor. In addition, MDI text editors make it a breeze to program because you can have many windows open at once and still have your screen organized. Next to my text editor I have my console in which I type make and my app gets compiled as easy as 1,2,3. GCC is great to work with because it works exactly the same on windows as it does on linux. In addition, if you work on both linux and windows making the transition is easier when you don't have to deal with the clutter of all the features of an IDE no matter how well laid out they are. One of the things that attracts most people to IDEs is that a lot of them come with code wizards and so forth that help with the basic layout of applications. I have never found these to be of much use because I end up scrapping much of the code because it usually isn't as concise as I like it. So for now I will stick with my text editors.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Osty]

In some ways a basic text editor is easier to work with, of course the nice color coding makes reading your code easier but really your code, when properly formatted(indenting and so forth), should be easy to read in a text editor.

Color coding is nice so you can see at a glance what is a variable, what is a function call, what's a constant, etc. Sure, you can do that with naming conventions (variables get lowerCaseCamelCasing, functions get UpperCaseCamelCasing, constants are ALLCAPS, etc), but that still requires more parsing than just seeing that variables are blue, functions are red, and constants are green. As well, it also helps you determine whether or not you've got a large block of commented-out code (yeah, sure, you don't leave dead code in your source files -- now try supporting someone else's source code). It's easier to see that a block is commented out when comments are blue on light-gray, rather than searching for that closing */ (it also will show you the error of nesting /**/ comments before you get to compile-time and see the build error). Finally, color-coding isn't all there is to an IDE's editor. Good IDEs will cross-reference your code, so you don't have to go digging for that Foo() function -- just [shift|control|] [double-|right-]click on the function, and there it is. Sure, you can do this with ctags and emacs or vi, but not with notepad, and not without an extra step -- building the tags.

Next to my text editor I have my console in which I type make and my app gets compiled as easy as 1,2,3.

Visual Studio can make a project out of a make (well, nmake) file, and you can turn a project back into a makefile. As well, we use a commandline-based build process at work (ultimately based on nmake, but with a lot of customizations on top in the form of batch scripts, perl scripts, WSH scripts, and executeables), and it's still more convenient to write code in the IDE but click over to a cmd.exe prompt to run a build.

One of the things that attracts most people to IDEs is that a lot of them come with code wizards and so forth that help with the basic layout of applications. I have never found these to be of much use because I end up scrapping much of the code because it usually isn't as concise as I like it.

To each his own, and I'm sure you've got your own personal library of boiler-plate code you pull from all the time. Most good programmers do. However, recent IDEs (well, VS.NET :) do create fairly good boiler-plate code, and it takes a lot of the tediousness out of development, letting you get to the core logic without having to niggle around with your message pump, or setting up a standard window, or whatever.

I've not used dev-cpp, but it's still fairly young and surely has a way to go. VS.NET is much better than VS6 (which itself was better than VS5). It's all good and well to be hardcore and prefer your favorite text editor (I still whip out vim for most scripting jobs, whether it be nt command/batch script, vbscript or jscript, perl, or php), but a good IDE is an invaluable tool for any programmer, novice to expert.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[binux]

Next to my text editor I have my console in which I type make and my app gets compiled as easy as 1,2,3

With vim it's easier invoking make from the editor. The errors and warnings are redirected to a tmp file . Type ":cwin" and click on the error to open the source at the line where the compiler barfed. Surely Emacs would have something like that.

Vim with ctags and cscope does everything I need from an IDE.

I also use the error file feature for preparing code walk throughs for newbies in our team. Load the tutorial in VIM like an error-file and click on "errors" in the text to open the source you are describing in a split window.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Trinition]

The biggest thing I would miss if I went back to a text editor would me the auto-completion. Some call it code-sinsight, aother code-completeion, other auto-complete. But he fact that I can get a quick in-place list of methods/members without referring to another file, or documentation, ro header file, is awesome.

I know, I know, it sounbs so trivial. But I believe this to have been the biggest efficienncy in IDE design ever! And, I'm sorry, notepad just doesn't have it.

jEdit, on the other hand... that's what I would call a text editor that gets confused smetimes and thinks it's an OS.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

With the number of typos in your post, auto-completion must save you a heck of a lot of time.

;)

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[__past__]

The biggest thing I would miss if I went back to a text editor would me the auto-completion.... I'm sorry, notepad just doesn't have it.

Use a better Editor, then. Emacs can auto-complete both based on tags (i.e. it understands you source code), and even without it, for every kind of text format you happen to write: it just looks in all the open buffers for possible completions.

I write Common Lisp using the Ilisp package mostly, and with that you also get hints about the arguments a function wants etc. I'm sure something like that is available for other languages, too.

There seems to be a Lisp plugin for Eclipse, but frankly, I doubt that it will be too successful. It is hard to beat the productivity of Emacs, Ilisp and CL.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Trinition]

It's as if you know me! I never took a typing class. What I do is probably about as far from ergonomic and proper as possible. But, then again, I feel most typing classes are oriented for eltters, but curly braces, underscores, function keys, etc. So between my speed, and the computers ability to correct what I type for me (except, of course, in HTML textareas), even someone ashandicapped at typing as me can get stuff done.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Unregistered]

you want nedit. It's a basic text editor with color syntaxing for many languages. I use it as my primary coding app.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[the eric conspiracy]

The reason I use an IDE is carpal tunnel - I find that it requires a lot less typing to use Eclipse vs. a text editor, and my RSI problems went away when I started using Eclipse. I also feel my code quality is better - Eclipse makes it much easier to clean up or refactor code than if I was using a text editor.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[Chris Marlowe]

In some ways a basic text editor is easier to work with, of course the nice color coding makes reading your code easier but really your code, when properly formatted (indenting and so forth), should be easy to read in a text editor.

Well, yeah, and debuggers are nice, too, but your code, when properly written, should be bug-free. Take it far enough, and compilers are a luxury, because one's code should be directly-executable.

The whole point in having good professional tools lies in the chasm between "should" and "is." The code that leaves my fingers is easy-to-read as to my intent, but not necessarily as to what it actually does. I've had bugs that were harder to find because the indentation and comments said one thing, and the code did something else.

A good code editor indents, balances braces, and colorizes as a way of feeding back the meaning of the code as the programmer writes it. If the meaning as the editor sees it isn't what I thought it was, that's at least a compile cycle saved, and maybe a debugging session avoided.

Re:IDEs vs. Text Editors

[jdaily]

I've been using Emacs for years, but I tried Eclipse for a while. It was too buggy (or unpredictable, which to me was buggy) for my tastes, but there's one advantage to a Java IDE that significantly decreases development time over a tool like Emacs: continuous compilation.

Eclipse will show you whenever you've left out an import, or mistyped a variable name, or pick your favorite goof. Using Emacs, I would type for a while, compile, get errors, track them down, compile again, etc. Seeing errors on the fly and fixing them, without having to wait for a Java compiler to start and execute, is addictive and tremendously more efficient.

Eclipse? Nah, not worth it.

[malachid69]

I tried Eclipse a month ago, and was severly disappointed. First off, I had to read the tutorial to figure out how to build HelloWorld with their system. Not intuitive. Also, the SWT library is a complete joke -- it doesn't look like the host OS, and requires native code. No java program using SWT is cross-platform, so what's the point?

Malachi

Re:Eclipse? Nah, not worth it.

[org.earth.Citizen]

I tried Eclipse a month ago, and was severly disappointed. First off, I had to read the tutorial to figure out how to build HelloWorld with their system. Not intuitive. Also, the SWT library is a complete joke -- it doesn't look like the host OS, and requires native code. No java program using SWT is cross-platform, so what's the point?

Are we using two different Eclipses? From unzipping the binary distribution to setting a couple preferences to a System.out.println("Hello world"): 2 min.
Also, how can SWT not look like the native OS when it's a JNI wrapper around native widgets? Furthermore, to write SWT apps no native code has to be written by the developer, you simply need to include the SWT native library in your java.library.path. SWT is cross platform! The widget classes are nicely abstracted so that each implementation of the JNI library for each platform requires no code changes on your part. Please learn more [SWT FAQ] before dismissing it wholesale based on incomplete information!

Re:Eclipse? Nah, not worth it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that some developers like Java the "language" and could give a hoot about cross platform. Frankly I wish Java would have started out with the native widget approach and emulating the rest. Java might likely be a contender on the desktop then.

Anyway SWT just gives Java developers a choice. Don't like or want to use SWT, then don't. Simple as that.

Re:Eclipse? Nah, not worth it.

[Evil Grinn]

Frankly I wish Java would have started out with the native widget approach

uhm, AWT?

IntelliJ Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

IntelliJ

Re:YOU ARE MOST LIKELY A GAY HOMOSEXUAL SLASHDOT U

[Anonymous Coward]

Gay homosexual? Jeez, I really didn't know that there could be any other kind of homosexual. Straight homosexual? Not likely. ANYHOW...

Other languages

[TheViciousOverWind]

Have anyone made a plugin for eg. PHP for Eclipse? And is it easy to switch (I develop both Java and PHP). What advantages would it give a developer not developing Java full time?

Re:Other languages

[Lennie]

if you'd do a:
google search: php eclipse, you'd find out this works well.

