Comparing Visual Studio and Eclipse

An anonymous reader writes "Getting started with Eclipse can be confusing. New concepts, such as plug-in architecture, workspace-centric project structure, and automatic build can seem counterintuitive at first. Without waxing too philosophical about IDE design, this article presents the main differences between Visual Studio and the Eclipse IDE."

Comments

Plug in architecture

[Anonymous Coward]

was advocated by Larry Craig in 1993

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

One is for c#, the other is for Java.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

(in the style of lex luthor)
WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!

I beleive the technical term is

[JamesRose]

Eclipse>Visual Studio

Ba Doom Chi!

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

so you're saying Eclipse eclipses Visual Studio?

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Eclipse>Visual Studio

Which would be funny, except that for the languages supported by Visual Studio, the correct version is Visual Studio >> Eclipse.

Eclipse does fine on its home territory as a Java IDE, but the plug-in system is way too disorganised and underpowered for serious development in, say, C++ or C#. Even if you use CDT for C++ work, it's basically hopeless unless you're combining it with GNU tools, and things like the debugging tools aren't even close to the power of VS.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[gangien]

and Intellij > Eclipse

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but Eclipse does Python. (with the PyDev plug-in)

Eclipse + Python FTW

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a python plugin to Visual Studio and it will do python, too. (Does one exist? I have no idea. My point is that plugins do not affect the suck or lack thereof of an ide.)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eclipse + Python FTW"

Go back to digg.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Yes, there's an extension which supports Python.

(Oops -- you mean VS supports extensions? But TFA says that's unique to Eclipse!)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Shemmie]

Iron Python count? http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName =IronPython

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[kestasjk]

I use Eclipse for PHP development using PDT, and it's great. Zend Studio Pro costs $299, and comes with debugging support, but you can get the same thing with Eclipse for free, and support various other languages as well.

If you're doing MFC, or .NET development, or developing specifically for the Windows platform using an MS supported language then of course VS.NET is the obvious choice, but Eclipse is good too.
It's also encouraging that enhancements can be written for Eclipse easily without IBM worrying that your enhancement will stop people upgrading to the Pro edition.

I think that because IDEs for any language all share so many requirements, and because they're used by developers who will want to improve it, it makes a natural open source project, and I expect as time goes on it'll get better and better.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Ucklak]

Last I checked, Visual Studio only runs on Windows.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

Real programmers do not need debuggers ;-)

Seriously, I have been using eclipse for years and I don't even know how to invoke the debugger. Nothing I hate more than an IDE falling into debugging mode when an error is encountered. A stack trace is fine with me. When really stuck, I insert debugging statement in the code in the relevant places.

Of course, I realize that this is my old way to view things. I also know that modern development teams would go on strike if I tried to impose them an IDE without a debugger ;-)

So, view this as my 2 cents, nothing more ;-)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[hedwards]

That all depends. The suite we were using in CS had a debugger, but it didn't pop up unless I explicitly added the break points. It was an irritating IDE in many ways, so many times I would on short code be left to boggle as to why it wasn't able to read what was typed. Sometimes it would inexplicably fail to read the closing brace even if it were only two lines down.

A good debugger can be a time saver, but one should really only need it if the program is large enough that it isn't clear as to where a variable changes to something naughty. Yes of course, one could do that by hand, but that isn't necessarily the same, every once and a while there is a genuine bug in the compiler or something isn't being done the way that it should be, and paper tracing isn't going to find that.

I would be curious as to how you handle code which is separated into many files to keep things small and comprehensible. Of course each file is easier to fix, but I am somewhat curious as to how you deal with the interactions between multiple source files. And more specifically all of the flipping between source files that can happen with a more complex program.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

With debugging statement:

FileThatObject.thatMethod(): x=1, y=2

Of course, you have to be in pretty good control of your code, plan and visualize in advance, before you actually start to write the code so the few times where you will need to write debugging statements is when you made some typing mistake (or almost).

It is a different approach to coding, but it leads to more robust code in my humble opinion. The down side of a debugger is that sometimes, it happens that some developers do not know what they are doing, they start writing code without prior planning and they manage to finally get it to work with the debugger. Typical time consumption ratio will be like 20% for writing the code and 80% to debug it and some bugs will go undetected.

My old way to do things is 50% planning before starting to code, 45% coding, 5% debugging. So the availability of a debugger is less important.

Note that I DO use debuggers if I need to reverse engineer code.

Again, I realize and I know that a debugger has become a standard tool in modern development teams. I am just saying I do not use them often so it is possible to get away without them.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[cayenne8]

"Of course, you have to be in pretty good control of your code, plan and visualize in advance, before you actually start to write the code..."

I'm a bit confused....this 'planning' thing you talk about...what is this?

Is this concept similar to another strange one I heard about the other day.....'documentation'??

:-D

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[can.i.have.free.beer]

lol...

you should probably stop drinking Stallmans sweat...

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[DuckDodgers]

I'm fond of the log4j library. Set it up, then litter your code with log statements - logger.error for serious events, logger.debug for reporting nearly every step of the code. First, it documents the code right in the code, and it's much easier to keep the log statements updated when you make code modifications. Second, when something breaks you just change your logging configuration file to turn all logging on for the affected code and re-run your tests. Third, in those (hopefully rare) occasions when a bug appears in production that didn't appear in development, you can turn up the logging level on your production software too.

Of course, unit testing is also good.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[coryking]

Is python dynamically typed? I've never got around to playing with it. If so, I'd be curious how VS2005 does it's intellesense magic with a dynamically typed language.

Fun fact, though I dont have the MSDN link, from what I understand Visual Studio provides all kinds of hooks to get it to "understand" your language of choice. Besides the python thing, aint there a PHP one?

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fond of the log4j library.

Link to it for crying out loud. Don't make us work for it.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[jlarocco]

I wouldn't even give it that much credit. Eclipse is utter crap. Worst IDE ever, bar none. There are so many gotchas and little annoyances, it completely over shadows the few things it does right.

And don't get me started on CDT under Linux. It literally takes 30-45 seconds to open up the little autocomplete box and it freezes up all of Eclipse while it waits for it. And that's just the tip of the iceburg.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[AaronBrethorst]

I think there are actually a couple different PHP environments out there for Visual Studio. You can find the full list of addins and packages to complement Visual Studio on our VSIP partner catalog.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[coryking]

Sweet.. I didn't know there was so many languages (like php).