Re:Other languages

[nostriluu]

I tried the phpeclipse plugin a few months ago and found it a good start but incomplete. Perhaps it has improved but for my purposes I found xored::WebStudio to be much better, including its outline view, which indicates include files. Very nice, though unfortunately not open source.

http://www.xored.com/products.php

Re:Other languages

[Lennie]

Yes, I found out about that yesterday, while I was looking for support for debugging, which it supports using DBG.

But, it seems Xored WebStudio will go on the be known as: TruStudio (from the website: TruStrudio will be next generation of WebStudio product. Preserving all WebStudio features TruStudio will introduce new great ones and all wishes of grateful users...)

And I guess it will be open source, because it has a sourceforge site (which is only for opensource projects ?).

But there is nothing in CVS or otherwise source available. Binary downloads from there site now goto the sourceforge site, though.

I think I'll ask the author about that, because I think they should.

Old news

[lastberserker]

Bah! Yet another Emacs, er, GNU/Emacs clone ;-P

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

It's GNU Emacs (no /), as Emacs is part of the GNU project. The / between GNU and Linux is there to indicate that they are two separate projects that complement each other.

that was hilarious...

[netsrek]

heh. heh. mmm... the pure simplicity of var...

O/t: I hope some eclipse gurus can help me

[mijok]

I have a problem with eclipse and the tomcat plugin for it: I can't get localization to work at all. I'm doing JSP-development and all non-English characters (i.e. in my case Finnish) come out as ??? and some English characters after them are missing on all pages when I use the plugin to start tomcat from eclipse. Eclipse itself shows them correctly when I've set LC_ALL=fi_FI@euro and the same thing if I run tomcat separately but not when I start it from eclipse. Then it runs so badly that strings with such characters in java classes cause nullpointerexceptions - due to incorrect lenghts caused by the characters missing after ???, I assume. Does anybody know how to fix this? Is there some additional locale setting in eclipse (well hidden since I haven't found it...) ?

Re:O/t: I hope some eclipse gurus can help me

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same problem with resin. Seems to be corrected now.

Ironical

[vivek7006]

Open source IDE for a closed source language ...

Re:Ironical

[anarxia]

The language is open source for the most part, but the license isn't free. You can modify it and use it but you cannot redistribute the modified work without permission from Sun. If you download the JDK from Sun or blackdown.org there is a file called src.zip guess what it has inside...

Re:Ironical

[Anonymous Coward]

So define open source, then.
Is it:

Something where someone gives away the code BUT the license says screw you if you change it without the original vendor's permission? -- The license you mentioned

Or something where code is given, you can distribute the product for free, but you must include the original source code and the code to your modifications? -- GPL
I think that means you are wrong, and it is not open source.

Open source for the most part sounds like a little bit pregnant...

Redundancy

[tequila26er]

grammar nazi hat on

Am I the only one who reads IDE environment and cringes at the redundancy? It's the same as people saying they need a NIC card for their computer.

Eclipse is an open-source Java IDE. My computer can talk to other computers because it has a NIC.

grammar nazi hat off

Sorry, but that's just one my my pet peeves.

Re:Redundancy

[dubbreak]

or barron of beef with 'aux jus'.. that's barron of beef with 'with the juices'... damn idiots

Re:Redundancy

[Osty]

or barron of beef with 'aux jus'.. that's barron of beef with 'with the juices'... damn idiots

That's almost excusable, since it's mixing languages (like the infamous movie watched on MST3K, "Manos, the Hands of Fate", which translates to "Hands, the Hands of Fate"). However, if I have to listen to another person tell me they're going to the "ATM machine", I just might hit them.

Re:Redundancy

[dereklam]

These pet peeves extend beyond computers for me. How often have your family referred to their ``PIN number,'' or your friends referred to a book's ``ISBN number?''

Re:Redundancy

[Khuzud]

There's nothing wrong with IDE environment or NIC card. Get used to it.

Sorry, but grammar nazis are one of my pet peeves.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the ATM machine. I hope I remember my PIN number.

Re:Redundancy

[Chris Marlowe]

William Safire actually addressed this once (SALT treaty, FOIA Act, etc.). The actual rule of English, as evidenced by almost universal usage, is that it is acceptable, though certainly optional, to repeat the final noun of an abbreviation or acronym.

It's just one of those things that's too deep in the neurolinguistic wiring to fight.

Re:Redundancy

[Unregistered]

So will my IDE environment work wic my NIC Card or not?

Re:Redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just FOAD and die?

Re:Redundancy

[PD]

Unfortunately the article you referenced is full of crap. For example, he talks about thinking that someone with HIV has the full blown disease. That's clearly an ignorant viewpoint, since the acronym AIDS refers to the full blown disease.

The redundant words are just annoying.

BTW, Nazis is spelled with a capital 'N'.

Re:Redundancy

[mml]

Whether you think it's a NIC card or not depends on whether you think NIC stands for network-interface-card or network-interface-controller.

Hardware people often think the latter, e.g. this
product sheet from Natsemi.

Matt

Re:Redundancy

[jesdynf]

Consider it a concession to clarity. If it bothers you, -use words-, not acronyms.

I've heard people whine about the matter forever, and I've come to the conclusion that they're simply wrong.

Yes, redundancy is evil, wah wah wah, but I simply -prefer- "ATM machine" to "ATM", and will continue to use it. I don't -need- my speech compressed that far, and I'd prefer it contain more words than letters.

Re:Redundancy

[Feztaa]

Am I the only one who reads IDE environment and cringes at the redundancy? It's the same as people saying they need a NIC card for their computer.

Hey yeah, that's like when I was at the bank and I needed to know my personal PIN identification number!

Re:Redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - RLLA* Acronyms get my goat up - so do people who use the word 'acronym' when they mean abbreviation.

* Redundant Last Letter Acronym

Re:Redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

So that you could get money from the ATM machine, right?

Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[leandrod]

> developing under your favorite text editor feels like comparing Eclipse to the dinosaur age - I can't live without refactoring now

You can have a better IDE doing refactoring as well.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[Osty]

That's hilarious! It's ingenious the way you called emacs a "better IDE". Pure comedy gold.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[nilsjuergens]

> You can have a better IDE [gnu.org.] doing refactoring [xref-tech.com.] as well.

You cant really compare that - Xrefactory isn't even free-as-in-beer.

XEmacs sure is nice, but neither its code completion support (filling in whole method names while you type) nor its support for refactoring come anywhere near Eclipse. And don't let me get started about "Quick Fix".

Actually i would be delighted if anyone could show i'm wrong and tell me how to do it - XEmacs really has a steep learning curve (imho).

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[jonabbey]

What other editor is powerful enough to keep giving you things to learn, ten years after you start using it?

I mean, sure, that's a downside if you don't like learning things..

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[Tim C]

Alternatively, you could ask "what other editor is so complex that even after ten years of using it, you still don't know all its features?".

Some of us prefer to use powerful, but still relatively simple tools, so that we can get on with our jobs. I'm paid to design and develop software (amongst other related things), not to learn to use a tool.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[idontgno]

Amen, Brother, preach it!

If I want "a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe," I'll play chess. And a monolithic tool that needs a 2,560-page manual and a 17-week qualification period is no fun. Give me robust but lithe and agile tools that I can string together with a minimum of grunting and get out of my way!.

Years (decades?) ago, I was one of the fringe-warriors in the various editor holy wars, but as I grew older and wiser I realized it had less to do with the tool and more to do with the craftsman. Now, I prefer to craft my code myself, not let an IDE do too much for me. (How much is too much? "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" [Quoting Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's comment on obscenity.] As soon as the tool spends less time helping me and more time being in my way, it's out of here.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[EatAtJoes]

It's all possible in [x]emacs... i've thrown together something that constantly completes java code as I type by inspecting import statements, doing reflection ...

JDE for emacs does some of this though not as thoroughly. To get what I wanted I had to code lisp for days tho ...

the point being -- ANYTHING is possible in emacs, in fact I'm a bit mystified why the IDE tools aren't better already.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[kcbrown]

I'm paid to design and develop software (amongst other related things), not to learn to use a tool.

Huh? When you're paid to do a job, learning the tools to do the job (even if there are some of them that you don't end up using) is implied, because you simply can't do your job properly without knowing how to use the tools to do it, nor can you do your job well if you don't know enough about the available tools to make an intelligent decision about which ones are most applicable for the job at hand.

I wish I knew where this idiotic notion that you should be able to do your job without learning how to use the necessary tools comes from, but it seems that it's becoming more common over time -- a depressing thought, to say the least. It's this thinking that's behind the belief people have that they should be able to use the computer, including all the programs on it, without having ever learned anything about it first.

If automobiles hadn't been around for so long, people would probably think that they should be able to get into a car and drive without learning anything about driving, too. It's probably only because the people who made the automobile into an integral part of our society weren't as lazy and stupid as people today that this notion never made it into the automobile culture...

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[Osty]

I wish I knew where this idiotic notion that you should be able to do your job without learning how to use the necessary tools comes from, but it seems that it's becoming more common over time -- a depressing thought, to say the least. It's this thinking that's behind the belief people have that they should be able to use the computer, including all the programs on it, without having ever learned anything about it first.