You should tell your marketing dudes they need to make this website more prominent on the MSDN site. I had no idea this site even existed!

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Yes, Python is dynamically typed, and, yes, intellisense can't work in cases where the signature of a type is changed by the program during execution. That's also true of C#, however; reflection affects all syntactically-driven editors.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Shados]

You should check out VS2008's Javascript intellisense to see what Visual Studio can do with dynamic types. Its not perfect, but its pretty slick overall.Also in .NET 3.5, there's a new dynamic type enhanced runtime, so quite a few dynamically typed languages are popping up for Visual Studio, too.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[coryking]

Sorry if I sound stupid, I should probably go bust out something in python... by dynamic you mean python is more like Perl:

my $var = "Could be a number, or a string, or a hashref";
or more like C#

int var = 102;
string astring = "My Happy String";

I'd think with the former perl like syntax the only way you could really parse the language in the editor and do good intellesense is to damn near compile the code in real time somehow. With C# and language like it, the editor only needs to look "skin deep" for the most part to determine the structure of variables and the language.

That said.. I'm no CS major, and alas I cannot write my own compiler. Not a superstar programmer here :-).

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[YU Nicks NE Way]

More like perl.

class foo:
    blah
    blah

def outsideFoo(gnoo):
    return gnoo

foo.noo = outsideFoo

print foo.noo(7)

is valid Python.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would be funny, except that for the languages supported by Visual Studio, the correct version is Visual Studio >> Eclipse.

error: invalid operands to binary >>

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[0232793]

Java is implemented as a plugin, and some language extensions are better developed than others. It isn't a question of the power of the plugin architecture. E.g., see the Ruby plugin, supporting full debugging, refactoring, etc.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[AaronBrethorst]

just did, thanks for the suggestion! :)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[lattyware]

Which pretty much makes Eclipse > VS in itself. Not that I like anything that heavyweight. Java is such a slow platform, why I hate azureus too.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

When I originally posted about PyDev and Python, I was referring to the standard CPython implementation, not IronPython. But thanks for the link, it was informative.

This would have worked if it had not been discontinued because of the requirement for it to be closed source. Regardless, I'd expect Python to be a second-class citizen in most IDEs, other than the ones where it is most commonly used.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Trying to develop a million lines of code project in C++ without a good debugger is more difficult than trying to build a house with a leatherman. Real programmers use real tools, noobs use printf() statements.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[marcosdumay]

"Yes of course, one could do that by hand, but that isn't necessarily the same, every once and a while there is a genuine bug in the compiler or something isn't being done the way that it should be, and paper tracing isn't going to find that."

If one can't find it by paper tracing, I really doubt he will do with a debugger. A person that doesn't compreend the code well enough to paper trace it will also not know what to look on the debuger.

Despite that, debuggers are really a time savers, mostly because it lets you refine your traces without the need of inserting statements and recompiling every time. It also saves the shame of not locating all the debugging statements (altough there are other ways of avoiding it).

Debuggers are also very nice for reverse engeneering. But I think they should be used after most of the work is done. First, you read documentation and see the program running (black box), then you find the main functions and read them, then you use tools to create the needed diagrams, only then, if still needed, you launch the debugger.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

I'm fond of the log4j library. Set it up, then litter your code with log statements - logger.error for...

Exactly ;-)

But do not litter your code to much since it might affect performance if you really over do it. We usually comment off seldom used debug log statements and even delete them from the code once a one time fix has been applied to a weird bug that doesn't have many chances of showing its ugly face again.

Used according to standards and best practices, unused log4j statements ( when debug is set to off) won't affect performance much (maybe 1 or 2 %).

Log4j affects performance because even if you set debug=off, there is still one method call to check that the flag is off for every debug log statement. Try at least to comment off log4j debug log statements in computational loops ;-)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[sg_oneill]

Yeah. Its a pretty good little python too. Its not *quite* cPython compliant to the level of Jython (last time I checked, which was some time ago), but I'm told the clr is pretty flexy if a little eccentric maybe, so that could change. That said, Jython is brilliant and really does leaverage the JVM very well and presents a damn good alternative to a full blown java trudge for gluing java bits together into a real app.

Oh yeah fun hint: Jythons XML-RPC server + Your Java monstrosity of choice = xml-rpc API for your app in under a page of code. Its really really really neat being able to leaverage Python that way. If Ironpython manages to port pythons fantastic library to dot net, you'll see some pretty cool stuff like that too.

Yeah. Im a python zealot :)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Shados]

Actually, its more complicated than that, even for C#. In .NET 3.5, C# has a new feature, called anonymous types, which are defered at compile time from the context, so Visual Studio has to do some work anyway.

Something like (I forget the exact syntax):

var anon = {first = 2, second = "test", third = 32.2};

And then if you type anon followed by a period, intellisense will correctly pick up the types of the object and each of its members, defered from the initialization. Though even if it wasn't for that, Visual Studio 2008 supports stuff like javascript intellisense, so it "tracks" whats happening to the object at a given position in the program... pretty clever.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[CryBaby]

Um, Eclipse does not "fall into debugging mode". You have to intentionally start your app in debug mode.

Of course, I realize that this is my old way to view things

Age has nothing to do with it. Your "way to view things" is simply wrong. Please demonstrate even one way in which manually added "debug statements" are superior to using Eclipse's debugger.

Here are just a few reasons why the debugger is better:

• No redeploy of the app is necessary to debug it.
• Debugging may performed on a remote server (again, without redeployment).
• You may add as many "debugging statements" as you need, at any time, and you can modify them at will.
• You may step through particularly complex code one line at a time, choosing whether or not to step into methods along the way.

If the problem is that you simply haven't taken the time to learn how to use a debugger, please don't try to pass your ignorance off as some kind of "old-timey" virtue.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[eneville]

Sorry if I sound stupid, I should probably go bust out something in python... by dynamic you mean python is more like Perl:

my $var = "Could be a number, or a string, or a hashref";
or more like C#

int var = 102;
string astring = "My Happy String";

I'd think with the former perl like syntax the only way you could really parse the language in the editor and do good intellesense is to damn near compile the code in real time somehow. With C# and language like it, the editor only needs to look "skin deep" for the most part to determine the structure of variables and the language.

That said.. I'm no CS major, and alas I cannot write my own compiler. Not a superstar programmer here :-). http://xkcd.com/208/ But, intelisence can apply certain things to the variables, no matter what their type, since this can be done in the language anyway.

my $i = 4;

$i = func( $i );

$i = $i * 2;

What's to say that the value of $i doesn't become alpha in func? That could be optional...

Intelisense sucks anyway. Use vim and ctrl-n/p, it's much more sane than that method completion anyway. There's so many benefits to learning how to use vim that it's just silly to list it all here. I have to spend all day listening to people crap on about the latest addons to VS or whatever everyone is wanking over these days that it makes one just want to switch off and use something that doesnt come complete with hype, and it's more productive.

VS is just a toy.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

Congratulations, you must be a real genius for having figured out how to use a debugger ;-)

Read my other posts on this thread, I said I used debuggers mostly to reverse engineer code. I have used them mostly with assembly languages. With stack traces, log4g, the jvm being able to run in debug or trace mode itself, etc.. I do not need to use them with eclipse.

It doesn't take very long to learn how to use a debugger. Learning to code properly takes considerably longer. As a matter of fact, when you know how low level languages like assembly and machine languages work and that you are also familiar with the internals of the jvm, you don't even have to "learn" how to use a debugger, you just use it.

If being able to switch debug on the fly on a remote server is so important to you. Is that because you debug your programs while they are in production ? Note that, as another poster mentioned, it is perfectly feasible with log4j as well.

Thanks for your advice, I'll go buy myself debuggers for dummies. ;-)

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[CryBaby]

I enjoyed your rambling, self-aggrandizing version of "no, I can't give you even one reason why hard-coded debug statements are better than using a debugger." It was also nice how you worked in as much "old-school programmer street cred" as possible. It really impressed me.

It doesn't take very long to learn how to use a debugger. Learning to code properly takes considerably longer.

That's precisely why it is incredibly stupid to avoid using a debugger. Learning and using a debugger doesn't take away from design and programming time and it can help you to learn what your code is actually doing. In other words, a debugger can help you to learn to code properly. Why you see these as opposing rather than complimentary activities remains a mystery.

If being able to switch debug on the fly on a remote server is so important to you. Is that because you debug your programs while they are in production ?

Hahaha! Love the crudely veiled insult there. Here's a somewhat less veiled insult for you: if you have never experienced a bug that manifests itself in a production or staging environment but not in development than either you haven't been programming for very long or have only written the most trivial of applications. Remote debugging is an invaluable tool in certain situations and only a fool would deny themselves its abilities.

Note that, as another poster mentioned, it is perfectly feasible with log4j as well.

Shockingly, I use both logging and a debugger! That's because a logging API and a debugger are two different things with different strengths and purposes. If you're trying to use your logging API as a debugger, you're simply making troubleshooting much more difficult than it needs to be, and for absolutely no good reason.

Let me know when you come up something that at least resembles a rationale for your bizarre bias against using a debugger for Java. Until then, I'll take you at face value and assume that it's a manifestation of your lack of confidence in your manhood -- or something like that.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

Let me know when you come up something that at least resembles a rationale for your bizarre bias against using a debugger for Java. Until then, I'll take you at face value and assume that it's a manifestation of your lack of confidence in your manhood -- or something like that.

I have absolutely no bias against people using a debugger. Where did you get that idea? I just said I rarely used one in my J2EE projects, so rarely that I don't even remember where it is in the menus. I jokingly stated "Real programmer don't use debuggers" as some kind of bragging, I could admit that. It's not my fault if you took it so seriously and that you seem to have decided to teach me a lesson about how stupid I was not to use a debugger.

Since I do not use a debugger that often, the functionality of it in eclipse is less important for me, that's all my post was about.

To make you happy, should I start using one and post back here telling you how great it is ?

Am I automatically an idiot because I do not use a debugger ?

Do you want to force me to use a debugger so you may then respect me ?

I won't ask you if you are jealous because I get away without a debugger given your former replies ;-)

About my experience with debugging big and complex projects, I won't go there but I will give you a hint, look at the source code. The fact that you seem to want to challenge me about the size of projects I have worked on makes me suspect that you may not have worked on such big and complex projects. Otherwise, you wouldn't feel the need to challenge me on that.

Take care and don't get all excited so easily ;-))

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[smellotron]

Eclipse>Visual Studio

Which would be funny, except that for the languages supported by Visual Studio, the correct version is Visual Studio >> Eclipse.

Speaking of languages supported by VS, which of the following do you mean?

• Visual Studio is much greater than Eclipse
• Visual Studio right-shifted by Eclipse bits
• Visual Studio's next non-whitespace token written into Eclipse

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[CryBaby]

I have absolutely no bias against people using a debugger. Where did you get that idea? I just said I rarely used one in my J2EE projects, so rarely that I don't even remember where it is in the menus. I jokingly stated "Real programmer don't use debuggers" as some kind of bragging, I could admit that.

By stating that not using a debugger is something to brag about (which you admit to above), you clearly imply that programmers who do use debuggers are somehow inferior to you. So I got the idea that you have a bias against people who use debuggers from your stated bias against the use of debuggers.

My point, put as simply as possible, is that choosing to be ignorant of the powerful tools available to you (a debugger among them) is something to be laughed at -- not bragged about.

To make you happy, should I start using one and post back here telling you how great it is ?

No, it would be enough if you stopped trying to spread the ridiculous myth that the use of a debugger is, in some unspecified way, linked to inferior programming abilities.

Am I automatically an idiot because I do not use a debugger ?

Yes, absolutely, assuming that you've ever had to debug something. It's no different than insisting on using vi instead of an IDE because of some misguided, ultimately self-limiting belief that "really good" programmers don't use certain kinds of tools even when those tools offer tremendous advantages.

Do you want to force me to use a debugger so you may then respect me ?

No, but I feel compelled to respond to your suggestion that programmers who do use debuggers are inferior to you. A younger programmer reading this might otherwise get the idea that you are right.

I won't ask you if you are jealous because I get away without a debugger given your former replies ;-)

So there it is again. Another clear suggestion that one should be jealous of you because you deny yourself the use of a debugger. It doesn't matter how many different ways you say it, it still makes no sense.

About my experience with debugging big and complex projects, I won't go there but I will give you a hint, look at the source code.

So you "won't go there" but then you immediately proceed to go there but somehow fail to back it up with anything. What source code are you talking about? I don't see anything. Does this source code you speak of exist only in your mind? That would explain your strange attitude toward debuggers...