I think you missed the point. Basically, what the poster was trying to say is that learning emacs is a full-time job. Of course you have to learn the tools you want/need to use, and if there's a new tool or set of tools you need to learn to do a job, then that should be factored into your estimate and charged appropriately. The problem is that emacs takes damned long to learn all of the ins and outs. Sure, you can fire it up and start using it by only knowing a few commands, but it's highly unlikely you'll be as productive as you would with a less-featureful but more-intuitive tool.

If automobiles hadn't been around for so long, people would probably think that they should be able to get into a car and drive without learning anything about driving, too. It's probably only because the people who made the automobile into an integral part of our society weren't as lazy and stupid as people today that this notion never made it into the automobile culture...

It hasn't? Driver education in the US is a joke, and most people do believe that they should be able to get into a car and drive without learning anything at all about driving. To some extent, that is true -- the interface on most automobiles is simple enough that you can simply get in and drive, with all of the major controls in similar places, if not exactly the same place. You won't necessarily be very good at it, but you can still do it.

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[jonabbey]

I think you missed the point. Basically, what the poster was trying to say is that learning emacs is a full-time job. Of course you have to learn the tools you want/need to use, and if there's a new tool or set of tools you need to learn to do a job, then that should be factored into your estimate and charged appropriately. The problem is that emacs takes damned long to learn all of the ins and outs. Sure, you can fire it up and start using it by only knowing a few commands, but it's highly unlikely you'll be as productive as you would with a less-featureful but more-intuitive tool.

But the point is that emacs has more ins and outs than other tools. Yes, things like Eclipse or VS have some fancy compiler integration tools, but there is so much more to emacs as an editor, and while one may not need to use all that power, try telling that to those who do.

I mean, I'm sure I could live without the ability to instantly center the displayed text on the line my cursor is on, and that I could live without the ability to do arbitrarily complex searches on a shell buffer, and that I could live without the ability to do artificial intelligence logic in my editor, but why should I?

Re:Refactoring does not depend on Eclipse: Emacs!

[Eric Savage]

Quick Fix is an absolute godsend. If anything out there contends from Brooks' single productivity booster I'd nominate it.

jEdit

[Noksagt]

I'll have to try the new eclipse release....again.

I first looked for alternatives to IBM's VisualAge for Java and Metroworks Codewarrior when Eclipse was first released. I was hoping it would be enough, but then I got fed up with it & started using jEdit. I like having a decent functioning editor and then customizing it into a developing environment that suits my needs. Plugins are being released for the two at a comparable rate.

Re:jEdit

[nate.sammons]

I've found Eclipse to be more VAJ-like (VisualAge for Java, another IBM IDE) than I care for. You can't just open the app and start editing files. You have to make a project, then "import" your code to Eclipse, etc, etc. Lots of hoops.

jEdit is the only editor that has been able to get me off of vim for coding. That's saying someting. I've been a vim user for years and years.

I've been using jedit since 4.0, and now use daily CVS builds of the 4.2pre-X series. It's a great editor. Tons of plugins to do all kinds of things, support for lots of languages in the syntax highliting, runs fast (use JDK 1.4.1_02 if you can!!) and is generally a pleasure to use.

-nate

Re:jEdit

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Eclipse 2.2 Draft Plan:

Allow editors to open files outside workspace. A common request is to be able to open a file that is not part of the workspace using Eclipse. In addition, applications would like to provide file extension associations so that double-clicking on a file in the OS desktop would open the associated Eclipse editor. The operations and capabilities available on these "outside of the workspace" files would need to be defined. [Platform UI]

ATTN FIRST POSTERS !

[Anonymous Coward]

The high troll council has patriotically decided that all first posts, forst posts, forst pists and toast posts will be called "freedom posts" in the future due to the cowardly surrendermonkeyism of the firsts.

Re:ATTN FIRST POSTERS !

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if I gotta frosty pist, then I gotta frosty pist, regardless of what the council decided.

I may give this a try

[Billly Gates]

I tried out Eclipse when it was in beta and didn't like it. The ui felt uncomfortable and I did not like the everything is a plug-in method.

I use netbeans and find its a perfect ballance between functionality and slimness. You may want to download and give it a shot. Eclispe seemed to bloat very quickly if you add all the plugins and the fileview gets clogged easily. Of coarse this was the beta version so I will give it another shot.

Re:I may give this a try

[iapetus]

There's a huge improvement in current versions of Eclipse over earlier releases. It's well worth giving another try - I gave up on it a long time ago but tried it again with the 2.1 release candidates, and it's a completely different environment.

Re:I may give this a try

[JohnFluxx]

In reference to your sig - amazon does have a web service client. It uses mozilla and is fairly cool - I looked through the source code and it shows how nice mozilla is to use for making apps.
Well, actually I think it might still technically be in experimental status.

Re:I may give this a try

[Trinition]

Just for contrast, I first tried NetBeans/Forte. I hated having to "mount filesystems" (gee, did someone from the *nix world write this thing?). I couldn't get anything to work agaist my current projects.

I actually had the same feeling when I tried eclipse 1.x. It turns out, eclipse 1.x was just too primitive. 2.0 is great. 2.1, which I'm downloading now, looks like it will be fantastic!

Re:I may give this a try

[Anonymous Coward]

UGH! NetBeans is the absolute worst of the lost. It's so UGLY and uncomfortable to use.

My favourites are:

IntelliJ IDEA
Eclipse
JBuilder

after that I go straight to using Notepad rather than use NetBeans, SUN ONE, etc.

Re:I may give this a try

[Billly Gates]

I was making fun of Jim Allchin. He is diluted enough to actually think anything that is not .NET enabled is legacy primptive trash. I find this laughable.

Even without xml I find anything that can render custom html and do servlets as a web service or program. Even old cgi programs.

Just shows their ignorance and hope that enough mcse and mcsd vb type monkeys falling for the hype.

good education

[hlee]

I've been using eclipse since 2.0, and have been closely following its development - at first out of curiosity (when I discovered Erich Gamma of the Design Patterns fame was on the project), but have over time learnt a great deal from their articles and best practices...

• They probably have the best document about evolving Java APIs, i.e. maintaining backwards compatibility.
• Meeting deadlines. When they publish a game plan, they stick to it - very rarely missing their milestones. They've long adopted continuous integration (automated builds, unit tests), and frequent releases.
• SWT - their cross platform widget set, which has ports for most windowing systems under the sun. Its a lot faster and looks better than Swing. Its really a very thin JNI layer (C to Java interface) on top of the native APIs, so if you've programmed in GTK, you could take a look at the wrappers and figure out pretty quickly how to use SWT. It does have problems if there are humongous amounts of calls to be made (like with large tables - in which case you can just use Swing).

Anyway, one of my favourite features is its scrapbook that lets you execute Java statements on the fly like an interpreted language.

Worth a try if you haven't experienced it. I should know... there's an unused paid JBuilder license still sitting in my drawer.

It's not an IDE, it's a platform

[OpenSourced]

I'm seeing here in the comments that most miss the real point of Eclipse. It's not an IDE for Java. That's simply a side-issue, or more properly a concept proof. What really smash you about Eclipse once you start using it is the possibility of modifying your own environment.

I know that that is a common possibility in all Open Source projects, but Eclipse makes it really practical, using their plug-in system. I mean that you don't have to learn the whole damn bloat of code to start adding some menu point to it. I'm developing a plug-in, and while not trivial, it's affordable.I've been developing for more years than I care. And never sensed the same kind of power as now, when I can modify my IDE to suit my preferences. Efficiency is starting to climb, even considering the time developing the plug-in. And it'b bound to skyrocket as it gets perferctioned. I mean, most of my development has a high percentage of repetitive work, that is probably different for other developers. I'm now putting all that repetitive work in automated code generation routines. It will save me ages. And Eclipse offers a lot of built-in functionality that allows you to concentrate on the real issues.

Plus, the documentation is good. I would almost call it first-class.

I've been waiting for something like Eclipse since I did my first C code to generate COBOL list programs. So it's a while. Well, I must leave you, gentelmen, I think my download of the 2.1 is finished :)

Re:It's not an IDE, it's a platform

[Troll_Kamikaze]

I've been waiting for something like Eclipse since I did my first C code to generate COBOL list programs.

C code to generate COBOL list programs?! I think I would've opted to flop my scrotum onto the nearest anvil and reach for the sledgehammer.

Re:It's not an IDE, it's a platform

[IamTheRealMike]

Well yes, but emacs has been doing that for years. It's all defined in Lisp, so you can extend, rewrite, and customise virtually everything. I think it's more powerful than the Eclipse plugin method, certainly lighter weight.

Unfortunately emacs doesn't seem to have power IDE features these days. eTags just isn't as good as drop down code completion for instance.

I still prefer xemacs though, simply because it fills the screen with what you're actually working on, rather than cramping it into a tiny window and surrounding it with code browsers and stuff.

Re:It's not an IDE, it's a platform

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the unfortunate thing is that it's written in Lisp. ;)

The thoery of Lisp is really great, but the syntax is... painful.

Re:It's not an IDE, it's a platform

[the eric conspiracy]

simply because it fills the screen with what you're actually working on

Modern IDEs including Eclipse generally have the ability to arrange the work area any way you want.

Installing GTK2 for Eclipse

[mparaz]

I had to "jump through a number of hoops" to install late Eclipse releases on Red Hat 7.3. At first it required the GTK from Red Hat 8. Now it requires an even newer GTK - I now use 2.1.1 from Rawhide.