Take care and don't get all excited so easily ;-))

Maybe if you add a few more smiley faces I'll forget that you still haven't responded to my initial, simple challenge: please point out even one instance where using a "debug statement" is a better choice than using a debugger. And feel free to turn that around. Rather than simply implying your superiority through the eschewal of a debugger, please actually explain why a debugger is in any way harmful or inferior to your awesome debug statements.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[Cryolithic]

"by CryBaby (679336)"

Quite possibly the most accurate name. Ever.

Just to please you here is a perfect example where the debugger is going to do SFA compared to a hardcoded debug statement.

I was working on an application a few months ago that would randomly crash when it presented the file open dialogue. Every time I tried to repro in the debugger it worked flawlessly. Ended up I was running into a race condition that was always satisfied with the slower speed of running through the debugger. Took a few minutes of scattering some printf's to track down the issue.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[CryBaby]

Absolutely, you win the prize. However, that's not a "perfect" example -- that's about the *only* example. Obviously, if the use of a debugger masks a bug you have to find another way to track it down.

I assume you didn't start out with printf's because the debugger provides you with more power, flexibility and ease of use compared to hard-coded debug statements. Plus, the debugger doesn't leave you with a bunch of scattered printf's that you have to clean up afterwards. You're not arguing that because of that one, rare edge case, you've now sworn off the use of a debugger in favor of hard-coded printf's or logging (at least I don't pick that up from your comments). You also didn't try to imply that using hard-coded printf's was something to brag about -- only that is was necessary in this case.

My point was simply that a debugger is a better debugging tool than printf's or logging and, if you choose not to use one, it's not something to be proud of and it doesn't make you a better programmer. You haven't said anything to argue against that. I issued the "give me even one instance..." challenge to prove that the OP didn't have any actual rationale behind his statements and implications. Based on the personal insult you started off with, I can only guess that you mistook my tone for an argument that I was not trying to make.

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

Hey CryBaby,

I just came across this ;-)

This is another very stupid guy like me that doesn't use debuggers. When he does use them, it resembles quite strangely the usage I do when I DO use debuggers.

Have a nice one ;-)

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastar d-speech.html

Re:I beleive the technical term is

[ls671]

CryBaby, where are you ??? Since you replied to ALL my other posts, I am still waiting for your argument on my last post, which was just a link to Linus opinion on the matter ;-)

Eclipse vs Visual

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, by definition, you cannot see the object if it is eclipsed. If something is visual, you can see it. Easy enough comparison.

Now, to get the folks that can add studio into the equation....

Re:Eclipse vs Visual

[ScrewMaster]

So, what you're saying is that you're better off with a partial Eclipse rather than the full download.

That's not a comparation !!

[Saija]

Hey guys before the flame start the article is not a comparation between VS and Eclipse, it's a Intro to eclipse for VS users...

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[CastrTroy]

Mod this guy up. Seriously, I don't even know how you would do a comparison of 2 products that don't compete against eachother. Sure the are both IDEs, but one is mainy for Java Development, while the other is for .Net,C++. Comparing features and how easy to do things would be nice, but the major deciding factor for most people will be which programming language they are using.

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[Jugalator]

Exactly -- I kept looking for the Visual Studio screens and side-by-side comparisons. Nothing. :-S

It's more like Introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio developers.

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[Jugalator]

LOL wait a minute, I see now that was exactly the page's title... Haha...

Well, it's only the Slashdot summary that's misleading, then.

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[QMalcolm]

"It's more like Introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio developers." Funny you should say that. The title, is, in fact: "An introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio users" Crazy!

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[Poromenos1]

This reminds me of an incident in Feynman's "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" (great book), where he was called to review schoolbooks, and some reviewers had grades for books that hadn't been delivered yet. Similarly, slashdotters post about the article's comparison when the article doesn't even compare anything.

Oh, wait, that includes me...

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[nwbvt]

You are right in that this article is an introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio users, but wrong over whether or not Eclipse is a C++ IDE. In fact, their CDT suite has gained a lot of ground in that area, and I've heard from many in the embedded world who state that Eclipse CDT has become the standard IDE in that arena.

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[jgrahn]

... and I've heard from many in the embedded world who state that Eclipse CDT has become the standard IDE in that arena.

I haven't used it, but it should be pointed out that Eclipse is now so big that it's also used for a lot of stupid reasons -- that it's used for $foo doesn't prove that it's a good fit for $foo, or for anything else.

I used to be in a project where we used Visual Studio 6. In reality, it sucked, so I wrote all my code in Emacs.

Re:That's not a comparation !!

[mrosgood]

I started using Eclipse 3.2 and CDT for writing some 'C'/JNI stuff earlier this year. It was okay. I've got Visual Studio, but I don't use it any more if I don't have to. Mostly because I dev on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Two weeks ago, I downloaded "Europa" Eclipse 3.3 and the updated CDT. It's a huge step forward.

I love doing my Java/JNI/'C' work in a single environment.

Not Apples to Apples

[Chabil Ha']

I would rather have seen an apples to apples comparison of what VS is used for, ie development in C# or VB. Although Eclipse was primarily designed for Java, like the article mentions, various plugins do exist to C# and VB development (likewise Java development in VS). It also would have been nice to see screenshots of the VS comparison.

The compare and contrast was superfluous at best. This was merely a "my dad's better than your dad" analysis.

Re:Not Apples to Apples

[plams]

But the plug-ins are not of the high standard that the Java development environment is, so there's currently little reason to use Eclipse for C++, C# or VB development unless Eclipse happens to be your favorite text editor (I use vim for anything that's not Java).

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Visual Studio compare with Eclipse in terms of resource hogging? Eclipse can slow my, not old, dual-core lappy to a crawl just opening a test project (before I went back to using Vim), does Visual Studio do the same?

Re:Question

[LiquidCoooled]

Yes, Microsoft worked hard to implement the slowness of Eclipse within Visual Studio.
The latest 2005 editions even come with a set of custom options for configuring your resource hogging.
The flashing file save icon has been redesigned and now displays as an alpha blended bead of annoyance.

Re:Question

[TopSpin]

There is no doubt it takes a lot of RAM to run Eclipse.

How much of this is due to JRE implementation? I know Sun's JRE likes to load a lot of class code; at one point with 1.5.x I had to manually bump the memory reserved for class code above the default of 64MB while running Eclipse. What fraction of that is wasted on infrequently used code? I also recall not being able to allocate >1.6GB of RAM on 32 bit W2K3 because, according to Sun, their JRE's heap requires contiguous RAM, and 32 bit W2K3 can't provide it in larger pieces, although it would host 2 processes each ~1.5 GB just fine. If the memory must be contiguous, that implies certain inefficiencies such as never releasing unused RAM below the most distant allocation.

Anyhow, I suspect common JREs are using RAM inefficiently. Flushing unused code, releasing unused heap and sharing common code among processes are all commonplace, well understood techniques. Be nice if Sun and other JRE vendors figured out how to leverage them.

Re:Question

[howlingmadhowie]

do you have a 64-bit operating system installed? just wondering. if you do. google for "bug eclipse 64-bit" or similar.

Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Will the Chill]

I've been using Eclipse for quite some time now, and must say that it's by far the best IDE I've ever had the pleasure of operating. Because of superior modularity, I can use different Plugins to simultaneously edit projects in C++, Perl, and Fortran with full syntax highlighting and real-time error checking. This saves alot of time in recompiling your apps!!!

The most important thing to me in moving to Eclipse was that it would fully support the Vi command set. There were several different Vi-type plugin options available, but after trying them all I ended up using the only commercial download of the bunch, which was availble for $20 here:

http://satokar.com/viplugin/

The only other IDE I've ever found that was acceptable before Eclipse was Visual SlickEdit, which had most of the same features as Eclipse but was very expensive and didn't have the F&OSS plugin community of Eclipse.

Now that I'm into Eclipse, I don't think I'll ever look back!

-Will the Chill

*please insert 10 cents for one additional sig*

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Superior modularity? Care to explain what you mean by that? We'll just ignore the fact that Visual Studio does everything you said straight out of the box.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Will the Chill]

Eclipse was built from scratch as a one-size-fits-none IDE solution. The only way to ensure that all developers had exactly what they wanted, regardless of languages or platforms, was to make everything from the editor frontends to the compiler backends as modular as possible. This means you can replace any and all aspects of Eclipse with custom plugins if you so choose.

As far as Visual Studio already doing everything "out of the box", I already noted that Visual SlickEdit does the same. My argument is that community-supported Free & Open Source Software solutions a superior IDE make.

-Will the Chill

*sig not found*

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[thegrassyknowl]

must say that it's by far the best IDE I've ever had the pleasure of operating

Too many years working on Windows with crappy MS tools has left you brain damaged.

Eclipse is crap - I can't stand the complexity of its user interface. You spend more time in the Eclipse interface than you do developing good code. VS is much the same, but at least there's not as many useless tabs littered all over the place and only a handful of modes to really come to terms with.

True programmers develop their code in binary and load it into RAM with toggle switches and push buttons. The rest of us prefer Emacs (or Vi if we're feeling sadistic). This IDE thing is for pussies.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of us prefer Emacs (or Vi if we're feeling sadistic).
As they say in my homeland, those be fightin' words!

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[enrevanche]

I think you mean masochistic.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Just Some Guy]

I can use different Plugins to simultaneously edit projects in C++, Perl, and Fortran

Why does your boss hate you?

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[blackpaw]

My argument is that community-supported Free & Open Source Software solutions a superior IDE make.

Thats not an argument, thats a statement. So far you've presented nothing to back it up.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[MrCopilot]

My argument is that community-supported Free & Open Source Software solutions a superior IDE make.
Thats not an argument, thats a statement. So far you've presented nothing to back it up.

Can be.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[ClosedSource]

"The only way to ensure that all developers had exactly what they wanted, regardless of languages or platforms, was to make everything from the editor frontends to the compiler backends as modular as possible."

If you think that Eclipse ensures that "all developers had exactly what they wanted, regardless of languages or platforms", you've never used it for C++. I'd say developing for C++ using Eclipse is quite competitive with other circa 1992 IDE's.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for admitting that true programmers don't use Emacs or Vi.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[gbjbaanb]

He doesn't, the guy's a masochist who likes hurting himself, hence "The most important thing to me in moving to Eclipse was that it would fully support the Vi command set"

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Rogerborg]

And he likes to take his punishment from a paid professional. Kinky.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[marcello_dl]

>>My argument is that community-supported Free & Open Source Software solutions a superior IDE make.

>Thats not an argument, thats a statement. So far you've presented nothing to back it up.

There is eclipse for C#- where is visual studio for Java? Java, not "transitional-crippled-J#-which-will-cease-existin g-when-enough-C#-coders-are-around".

Why is this a good example and not a simple feature war? because it shows that no matter how many pounds the gorilla selling you proprietary dev tools, the feature set will always be modeled after what the seller wants. If I spend money for a dev environment that took time to support J# and doesn't do the small but useful step of supporting java, I'm sure going to feel crippled.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the original poster's somewhat inflammatory/trolling tone, there is definitely something to be said for the argument against IDEs.

With the obvious exception of creating a UI-intensive app (in which case an integrated UI editor is essential), IDEs really do fucking suck for writing applications such as daemons. IDEs are slow as hell, consume a massive amount of screen space with a clunky point-and-click UI, and despite the tons of unnecessary crap (what sort of programmer needs a wizard?!), they still fail miserably at their primary goal - editing text.

Take a look at the more advanced features of Emacs/Vi. Pretty much anything you can imagine is out there (and that includes autocomplete/intellisense). Being able to code in a decent text editor with superior text editing facilities is a hell of a lot better than a handful of extra features often designed for beginners you do not need or want.

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[Haeleth]

We'll just ignore the fact that Visual Studio does everything you said straight out of the box.

Visual Studio comes with Perl and Fortran support and vi emulation, out of the box? That's amazing! I wonder why Microsoft have never bothered to mention any of this?

Re:Plugins make Eclipse what it is

[xxjthxx]

BTW Visual Studio provided Vim integration as well.

hmm

[El Lobo]

Well, I've been using both every day for years now. As always there is no black and white but there is a lot of grey there in between. If I need to chose, I would chose Visual Studio any day. That doesn't mean that it's perfect: it's not, but it simply feels better for my needs. My subjective opinion is that VS feels a lot more "solid" to me, faster and "logical" to my Borland eductated tastes. Havig support for C# is also a big plus to me, but that has nothing to do with the point of the article. Being OS is nota plus in my book, because I really don't prefer OS over commercial or the oposite just for the sake of it... I'm not religious in any shape or form. My 2 euro cents.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you use both every day?