To upgrade this GTK I had to rebuild some pieces which in binary RPM form were built against a newer glibc than what I had.

Re:Installing GTK2 for Eclipse

[Salsaman]

I'm not talking about using Eclipse under GTK, I am referring to the GTK/Java plugin. Perhaps I should have been clearer.

Get your Eclipse plugins here

[eddd]

There is a plethora of plugins for Eclipse here.

It depends - and not in investment banking

[hughk]

I work with trading systems. There are a lot of things you can implement cheaply and efficiently enough such as the forms around trading. However everything in the price broadcast, order and execution chain needs to be fast. It doesn't matter if your code is 1% slower than the other guys because he will get the deals and you won't.

The correct solution is to code everything out of the performance critical loop in whatver language is easy and cheap to work with, and then you write what actually matters in the fastest and most efficient way. Actually for the easy and cheap, you can find scripting languages like Perl, Python or Ruby are as good as Java if not better. Java is often a little faster though (but not always).

What Java does have is the ability to run on multiple client platforms, otherwise you have to roll out specific binaries. The joke is for serious applications, your Java often has to call down through JNI to some special stuff that is platform specific anyway so you lose that advantage.

Re:It depends - and not in investment banking

[Furry Ice]

Finally, someone posts a moment of clarity. I've been coding in Java at work for four years, and have found it to be much more cumbersome and time consuming than the projects I do in Python, Ruby and Perl on the side. Java is just really mediocre in all categories, except for library support. However, Perl and Python are also very strong in that area.

I'm really hoping Paul Graham finishes Arc in the next century so that Lisp might have a chance to thrive again.

Re:It depends - and not in investment banking

[hughk]

Personally I don't particularly like Perl, but I love CPAN and Perl is in any case still a bit more mainstream than Python or Ruby.

Re:It depends - and not in investment banking

[Furry Ice]

I hear that. I write more Perl programs than Python or Ruby just because of CPAN. For some reason, Perl just feels right when I begin a job, but then I realize I need to make hashes of arrays of hashes and I just want to slit my wrists. I'd kill for better complex datatype support in Perl.

Re:It depends - and not in investment banking

[Baki]

OK, maybe some niche areas need to squeeze the last 1% possible performance, but that is not very typical for 95% of software. The software we write is likely to last for 10-20 years (as were the previous generation), it needs to be very robust and in an environment that is 100% guaranteed to remain constant (completely backwards compatible) for many years.

As much as I like Perl (use it privately and at work for tools and scripts for filetransfer, text preprocessing for downloaded files before they are loaded in the datawarehouse) it is not suitable to capture important business logic in software modules that are used by hundreds of other programs/modules over a period of 10 years, IMO.

Yes, Java is sometimes cumbersome, it lacks some convenience features from Perl, it lacks some advanced features from C++, but what you write therefore is almost always easier to understand and maintain by others (for example if someone looks again at my code in 5 years time to make some change in the logic). And in 5 years time it is very likely that the same code (even .class binaries) shall still run, since SUN hardly breaks compatability, a key factor for Java's success in such enterprise environments.

This combined with a good standardized component architecture such as Corba or EJB make that there is hardly an alternative. For its simplicity it still is miles ahead of non-OO languages such as Cobol or PL/1.

Re:It depends - and not in investment banking

[hughk]

erl may not be the best but it is ubiquitous. As I mention elsewhere, I prefer other scripting languages such as Python or Ruby. The thing is, that I don't particularly see any reason to code business logic in Java as above other languages and if we are going interpreted, then why not the whole way?

I have already worked on code that is ten to fifteen years old. Believe it or not, Java isn't really transparent enough because you don't want to go into 10-15 year old libraries to find out how a module does things. In the past we did it in Cobol, now we use other languages but on thr backend, Java isn't one of them.

Where is the SWT rpm??

[ahornby]

I'd like SWT to be released separately from eclipse so that I can develop/distribute SWT based apps easily.

Also an SWT gui builder wouldn't go amiss....

Re:Where is the SWT rpm??

[Anonymous Coward]

It is separate. You get it when you download Eclipse or if you browse their CVS.

What's stopping you from developing/distributing SWT based apps easily?

I think this is what you are looking for.

Re:Where is the SWT rpm??

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree that it would make life easier. You can still download what you want, but it is a 60MB drop and then you need poke around to find the swt.jar file as well as the native library appropriate to your platform. (This is what I've been doing myself.)

I think there are GUI SWT builders out there, but I'm not sure how good they are. Hand-coding isn't too bad, but the interfaces I work with are pretty simple and straight-forward...

Re:Where is the SWT rpm??

[burner]

It's pretty easy to pull out. Debian's eclipse packages have done this.

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/libswt-j ava.html

And it's easy to do by hand, too. Just grab Eclipse and pull out the swt jars and dlls. You can even pull out JFace and use that for higher level widgets.

Good for PHP Developers too

[Bishop923]

With the release of Eclipse 2.1 Xored has released version 0.3.4 of the WebStudio plugin that is compatable (Finally we can stop using 2.1 M5...)

Excellent Cross platform PHP/HTML IDE

Now all I need is a -good- XML/XSLT editing plugin and I can have all of my dev work in one integrated tool.

(Guess I'll have to pick up some esoteric language so I can have a reason to keep vim open, wouldn't feel right to be so efficient :-) )

CVS

[manseman]

While refactoring with Eclipse is vastly superior to manual refactoring I think the biggest advantage is the overview of and easy access to the cvs repository it offers.

However, I've been having problems with disappearing cvs log messages using Eclipse.
Perhaps this has been fixed in this release?

Re:CVS

[Anonymous Coward]

If your problem is with the console messages disapearing off the top, look at your settings under Preferences > Debug > Console. I have deselected the Limit console output. This setting seems to apply to the CVS Console as well.

Still unusable

[cca93014]

From the FAQ:

Is there a Tomcat plug-in?

No, the Eclipse SDK does not include a Tomcat plug-in.

This kills it dead for a lot of people...Is there no way to debug jsp's with Eclipse?

Re:Still unusable

[miniver]

You're missing the point. So Eclipse doesn't provide a Tomcat plugin; big deal. A number of other developers provide plugins to do almost anything you might want, most of them open source (though there are some commercial plugins.) Have a look at the SysDeo Tomcat Plugin before you pass judgement on Eclipse.

My only gripe with Eclipse plugins is that Eclipse doesn't have a central repository that uses their automatic install/update mechanism for plugins to save people from having to hunt for the plugins. Instead they've let the community pick up the slack -- so you sometimes have to hunt around looking for just the right plugin.

Eclipse versus WSAD

[rocnar]

I work for a company that has chosen WebSphere App Server (WAS) as its J2EE platform and WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) as its IDE. One of the primary advantages to WSAD, in my situation, is that it helps you manage a lot of the application deployment "overhead" (like data source/EJB bindings, WAS-specific config settings, etc.)

I was wondering if someone here knowledgable about both tools could provide insight as to what I'd find missing if I switched to Eclipse? As a developer, I'm always eager to get the latest IDE improvements... and my company has been stuck on an older version of WSAD for a long time.

Re:Eclipse versus WSAD

[jas79]

Isn't WSAD based on Eclipse? I thought that was IBM's plan.

Re:Eclipse versus WSAD

[rocnar]

Yes, it is. However, I was wondering what "value-added" IBM was putting into WSAD that Eclipse may not have. Example: does Eclipse have the extension editor for the WAS-specific deployment files? Just thought I'd see if anyone knew before I spent all night downloading 2.1 to see for myself. ;-)

Re:Eclipse versus WSAD

[andy1307]

Eclipse IS WSAD without all the WebSphere plugins. Switching from WSAD to eclipse is a giant step backwards. If you are running an application server locally, you can't debug the application server process using eclipse.

If you have WSAD, you are already using eclpise.

WSAD rocks..:-)

Comparisons?

[FattyBoeBatty]

For all you guys that switched to Eclipse as a primary IDE, what did you switch from? I'm considering spending some time learning to use it, but first I think it would be helpful to see why people chose it vs. other IDEs.

For what it's worth, I've started using IntelliJ lately and it's the best editor I've ever used by far. Has anyone else tried it?

-Fatty

Re:Comparisons?

[andy1307]

Eclipse is a memory hog. It's good to have if you are writing large amounts of fresh code. If your project is stable and most of your work involves enhancing existing functionality, you can use textpad. Once the gee wiz effect of eclipse has worn off, you will start noticing the memory problems.

Re:Comparisons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched from Visual Age for Java (we use IBM WSAD 5.0 at work now -aka- Eclipse with a mess o' plugins).

I absolutely love Eclipse. I use it at home and am very happy that we're using WSAD at work. We were very leary in regards to Eclipse/WSAD over Visual Age for Java. Eclipse has now completely surpassed IBM VAJ in my opinion.

I haven't tried too many other editors, as Eclipse/WSAD has met all my needs. If there's something missing, most likely somebody has already started a plugin for it... you just need to pitch in.

Re:Comparisons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Borland's products since the Turbo Pascal days and have progressed from Delphi to JBuilder over the years. But around the time of JBuilder 3.0 I found that their products just weren't good enough for me and that I could pump code out faster by going back to vi. Eclipse is the first IDE that I'm excited about again. I've been using it since version 2.0.2 and 2.1.0 looks like a HUGE improvement over the previous version. Still a lot of kinks to iron out, but CVS integration, automatic refactoring, code formatting, class outlines, ant/junit integration and all the other stuff they throw in for free makes it an amazingly good dev environment. I especially like their idea of having perspectives which for different modes of doing work. For example you'd usually be in the Java perspective when coding in Java, but switch to a debug perspective when debugging your code. Each perspective lays out the windows in a very nice way by default for the task at hand. I could go on and on, but instead of me doing that you should definitely go and download it and start working through their online manual (which is also excellent). btw, I've also recently tried intellij, which is definitely very very good, but given the price of IJ vs. Eclipse, I would pick Eclipse hands down (plus IntelliJ's CVS integration is not all that great).

ISBN?

[Rhinobird]

Isn't that a city in Portugal?

ba dum ching

Being an American

[Rhinobird]

Being an American, I am protesting all things French, including mangling their language.

Speaking of redunancy, how many of those letters in 'aux jus' are silent?

Re:Being an American

[Gerald]

None, if you're in the US.

Re:Being an American

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of the French, I must head out for a cross-ant. Yum, yum.

Ant

[MrChucho]

It is my firm belief that Ant is still the most powerful and flexible Java development tool available. A single XML file can be distributed among developers (regardless of platform), integrated into an IDE or used along side a simple text editor, then used with little or not effort. Ant can be extended with "plugins" or tasks... making it integrate with version control systems, documentation-creation tools (e.g. doxygen), etc.

There's a reason other popular IDEs like Eclipse and JBuilder include support for Ant build.xml files!

jsp plugin

[Anonymous Coward]

I love eclipse and i use it for more than an year.
It was the first ide that convice me to drop emacs :)
In can inprove your productivity to write code.
Refactorimg, generating get/set on the fly are great features that really improve you coding speed while not limiting your freedom.

But the I have a problem eclipse doesn't have support for jsp.
I have tried to find a plugin but i didn't find one that seems to do the trick.

Do any of you know anything?

Slashdotted already?

[Trinition]

Anyone have a miror?

I've tried both the FTP and HTTP links. I'm currently getting 2.58kb/sec on my fancy broadband connection.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Viral Fly-by]

Yeahamirrorwouldbenice...thedownloadnever getspastaboutfivepercentformewithoutstalli ngout.:-(

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Drakonian]

can anyone put this on BitTorrent? It is perfect for this stuff. (Getting 150k/sec on Mandrake 9.1 ISO downloads right now)

Improved effects...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now with even blacker black!

Ignore SWT, use eclipse anyway.

[zipwow]

SWT is an interesting "under the covers" bit of information, but its not important to the way you're using the application. Eclipse (unlike most branded IDEs) doesn't have, in addition to its main features, this hidden motive to get you to use their vendor-lock-in widgets and toolsets.

If you want to use SWT, fine, its interesting, but don't get the idea that using Eclipse somehow leads you to SWT.

I'd use Eclipse if they decided to write it in cobol, so long as it works the way it does. CVS integration, and so many things that "just work the way you'd want them to", and good linux support. I don't have a lot of things left on my wish list, really.

-Zipwow

Re:Ignore SWT, use eclipse anyway.

[kdriedge]

SWT may be an interesting "under the covers" bit of information but it could be important to you if you want to develop modern native (professional looking) applications in Java.

How an open source widget toolkit could be considered vender-lock-in, mystifies me?!?!

Since we're picking nits..

[Slynkie]

Eclipse is an open-source Java IDE
err, no it's not. from eclipse.org:
"Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular"

Granted, i'm sure at this point that the most popular use of Eclipse is as a Java IDE, but let's not limit it's potential!

Eclipse Does Swing!

[alacqua]

Ive seen posts here and on previous articles implying that eclipse forces developerse to use the SWT. Am I missing something? Id swear I wrote Swing code with eclipse. My (limited) understanding is that eclipse is written in Java and the eclipse developers chose to use the SWT, but that in no way affects the way you write your code. In particular, you may freely write Swing code while using eclipse.

Frankly, I dont give a damn what toolkits the eclipse developers have used. It is a great, free, open source product. I'll worry about the SWT when I develop for eclipse and not with eclipse.

I think this is an important point, so if someone with a little more knowledge of the subject can confirm this, please do so. Or please educate me if I am wrong.

Re:Eclipse Does Swing!

[Anonymous Coward]

...implying that eclipse forces developerse to use the SWT.

Not only that, but they imply that developers are forced to use the SWT, too! Harumph!

Re:Eclipse Does Swing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse imposes nothing on you. [Editor: Insert MS-bashing joke here.]

You may write AWT or Swing or SWT or text. You can use earlier JDKs (maybe down to 1.2?). You can target what you want. You can develop with 1.4 and run as 1.3. You can have multiple workspaces (nice feature). Version control is really easy just awesome (I am continuously amazed at how may professionals do not 'like' version control).

You want another language in the IDE? Go pick it up.

Ok, ok, I was gushing, but it is worth your time to try it out.

Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[ajm]

I know we're meant to be talking about Eclipse but if you're in the market for an IDE and you don't look at IntelliJ IDEA you're missing out. At work we have saved the purchase price ($700, far less than so called "Enterprise" tools) many times over. The whole tool works so cleanly and unobtrusively it doesn't get between you and your code. The only downside is it tends to turn its users into partisans in the same way that emacs does. If you're worried that you'll end up posting to Slashdot praising a commercial product then stay away.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[Trinition]

I've read the feature list many timesz, and it is impresive. And I've talke to people who've used it any they love it! However, I'm starting to see eclipse catch up (and maybe others?).

Can you point out some of the featuresin IntelliJ that you have yet to see in another IDE? Heh, maybe it will be a starting poi9nt for the next feature list to ecipse!

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[myster0n]

The only downside is it tends to turn its users into partisans in the same way that emacs does

I've noticed that at work. On the other hand, I'm becoming a real Eclipse-zealot myself (and why not? It IS the best ;-)

The one thing, for me, that IntelliJ has that should be added to Eclipse is code folding.But I'm not too sure about that one. Back in the day when I was using NetBeans things could get so cluttered that code-folding could help, but now, using Eclipse, I haven't really felt the need for it.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[rossifer]

Several of the other developers in my office use Idea, and though they get their import statements automanaged, there are clearly other factors at work when you look at who wrote what and the functionality of that effort.

Let's just say it's the helmsman, not the tiller, that determines the quality and maintainability of a particular unit of source code.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[bay43270]

To help prove your point, check out the changes to eclipse in version 2.1:
http://download2.eclipse.org/downloads/drops /R-2.1 -200303272130/whats-new.html

There's very little in there that hasn't been in IDEA for at least 6 months. Eclipse is open source, so it will have many more features in the future, but more isn't always better.

I can't really see Eclipse overtaking IDEA in usability (it's natural strong suit). I've never seen an open source project that has excelled in that area. IBM may flex some muscle in this area and prove me wrong, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[nebby]

IntelliJ has high level Java-specific features that I'm sure the Eclipse team has not even begun considering implementing. It wins hands down.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[the eric conspiracy]

I've never seen an open source project that has excelled in that area.

I don't think that Eclipse is at all a typical open source project. Its development is really driven by IBM who are using it as the basis for most of their enterprise development tools.

If I were IDEA or Borland I would be looking at ways to exit the Java IDE business. The fact that Eclipse is pretty good right now, is free, and has the backing of IBM is going to make it tough for anybody to recoup development costs in this area. Instead I'd be looking to write plugins for Eclipse.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[bay43270]

I don't think that Eclipse is at all a typical open source project. Its development is really driven by IBM who are using it as the basis for most of their enterprise development tools.

Have you USED ibm's development tools?!? IBM has some nice technical advancements from time to time, and they are big and powerful, but USEABLE???

Isn't that why they had to start over on their Java IDE? Visual Age was a piece of crap!

There is a chance that IBM will put some usability work into Eclipse, but given their history, I wouldn't expect it. And my previous comments about open source usability still stand.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[the eric conspiracy]

Isn't that why they had to start over on their Java IDE?

To begin with, Eclipse is NOT a just a Java IDE. It is a tools platform that supports a bunch of languages including Java, PHP, C/C++, and yes, even Cobol.

As for the reasons why IBM is dumping Visual Age (which many people felt had the best Java IDE), I think it is pretty obvious that the plug-in architecure of Eclipse is the driving force.

And my previous comments about open source usability still stand.

I agree that an Open Source effort is in general less likely to have good usabilty compared to a commercial product. But that sort of rule is such a sweeping generalization that there are bound to be exceptions. The fact is that there are plenty of commercial products that have poor usability, and many of those have open source competitors that are at least as good.

Re:Not free but ... IntelliJ is by far the best

[Alex Blume]

I've been a Java programmer since 1997, and have never really liked any of the Java IDEs out there enough to regularly use them until I came across IntelliJ IDEA. Most others seemed to get in your way more than they helped you, and took a good amount of unnecessary time to learn.

With it's seamless CVS and ANT integration, I had my project running in IDEA in about 10 minutes.
I liked it so much, I paid for the 400 clams for it out of my own pocket!