Re:hmm

[zig007]

I am also from a Borland background, and I understand why you would like VS more. It is really not that different. It has the same logic. VS is heavily inspired by Delphi, if you ask me.
I started with Eclipse a couple of years ago, and after a somewhat problematic start, I'd say it is much more flexible(some actually use Eclipse functionality in their applications).
And as others has stated, it can be used to write in a host of different languages.

As for solidity, I have had many more problems using VS than Eclipse. Not really sure how VS could convey a "solid" feeling actually.
Not that others are much better, I have yet to encounter such an IDE. Sure, most feel great in the beginning but then they all seem to deteriorate, for some reason. That reason might be me, I don't know. :-)
Anyway, yes, Eclipse has alse deteriorated, but not at all as much as VS (or Delphi) did on me. It still feels good, if not even better, after i have installed some l33t pluginz.

Also, there are really great commercial plug ins for Eclipse. There are for VS too, but with Eclipse, you don't have to pay anything for the IDE.

I don't use Eclipse for JAVA, since i don't do must JAVA coding. BTW.

Re:hmm

[tehcyder]

Being OS is nota plus in my book, because I really don't prefer OS over commercial or the oposite just for the sake of it... I'm not religious in any shape or form.

Slashdot blasphemy!

Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anrego]

Personally I love Eclipse. Working in an environment where I was required to rapidly switch between Perl, C++, Java, and Oracle, Eclipses perspective system is a godsend.

The only problem is it's so damned bloated. It wasn't until I used it on a powerful server-turned-into-a-workstation box that I found eclipse usable. On a standard system, it's just too laggy.

Even disabling some of the heavier features, I find it hard to get any work done when not using it on a system with 4 GB of ram and two processors.

Visual studio on the other hand I think is the perfect IDE for .NET. I think the main reason for this is that Microsoft holds all the cards. They don`t have to accommodate a million developers tool preferences, because they define the tool set. I`m not saying this is a good thing, just that it makes a perfect foundation for building a powerful IDE.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the mention the huge size of projects compared to how much actual code is present. When it takes me minutes to transfer a project of only a thousand or two lines onto a flash drive, there's a problem.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[smartr]

What possible features could you be using that require 4 gigs of RAM? I'm not going to pretend Eclipse is lightweight, but I find that it's memory footprint has been under 300 megs. I'm using the WTP Eclipse platform, and shifted a few months back from 3.2 to Europa(3.3). I'll probably be shifting entirely to the Red Hat Development Studio, because it's basically everything I'm using with a bit more, in a nice package. Are you perhaps using version 2? I haven't found a descent relational database management tool plugin for eclipse, and I'm curious if that Oracle plugin is the troublemaker. I've been using Squirrel SQL for the database. I admit this would still be saying 512 megs is really stretching your system, and 1 gig is more like a sensible minimum to be developing on.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[ls671]

On a 4 GB RAM server, we can smoothly run 8 instances of eclipse + 8 instances of Xvnc that the developers access remotely to work in their development environment, this is on linux. Are you on windows ? Could there be issues with your environment that impact performances when running eclipse ?

I also run 1 eclipse instance quite smoothly on my IBM thinkpad 1GB RAM and windows XP.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anrego]

Well, it might be the nature of the code I work on. It's a fairly large, poorly organized code base, and I am often required to have large portions of it open at a time. Additionally I am also commonly working with multiple languages at a time, flipping back and forth frequently, which might make some kind of impact (ie. having C++, Perl, and Java plugins going at the same time?)

Other IDE's I have tried (including Visual Studio on similarly large projects) don't seem to have much trouble.

And of course, vim has no problem at all ;)

I guess considering all that Eclipse does, it can be expected to be a little resource hungry, but nothing like the experience I`ve had with it.

I like the idea of running eclipse on a dedicated server, but I think that highlights it's resource hungry nature ;)

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[ls671]

Then just transfer your src files (the text files with 1,000-2,000 lines), that's all you need provided you have the libraries installed on your machines. VS uses libraries from the .NET framework that need to be installed as system libraries on each machine. Try transferring them to your flash drive along with your VS project and tell me how long it takes.

So your eclipse project is more portable because you do not need to install system libraries. It's all self contained within your project. It doesn't mean you have to transfer the whole thing to your flash drive every time ! ;-)

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[macshit]

I dunno, Eclipse is certainly bloated, but I run it on a 450MHz PIII system with 512MB of RAM, and it's perfectly usable (debugging fairly hefty programs). The only thing I found I had to disable was the "method completion" (whatever you call it). [This is on a debian system with a 2.6 kernel BTW; less sophisticated systems like windows might need more resources.]

The version of java you use to run it seems to make big different btw -- I used Sun's java 6/1.6/whatever, but earlier I accidentally tried to run it using GCJ (the java version of gcc), and that was completely unusable, mostly because my system tried to swap itself to death.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Tablizer]

Visual studio on the other hand I think is the perfect IDE for .NET. I think the main reason for this is that Microsoft holds all the cards. They don't have to accommodate a million developers tool preferences, because they define the tool set. I`m not saying this is a good thing, just that it makes a perfect foundation for building a powerful IDE.

Thats the constant MS promise: stick with just MS and everything fits nicely and is fairly compact. Problem is that it makes it harder to roam, which is exactly what they want to prevent.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[fbjon]

So how does Eclipse compare to the NetBeans IDE, anyone know? It seems more streamlined towards Java development to me, but I haven't tried Eclipse in a while now.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anrego]

I`ve never been a huge fan of netbeans. It's fine if your the only one on a project, and netbeans is the only tool in use, but I find beyond that it gets painful fairly quickly.

I find netbeans UI designer particularity painful. It's clunky, and the whole greyed out code you can`t edit, lest you never use the UI designer again really gets on my nerves.

And on top of all this, Eclipses main feature as far as I`m concerned is that it allows you to work seamlessly with multiple languages without having to close windows/change preferences/etc. The whole perspectives concept is, in my opinion, genius.

Oh well, different stokes for different folks and all that.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[fbjon]

Do you mean Eclipse has an even better UI designer?