I need to checkout where Eclipse is at this point, but I REALLY doubt I'll be switching to anything else.

Swinging with Eclipse

[ChaoticCoyote]

I've been using Eclipse for a year now as my primary Java development platform. My primary client loves Macs; I run Linux; we test on Windows -- all using one set of projects and Eclipse 2.x. Yesterday, while testing a largish Java application, I ran Eclipse on both Win2k and Linux boxes, against a single copy of the code residing on a share; it was a dammed fast way to test the code across platforms.

And our application is 100% Pure Java, 100% Swing -- no SWT. None.

While I prefer Nedit/xterm for my C/C++/Fortran coding, Eclipse works very well for Java development. I do revert to Nedit/xterm when I need to work fast (as in banging out raw code).

Which brings up some of the few problems with Eclipse: slow performance and a lousy search/replace facility. Even on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, it takes Eclipse more than a minute to start up. And the search/replace mechanism is primitive at best and ineffective at worst.

Eclipse can do lots of hand-holding -- all sorts of context-sensitive documentation and help is available, but you can turn it all off if it annoys you or slows the editor down.

I've tried other Java IDEs, both free and commercial, and I didn't really like them. Eclipse does its job well, costs nothing, and is portable across the platforms I need. And that is enough to make it one of my primary programming tool.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[the eric conspiracy]

Even on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, it takes Eclipse more than a minute to start up. And the search/replace mechanism is primitive at best and ineffective at worst.

You must be using a different version than I do. On my 1.8 GHz laptop (512 MB, RedHat 8.0) it takes Eclipse 2.1-motif 9 seconds (no plugins, no open files) to start up the second time.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[Artemis]

You must be using a different version than I do. On my 1.8 GHz laptop (512 MB, RedHat 8.0) it takes Eclipse 2.1-motif 9 seconds (no plugins, no open files) to start up the second time.

But how long does it take to startup the first time, as I'm sure that's what the original posters comment was referring to. Obviously it is going to startup faster the second time as a majority will probably still be cached in RAM.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[bojolais]

Not necessarily true. The very first time you run Eclipse, a number of operations will be performed (essentially, creating the workspace, etc.) that won't be performed again. Subsequent launches will be a good deal faster... not just launches while the app is cached in RAM.

Eclipse isn't the fastest IDE in the world, but later versions (with later JVMs) are making significant progress. I find Eclipse startup/shutdown to be comparable to VS.NET on a nicely equipped machine.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

While I prefer Nedit/xterm for my C/C++/Fortran coding, Eclipse works very well for Java development. I do revert to Nedit/xterm when I need to work fast (as in banging out raw code).

Ha ! I've never seen anyone else say this before, but this is exactly how I work. I use a plain old editor to "bang out" the initial implementation, and then open an eclipse project on the source after the initial compilation works. From that point on it is eclipse only.

Once you are in the "flesh-out/maintenance" phase, you can't beat an IDE; but for banging out initial code, I find they just get in the way.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[Petronius]

I'm surprised about the startup time... On a 1.8GHz Pentium, 512 megs of ram, RedHat 8.0 using JDK1.4.02 it never takes more than 20 seconds.

If you want to see slow, try Netbeans.

Re:Swinging with Eclipse

[ChaoticCoyote]

I stand corrected; it just felt like a minute! I loaded Eclipse after a fresh boot, using IBM JDK 1.4.0 under Linux 2.5.66, it took 30 seconds exactly.

I can live with that, really; I spend much more time using it than I do waiting for it to start.

dinosaur age - SLOWZILLA

[JewFish]

developing under your favorite text editor feels like comparing Eclipse to the dinosaur age

The only comparison I can give between my favorite text editor and Eclipse is that it feels as if it takes a dinosaurs age to open Eclipse. On my machine (AMD 1.2Ghz, 764mb RAM) my favorite text editor GVIM loads in 0.22s whereas Eclipse 2.0 loads in 27.00s. I must say however that Eclipse is the absolute best Java IDE I have ever used, I just wish it opened a little faster.

Re:dinosaur age - SLOWZILLA

[sohp]

It would be nice to know whose jvm you have installed/what version and what command line options you have set -- the performance of Eclipse is going to be heavily influenced by these factors.

Advertisements

[Unregistered]

I open the story and ther's a MS Visual studio ad. I think that's kinda funny.

Or you could get a real editor

[gaj]

Vim (and EMACS for that matter) can do auto-completion using ctags and/or the contents of any open buffers.

It also does code coloring, flexible auto-indent, browsing to a given tag (like Browse Symbol in JBuilder), make from within the editor allowing a jump right to each error, ditto for file grepping, etc, etc, etc.

And Vim's had all this for years, runs equally usably on my home machine (pathetic K6-333 laptop w/128MB of RAM) and my work machine (P4 1.5GHz w/512MB of RAM) and runs equally well in Linux, *BSD, Windows, and umpty-gazillian other OSs.

It's not as pretty as an IDE, though. Also lets you keep working away w/o having to stop and grop a rodent (unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case it'll give you what you want).

Not a troll

[Latent Heat]

Malachi, I have had the same experience with Eclipse as you. It may be the most powerful development editor on the planet, but the menus and dialogs are non-standard relative to the pattern established by other IDE's. Is it powerful enough to be worth the "learning curve"? I guess you will have to go with other's recommendations.

I have also had the same experience that if you criticize something that has its defenders on these pages, you get moderated down as "troll." It is the famous "if you don't know how to use it you must be stupid" attitude that places a persons preferences ahead of how user interfaces play out in the real world (while developers are perhaps a more sophisticated set of users than many, a developer's tool is basically a user interface).

Also, why can't such matters be debated with reason. Do I see replies to your post "Yes, it is counterintuitive, but they did it this way because . . ."

While saying "SWT library is a complete joke" may provoke a hostile response, your concerns are valid in that SWT is not the official SUN party line regarding multiplatform, and SWT looks suspiciously more complete on Windows than other platforms. This is an issue that merits some legitimate debate.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

"if you don't know how to use it you must be stupid"

That's not what the modders think. They think "if you don't know how to use it and you make obviously ignorant statements you must be insecure about your stupidity and you should leave the talking to those who have something useful to say"

Re:OS X version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does. Now they can draw pretty rainbows using SWT.

IdeaJ then JBuilder ...

[Anonymous Coward]

IdeaJ was the first one to bring this feature,
the JBuilder brought it too ...

Sorry ;-)

"Nothing changes, nothing created, ... only transforms"

Slashdotted

[stevenp]

I have never seen the Eclipse.org server to be so slow. Normally it makes 80k/ses without problems, now is crawling with 2-3.

Even the IBM Internet connection can not keep with the Slashdot power.

ctrl+1

[sohp]

At work they're starting to get tired of me talking about the magic ctrl+1, but to me that's the best part of Eclipse. It lets you write the code you are thinking about at the moment, then gives you help fixing up the little details and loose ends. Some of my favorites:

• Add stubs for unimplemented methods
  
• Add either a catch clause or a throws declaration to deal with an uncaught exception
  
• Add unimplemented abstract methods
  

A simple example: You're working on a bit of code that needs to call a method on another class, but with a different number of parameters than the method currently has -- you can go ahead and write the call, then ctrl-1 and Eclipse will offer to create the method for you.

Tried to View their On-line Slide Show...

[GroundBounce]

Here is the result:

This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Cross platform IDE, Single platform documentation :-(

Re:Tried to View their On-line Slide Show...

[Viral Fly-by]

" This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer."

This error message seems to indicate that you are using IE...just a version that is too old to view their slide show. If this is so, it may be incorrect to call the documentation single-platform. There is a difference between supporting multiple platforms and supporting those too lazy to upgrade.

+1 (Me Too)

[Joseph Vigneau]

I wish I had mod points right now... Anyway, I've tried Eclipse about three different times in the past. This "project focus" is the reason I switch back to jEdit every time. I work on a product that has thousands of source files, my focus is on a relatively small part. But, Eclipse forces me to make a project, and it then proceeds to compile it all, which takes hours to complete...

Maybe Eclipse 2.2 will be better, I understand there's an option to edit files outside a project...

Re:+1 (Me Too)

[Samrobb]

But, Eclipse forces me to make a project, and it then proceeds to compile it all, which takes hours to complete...

You can turn off the incremental compilation feature - open "Preferences" under the Windows menu and look under the Java preferences panel .

Too much integration is too limiting...

[javabandit]

It evades me why so many Java developers lean so much towards one single program to try to work effectively and solve all their problems. I often get people in my office saying, "How can you possibly work effectively using more than one tool?" It really amazes me. If you make some programmers use more than one tool, they simply fall apart. As if Visual Basic style programming is all they can do.

I cannot stand to have one tool that has everything built into it. I would much rather just combine two or three tools together and use them effectively. The idea of the fully-integrated development environment has never made sense nor appealed to me.

I have tried Eclipse repeatedly, and probably won't ever use it regularly. I think the project management is very cumbersome. And FORGET trying to use external VCS tools with Eclipse. Eclipse caches so much crap, that if anything VCS-related happens outside the environment, Eclipse goes nuts becuase it is out of sync. Not to mention that I have seen people get burned by Eclipse's dependency checker not actually compiling all the files. That's another problem. You can't compile _just one file_. It has to try to compile everything -- every time. And sometimes, that isn't what you want to do. And personally, I think the DIFF in Eclipse sucks. It has no colors whatsoever, so it is difficult to see what has changed. When diffing, it also does not ignore file changes that span across lines. So if you use a code formatter like Jalopy or Jindent, you get hosed if it formats long lines into multiple lines. These changes show up as differences -- when they really aren't. Eclipse does have some sweet features, but it really has some warts, too, IMHO.

If you are a programmer's programmer, and want a good, free IDE to use on Win32, I would highly recommend Gel. It isn't open-source, but it is freeware (the author will probably go commercial at some point). It is written in Delphi, so it is totally native. It is extremely fast and intuitive. Lightweight. It has the features you NEED. Not the kitchen sink. It doesn't do refactoring -- although some actually think refactoring by hand is better. Its VCS supports is really non-existent (although I use WinCVS -- so it doesn't matter).

It is a very solid Java IDE. I'll take it over Eclipse any day. I love having a native editor that only takes up 20 megs of RAM at the worst.

My regular Win32 working combo is :

Gel - Java IDE
WinCVS/Command-line CVS - Source Control
GVim - General purpose text editing
Jikes - Compiler
JSwat - remote debugging (if I need it)

Re:Too much integration is too limiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with much of what you say (I can't imagine why anyone would want a "swiss army knife", when they could have a bowie knife, a real fork, a real spoon, and a real saw); however, you are off the mark on CVS capabilities. I have WinCvs and eclipse, and probably the biggest reason I use eclipse is because of how good a GUI for CVS eclipse is (far better than WinCvs). OTOH much like you I use many tools outside of eclipse that do the job better than eclipse (but as an integrated editor/cvs eclipse can't be beat - especially for the price).

Re:Too much integration is too limiting...

[Michael Crutcher]

I think you've definately got a point, I use eclipse to do most of my coding and Poseidon to design. One comment got my attention, though:

although some actually think refactoring by hand is better People must enjoy pain where you work. Hmm... would I rather change this class name once, or search for the 3,000 places that its referenced in the project. I think I'll use eclipse to refactor it instead of replacing all of it by hand.

CleverSig myCleverSig = null;

Re:Too much integration is too limiting...

[javabandit]

Actually, that's not exactly what I was thinking about when I said "refactor". Renaming a class is really just doing a "Replace in files" for a simple regular expression. And then compiling to make sure you got everything. That's easy... in Eclipse or any other platform.

I was thinking more along the lines of other stuff that Eclipse does "quick-and-easy"... like pushing methods up/down. Or actually changing class structures. Changing widely-used method signatures. Stuff like that.

Some types of refactoring being difficult can be a good thing. Because it makes programmers think about different ways that they might accomplish the same thing... rather than just take the "quick-and-easy" way out.

Refactoring is always risky, and requires care and deliberance. Trusting your IDE to do these things for you might be pushing the envelope a little too far, I think. That's what I really meant.

Re:Too much integration is too limiting...

[Michael Crutcher]

Ok, points taken.

Re:Too much integration is too limiting...

[burner]

Clearly, you don't understand much about refactoring, then. Refactoring is a formal, verifyable process for making equivalent changes in code. Things like "extract method", or "push up".

These are tricky to get right by hand, but, since they can be done in a provably correct way, automatically, they are precisly the sort of thing your IDE should do for you.

Please read up on refactoring at http://www.refactoring.com/
and http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/refactor.h tml.

Excellent IDE/Emacs replacement but

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Eclipse is Emacs 2003, almost.
There are several areas which aren really adressed.

Servlet/JSP development is a joke, sure there is Sysdeo an Lombodz, but both arent in the same league as Netbeans currently is in this area.

There is no GUI builder, and you cant really currently get one without shelling out hilarious amounts of money.

XML support is the biggest joke on earth. You can find various variant plugins, like the excellent Planty, but raw xml, where is it?

Besides that, excellent IDE, which can be heartly recommended to anyone!

Educational Tool

[Troy]

One aspect of development tools in general that hasn't been discussed as much is the education value. In teaching programming, I don't want to become too bogged down in the tools and the equipment I use. Every class period I spend fixing Windows problems or getting the environment to work is a wasted period, because it is one less period I spend teaching the language.

Don't get me wrong, dealing with your "tools" is a part of programming and programmers need to learn these things. However, for an entry level C++ or Java programming course, I would rather spend a week at the end of the semester teaching some interesting language concept than spend a week at the beginning of the semester teaching the environment (which will inevitably change).

Beyond that, I want students to be able to use these tools at home. The automatically makes me prefer an IDE over a string of tools, because that everything I have to do to get the environment to work is what I have to write in a descriptive help file. Beyond that, students (of varying levels of maturity and motivation) have to follow this help file.

The things that I really like about Eclipse (as a teacher) are:

1) The simple setup/install -- Install the JRE and expand the eclipse.zip file and you're basically good to go. When I send burned CDs home, this minimizes the number of students who mess up the install because they missed an instruction. Students who do have problems end up having significant ones that I have to fix via VNC.

2) Focus on the language -- Eclipse does so many things for you that it really allows you to focus on your programming, rather than the host of tangential things related to programming. Granted, sometimes I think Eclipse does a little too much for you....for instance, creating class and method headers in new files prevent students from knowing how to write it .

3) Projects and CVS -- Oh God do I love how Eclipse does projects and CVS. The projects FORCE students to be organized, rather than throwing all of their files into one file. CVS' is so well integrated that students get all of the benefits of using CVS without having to jump through 15 hoops. Once again, there is an educationl benefit to learning how to jump through hoops, but that I have 67 hours a semester with these kids and I would rather focus on the language than the environment.

-Troy

OK, I'll bite

[Latent Heat]

There is nothing ignorant, stupid, or insecure in the comments made by Malachi. 1) Eclipse is not intuitive to newbies, and 2) Eclipse itself uses SWT and while SWT is not required (heck, you can use Eclipse as a text editor), SWT is somewhat less portable than Swing, which raises questions about which way to go. Tell me that there isn't anything factual or informative about either of those statements.

For example, you could say, "your statement is non-factual because there is this excellent tutorial about Eclipse and newbies need to go to that tutorial." Saying "I tried Eclipse and didn't have any problem with it" doesn't qualify because I don't have your resume, training, experience and life experience. And if as an evangelist of a product, even a product that takes sophistication on the part of the user such as a development tool, you suggest that people who have difficulties with that product are stupid, missinformed, or otherwise need to shut the heck up or keep their opinions to themselves, you are going to anger, discourage, or turn away potential users, and then you are going to wonder why that product does not catch on.

The choice of a development environment and GUI toolkit combination (such as Eclipse together with SWT) is a very important matter from the issues of ease of learning, ease of use, productivity, portability vs platform tie-down, features, capabilities and performance of the applications you develop. I spend whatever time I can spare looking over my shoulder at other platforms than what I am using to see if there is anything better out there. I also spend a fair amount of time on Slashdot because I can quickly get a feel for what is out there: from testimonials, from criticisms, and from the arrogant pose of some evangelists.

I am currently using C#/.NET because 1) I get to reuse all of the Delphi software I have developed for signal processing as ActiveX controls, 2) it has a C-like, Java-like syntax, and 3) the runtime performance and GUI responsiveness of this combination is very, very good. This setup has very bad vendor tie-in. Java is attractive because 1) it has C-style syntax and it is being taught in every CS department, 2) it is highly portable and is not Microsoft, 3) improvements are constantly made in its runtime performance. Eclipse/SWT is attractive because SWT tries to use more native GUI capabilities and not be as sluggish as Swing. On the other hand, it may have more Windows tie-in than you think. These issues need to be discussed and debated.

I develop engineering applications software, teach, and conduct engineering research, and in between all of that I try to evaluate development systems other than the ones I am using to see if it is worth making the switch, for myself and for my EE students. I found Eclipse non-intuitive, and I am certain I can figure it out, but then I have to teach it to electrical engineering students without taking up half the semester in a DSP class.

I find that Eclipse proponents, instead of trying to explain what Eclipse is about go around telling people who have difficulty with it that they are ignorant weenies, and I say I don't have time to waste on this. I think I will take a wait-and-see attitude -- if the thing is that good and gets enough mind share, I will invest the effort required to integrate it into my DSP class, but if its proponents are arrogant so-an-so's, I only need to wait for it to whither on the vine and I won't have wasted much time on it.

Fine software

[dr2chase]

I've used Eclipse on W2k, Linux, and MacOS X.
As near as I can tell, it is best on Windows,
worst on Linux, mostly because of problems
with cut-and-paste.

Eclipse is the first IDE that got me pried loose
from emacs. I've tried others, used MSVC++ for
debugging, but this is the first time I've happily
edited in the IDE, and I now find myself getting
annoyed with emacs where it fall short of
Eclipse's many editing features.

As far as integration goes, between the debugger,
junit, ant, and cvs, I'm relatively impressed.

Downsides: I think it takes too long to learn.
The 3rd-party plugins are a little random in their
quality. It uses more memory than you will find
in an old machine, at least for projects that
get into the 100kloc range.

Can't find screenshots on website.

[Wolfier]

So, no download from me. Thanks.