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[julesh]

Even disabling some of the heavier features, I find it hard to get any work done when not using it on a system with 4 GB of ram and two processors.

That's odd... it works fine for me on a 1GB system with a single celeron processor. Yes, it eats a lot of memory (I tend to find about 300MB, compared with about 100MB for VS), but if it's all you're doing with a box I don't see any reason you'd need more than 1GB for it.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[julesh]

Not the mention the huge size of projects compared to how much actual code is present. When it takes me minutes to transfer a project of only a thousand or two lines onto a flash drive, there's a problem.

Say what? Examining an average project in my workspace, I have 4.2K of eclipse settings files, 55K of source files and 72K of compiled binaries. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and if 4.2K of extra data is taking "minutes" to copy to your flash drive, you probably need a better flash drive.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried out Eclipse and you are right about the 300 MB of ram. It took around 3 minutes to start. Then it gave me a nice little message about an internal error when it started and let me look at the backtrace. The 78 call deep backtrace! I am not joking here. 78 lines of "at org.eclipse.core.internal.preferences.DefaultPrefe rences.loadDefaults(DefaultPreferences.java:231)".

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? So indirectly you're saying that Visual Studio .net is a fast, workable IDE, which it totally isn't. Only to start up it's incredibly slow, taking like 10 seconds on a 2Gh machine with 2GB of RAM to just load the IDE. It also locks up for a long time when you shutdown for some reason (even though you saved everything already). Not to mention the 50% slowdown while attached to a running program. Yeah, Visual Studio is really the pinnacle of performance itself...

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[smartr]

Odd, mine (Europa + WTP) loads up with projects and plugins and all at 104,324 K in Windoze. 300 is more for when you dive in... First of all, you should get the mustang JDK for Java SE 6 from Sun. Then if you're just going to make some simple java app, you could get Eclipse IDE for Java Developer's here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ If you're into web based development, you'd be wiser to go here (Red Hat Developer Studio - basically Europa + WTP + extra stuff in an easy package): http://www.redhat.com/developers/rhds/index.html If you're not actually a programmer, and want to make some pretty html/css with eclipse, there's always Aptana: http://www.aptana.com/ ... which you could also use as a perspective for developing a normal app.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[MemoryDragon]

Huh 4 gigs of ram, what are you using, Eclipse is my bread and butter tool for a living and I normally use it on a 1 gig box in conjunction with a database and app server and some testing browsers. I usually give it 300megs but then everything can be run within Eclipse, also the app server. Eclipse to my experience (I have been using it since Version 2) is in the same league as most other IDEs ram consumptionwise. (I use myeclipse btw. which is the best low cost extension for j2ee development) Of course if you use WAS or something similar then maybe the 4 gig are justified, but normally it is not.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[MemoryDragon]

Eclipse is more of a toolset, often you have to go plugin shopping, bare eclipse does not bring you very far, and Eclipse Europa while being very extensive still feels unfinished, I usually go for MyEclipse for my Eclipse needs, it always is somewhat better than the pure oss collections. Netbeans however is nicely integrated, everything feels like being solid, but the 5.5 version falls flat on some areas, like db integration, I have high hopes for version 6. Anyway if you want to kickstart with JEE coding then Netbeans probably is the better choice if you dont have experience. It is more of a classical ide!

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if..

[nwbvt]

I imagine a lot of it probably depends on how big the project is. I don't know what the exact architecture is, but I'm sure a lot of information about the project has to be kept in memory for things like code completion. If I'm working on a large project, I can see Eclipse's memory run up there (though not to 4 gigs). You can also adjust the settings to increase or decrease the heap size. So if you have enough RAM, you can bump up the heap size and almost eliminate lags.

Eclipse rules, but the summary != the link.

[Tom9729]

Eclipse rules, I use it for PHP and Java development. The summary != what is linked to though...

Re:Eclipse rules, but the summary != the link.

[dbc001]

While we're here, can anyone give links or advice on getting Eclipse working with PHP? I'm a web designer, and I'd love to get away from Dreamweaver, but I don't have the time to figure out how to get Eclipse up & running...

Re:Eclipse rules, but the summary != the link.

[Tom9729]

Eclipse doesn't come with support for PHP out of the box, it comes in a plugin plugin.

There is a wiki page here on installing Eclipse, the PHP plugin, and anything else you might need.

Re:Eclipse rules, but the summary != the link.

[Tom9729]

Mind you that's supposed to be plugin (once). Really should use that preview button...

How is IBM an unbiased source?

[Anonymous Coward]

So a marketing article by IBM (the friggin' owners of Eclipse) compares Eclipse to Visual Studio. How can anyone expect this to be objective? If Microsoft had written this article on their website, there would be charges of FUD, FUD, FUD

Re:How is IBM an unbiased source?

[Husgaard]

It's not a comparison; it's a guide for people migrating from Visual Studio to Eclipse.

Re:How is IBM an unbiased source?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFT

Re:How is IBM an unbiased source?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA

Re:How is IBM an unbiased source?

[nwbvt]

Aside from the fact that the article isn't comparing the two (rather its an introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio developers), it wasn't written by IBM in the first place. It is merely hosted on IBM's developerworks site, whose contributions come from across the industry.

Re:How is IBM an unbiased source?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFWOTW

Intellisense

[plams]

I've been using Eclipse professionally for some time and the only recent Visual Studio experience I've had has been working on some sparetime C++ project with a buddy. But from that I seemed to notice that the intellisense kind of feature and other assisting tools seem far more evolved in Eclipse. For instance, Visual Studio will sometimes fail to find the members in an object when I type <object><dot> and this rarely fails in Eclipse (unless there's a syntax error).

Eclipse also assists in further ways I'm missing from Visual Studio. It highlights syntax/parser errors, a feature which might seem annoying until you realise that Eclipse will help you solve it. This will save you from a lot of typing effort if you use it to your advantage. If you assign a value to an undeclared variable and press Ctrl+1 on the error Eclipse will offer to declare the variable either locally or as a field. If you instantiate a class, or access a method/field that doesn't exist Eclipse will offer to make a stub for you.

It's features like this that has turned Java from a hideously verbose language into something that's almost easier to develop in than Ruby (imho), and Visual Studio seems almost antiquated on this subject (there's no excuse for not implementing these features for statically typed languages such as C/C++)

Re:Intellisense

[shird]

You just need to install Visual Assist by Tomato software. Not cheap, but improves on VS an order of magnitude.