Re:Can't find screenshots on website.

[Viral Fly-by]

Like anybody can successfully download it anyway.... It's downloading at like 1-3KB/s if that, and for me the downloads all stall out and die around 3-6MB downloaded. Sounds like another successful /.

Re:Can't find screenshots on website.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is one of the most stupid things I have heard.

Re:Can't find screenshots on website.

[burner]

Linked right of the main page (termed "what's new"): http://download2.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/R-2.1 -200303272130/whats-new.html.

You're right.

[rjh]

A couple of weeks ago I finished a couple thousand lines of Java code for a pretty simple app a friend of mine needed. Heavy use of Swing throughout--Eclipse handled it just fine. In fact, I would've been more surprised if Eclipse hadn't handled it just fine.

anyone annoyed by all the files Eclipse creates

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite IDE is JBuilder. I tried Eclipse a few months ago and it created workspace files everywhere, in every directory I opened it up. I always tell people who use Eclipse to stay away from my source code because of all these file that
get created. Is there a way around this problem?
Does the new Eclipse fix this problem?

Nope, was using Mozilla...

[GroundBounce]

...version 1.3 on Linux, which quite up-to-date. If there is any laziness, it is on the part of those who speak before checking the facts.

Re:Nope, was using Mozilla...

[Viral Fly-by]

I wasn't saying that you are lazy... I was simply stating a possible alternative to the problem based on a proper interpretation of the (now shown to be badly worded) error message. No offense intended.

My Eclipse experience

[ShinmaWa]

Malachi, I have had the same experience with Eclipse as you. It may be the most powerful development editor on the planet, but the menus and dialogs are non-standard relative to the pattern established by other IDE's.

This just doesn't jive with what I've seen.

Here's my Eclipse experience:

I download the .zip file from the site and unzip it into my favorite location and launch it. It does its setup bit and is ready to go in about 5 seconds.

My screen has a standard menu bar (File, Edit,... Help) and four panels (a tabbed browser pane with a "Welcome!" message, Tasks, Outline, and Packages). So far so good. What now?

Well, just like with every new program, start with File >> New. I do that. There's a submenu on New where the first thing is Project. Projects are a very common IDE concept and that's what I want. I select it.

I'm asked if I want to make a Java project or a Plug-in project. I'm not writing a plug-in, so I choose Java. I'm asked the name of the project, and I call it "Hello World". It offers to switch to the Java Perspective and I accept.

(60 seconds have gone by since I started the program.)

The Navigator pane has been replaced with a Package Exporer containing a folder called "Hello World". Now I want to write a class. I went back under File >> New and saw there were also "Package", "Class", and "Interface". I want to write a new Class. So, I select it.

I'm given a dialog asking for the Source Folder. It prefilled with "Hello World". Good enough for me. It asks for the Package (its set to "default" since I didn't make one). I'm asked for the name of the Class. I tell it "HelloWorld". There's boxes for if I want to make the class abstract/final, or a subclass of something other than Object or if it should implement some interfaces. I ignore those.

Down at the bottom of the dialog, there is a checkbox for automatically including a main. Cool. I select it and click "Finish".

(90 seconds have gone by since I started the program.)

Half a second later, the tabbed editor pane now had a new tab with my stubbed out class. I close the "Welcome" tab by clicking on its [X].

The class now appears in the tree list in the Package Explorer pane, an outline of my class appears in Outline.

I add System.out.println("Hello World!"); to the main() and do a CTRL-S without thinking about it. It saved and compiled.

I want to run it now. I went to the Run menu and (I admit) I was disoriented for about 10 seconds. I settled on Run As >> Java Application.

Less than 1 second later, the tasks pane is replaced with a console pane that says "Hello World!".

(*click* 2 minutes flat)

The bottom line is -- everything is exactly where I expected them to be. The menus and dialogs are very normal and do what I expect. The keybindings do what I expected (without me even thinking about it, really.) I was productive within seconds of starting it up.

Since writing this missive, I noticed shortcut buttons on the menu bar for creating projects, packages, and classes as well as running the application that would have saved me the trip to the menus too.

The IDE is very responsive and cleanly organized. I can move the panes around or combine them (or close them) easily enough when I need them out of my way.

I can't, for the life of me, think of what is unstandard about this IDE.

Re:My Eclipse experience

[malachid69]

Wow. What responses. Definitely did not expect to get marked as a Troll since I was relating the RECENT experience of using it and testing it for the job -- but what the hell.

Perhaps it is important to talk about editors for a moment. I have used JBuilder, NetBeans, Visual Age Micro Edition, etc. What do I normally use? JCreator. Why? Because the 2 minutes that you spent above clicking here and there are summed up into:

Click New
Type in filename
type in:

public class HelloWorld
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}
}

Anyone want to explain to me why it should be a good thing to take 2 minutes to type THAT????

So you found it easy and convenient. That's great. That doesn't change the fact that it slowed me down dramatically. I could have done your 2 minutes in 10 seconds in Notepad! IE: Not efficient or intuitive.

As to the other comments... I am not going to comment about my intelligence or any of that. I have been posting on slashdot about Java since my comments were outcast just for mentioning Java. I'm the reason my old college now teaches Java, and I don't personally care what anyone thinks about my choice.

As far as Eclipse looking like their native OS -- I would have to ask for screenshots to prove that. Upon launching Elipse, the first and blatenly obvious thing is that the tabs don't look anything like any other program on my entire system. Let's put it this way, at a brief glance, the company decided to go with Swing and the Kunstoff look and feel because it looked MORE like Windows than SWT.

Yes, that's right, an IBM Partner said they weren't going to use Eclipse or SWT because it 1) doesn't look like Windows, and 2) isn't cross-platform.

I challenge you to show me a picture of the Eclipse IDE that looks like the rest of the Windows programs. The people who responded in retaliation were either amateurs, didn't notice the big glaring differences, or just arguing to flame.

As far as the cross-platform bit. I don't care who you are (IBM, for example) -- if you have to distribute .dll or .so files with your java program, it can no longer be considered either pure-Java or cross-platform. Why? Because I can not take my directory from the Windows box and run it on my BSD box. I can't believe how many people out there said it is still cross-platform even though it requires native libraries. Have any of you tried to do that? Did you look at the list of platforms it will work on from Eclipse's website? You can't download eclipse.jar and run it on multiple platforms -- you have to download a DIFFERENT version for each platform, IF they support it. Thus, NOT CROSS-PLATFORM!

As a side note, I thank Latent Heat for defending my troll-status with their own personal experience. It is interesting to note that with 3 different people moderating the above article, it only took one to mark Troll to make me a troll. Sux.

Re:My Eclipse experience

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting to note that with 3 different people moderating the above article, it only took one to mark Troll to make me a troll. Sux.

Yer right. This was a much better troll than your first one.

What a wild and crazy stream-of-consciousness and utterly incoherent rant! I'm impressed.

You are so CUTE when you are flustered.

Why Sun doesn't support Eclipse

[dolmen.fr]

There is some other reasons why Sun isn't supporting Eclipse:
- NetBeans was open-sourced by Sun before Eclipse
- Eclipse is based on the SWT GUI framework which is an alternative to the official AWT/Swing framework bundled with Java
- The name of the project is not just a joke, and Sun is not crazy to eclipse itself!

Re:Why Sun doesn't support Eclipse

[j3110]

Yeah... and they are all good things for us developers I think.

NetBeans vs Eclipse has spurred both to work extremely hard to be the best. That means NetBeans is faster and Eclipse is more featureful than before.

Sun is working extremely hard on Swing and fixing old problems like the file chooser. SWT is getting more stable, more features, and prettier.

I don't think IBM wants to drive SUN out of business. It's just friendly competition I think. SUN won't loose any real assets directly by people using Eclipse. In fact, they stand to gain some more if more people get interested in Java (now that SWT gives some developers what they want). This means more companies licensing technology from SUN and more companies buying SUN's application server etc.

It's all good for everyone, but you are right in some respects about IBM. IBM wants Java :) Everyone does. Microsoft wanted it so bad they tried to hijack it, then they remade it under a different name to be what they would have hijacked Java into being (a windows only, secure, homogenous programming environment that requires as much Microsoft software as possible).

the advantage of refactoring by hand...

[jrumney]

... is that it is painful. There is almost never a good reason to go around renaming classes or methods. It is a pointless timewasting exercise that confuses your coworkers. The fact that modern IDEs like Eclipse make it easy is not a good thing.

User interface clunky

[akuzi]

I tried out Eclipse 2.0, although it seemed to have a number of good features, on the whole I found the user interface very clunky and confusing to use (as well as a bit slow). It certainly didn't make me want to swap from Emacs and ant.

Open a new 'Perspective', change your 'View', select an 'Implementor', navigate 'Resources'. Sure these concepts may be useful ideas for people wanting to add new components to the Eclipse platform but why should you need to understand these terms to use the software itself?

It feels Eclipse was designed by a group of architecture astronauts) with the target audience being developers who will extend the platform more than the actual end users themselves.

Upgrading WSAD with Eclipse 2.1

[Rayooz]

Since WSAD 5.0 is based on Eclipse 2.0, does anyone know if it is possible to upgrade WSAD 5.0 to use Eclipse 2.1 instead?

Thanks!