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio 2005 supports the same features. You just have to access them in different ways, using different keystrokes, menus and shortcuts.
Visual Studio has a Refactor menu and can do the following types of things for you:
- offer to fill in signatures of members of interfaces that you have implemented
- offer to provide signatures of methods you wish to override from a base class
- reorder method parameters
- promote local variables to method parameters
- remove method parameters
- rename members
- encapsulate a field to create a property wrapper for it (set, get)
- extract statements from the body of a method to create another method

The intellisense capabilities are extensive: auto-complete, shows help excerpt tool tips, shows signatures of members.

The debugging features are extensive. You can pretty much see and change anything on-the-fly while stepping through your program. List too long to go into ...

Visual Studio intellisense sometimes fails notation when there is a syntax error above it in the code, not unlike Eclipse does.

Re:Intellisense

[dreamt]

Funny, because a lot of times, I find it to be the opposite. While I'm no huge MS fan, I think that Intellisense is much more refined in VS2005 -- and its simple things that make it such... ones that nobody else did, but its obvious once you see it. For example, the fact that when you hit DOT in VS, it goes to the last used property/method rather than the first one in an alphabetical list. I think that quite a few times, I want to refer to the last property that I uses, rather than having to scroll to it. Simple things like that.

It also seems much more of a pain to open an eclipse project on a different machine (at least with the Perforce plugin) than with Visual Studio (I just recently had to have someone else set up one of my Eclipse projects on their new machine, and we got into some sort of recursive look where Eclipse ended up creating subdirectories until it hit an NTFS limit for directory depth (which was a royal pain to clean up -- XP's fault, but still).

I think that much of it is preference, but each can (and should) learn from the other.

I'm anxious to see how X-Code (current and "leopard" release) compare... I've just started using a Mac as my primary development machine (and thanks to Parallels, I can run VS for existing dotnet and C++ development) as well as Eclipse on the Mac. I have not yet figured out how to begin integrating our existing Unix build scripts into X-Code to use it...

Re:Intellisense

[rgaginol]

I agree - the content assist features really put it in a class of it's own... and although I've seen a few small bugs with the latest 3.3 release, they're usually rock solid. I think any bugs I've seen in the latest release are just to do with the Eclipse developers "turning up the pace" and pumping out many more of these goodies, but maybe a little too fast. I think the content assist is one of those areas which differentiates a good developer from a good + fast developer. The look of amazement when I showed my friend how to auto generate delegate methods was priceless. Add to that auto creation of bean getters/setters, auto-extraction of method blocks, auto extraction of interfaces and a host of more subtle features and I'm not sure I could ever walk away from it. For a free product, it's just too good to be true. Oh yeah, and working with a tool which actively encourages plugin development is nice too. I'm not sure I could go a day without Spring IDE. I did have a walkthrough a few months ago of Netbeans by a developer who uses it every day. After seeing it in action, I could see many areas that Eclipse doesn't do too well (like grouping a set of libraries if I want to add them again), but I don't really mind. With Netbeans, it seems the approach seems to be to have more wizards to provide things like web services integration with your project, or removal of Ant as a requirement for building a web application... so you'd get accelerated development if you were happy to use their choice in tools. However, I don't agree with that kind of development philosophy in the long term, I think Java's biggest strength is how easy it is to integrate technologies and having developers who will only ever be able to integrate with a wizard dulls that great benefit.

Re:Intellisense

[Osty]

It's features like this that has turned Java from a hideously verbose language into something that's almost easier to develop in than Ruby (imho), and Visual Studio seems almost antiquated on this subject (there's no excuse for not implementing these features for statically typed languages such as C/C++)

What version of Visual Studio are you comparing against? Visual Studio 2005 (which is the basis for the free Express versions, so you can try it out without risking any cash) has all of the features you claim are lacking. It's maybe not as automatic (VS2k5 won't automatically stub a method for you unless you tell it to do so), but IMHO that's a good thing -- I don't want the IDE second-guessing what I'm doing.

Perhaps you were using Visual Studio for C++ code? It's been a while since I've done any C++, having focused almost exclusively on C# for the last 5 years, but with C# the IDE will catch syntax errors, auto-complete for you if you wish (use ctrl+space to bring up intellisense), stub out methods and interface implementations (ctrl+F10 to open the SmartTag-like dropdown), allow you to easily refactor code into methods or wrap variables into Properties, declare "using" tags if you reference something from an assembly in the project references without declaring its namespace (you can alternatively tell it to use the fully-qualifed namespace if you don't want to add it to your "using" list), etc. I would assume that most of the functionality also exists for C++ projects, but I haven't verified that. The functionality is all there (at least for .NET languages), in the box, without any extra plugins needed, and Visual Studio is lightweight enough that I can run 4-5 instances on a 2 year old laptop with 2GB RAM without any issues at all. VS is also pluggable like Eclipse, so feel free to extend it as you wish.

It's been a while since I tried using Eclipse, mostly because I haven't done any Java work since graduating from college back in 2000. When I did last check it out (probably 2-3 years ago) it was horribly obtuse and bloated. I'm sure things have gotten better over the years, and if I had to start working with Java Eclipse would be my first choice of IDE, but in a Windows C++/C# world I'll choose Visual Studio 2005 every single time. (I'd choose Visual Studio 2008, but I was burned by the VS2k5/.NET 2.0 beta and am now wary of beta versions of Visual Studio -- I'll switch when it ships.)

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, the fact that when you hit DOT in VS, it goes to the last used property/method rather than the first one in an alphabetical list.

So it is impossible to get a DOT into your source code? Thanks, I think I know now why somebody can hate VS so much. Isn't it possible at all to get the DOT into DOT-net? But without the DOT .net is nothing. No wonder why we see so few successful .net deployments.

--
Feel free to mod me troll

Re:Intellisense

[maglor_83]

From my experience, Visual Studio's intellisense is pretty good when programming in .NET. However, its terrible for C++. It frequently decides to lose scope information, which then makes the entire tool completely useless. Even when it does work, it doesn't remember the last used variable like it does in .NET.

I haven't used Eclipse much, and only with Python, but from memory I thought that it did remember the last variable used, but that might have been some other IDE I was experimenting with.

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh...have you even USED Visual Studio or are you a random troll? First of all, claiming VS Intellisense is broken is a blatant lie. You probably did not add a reference to the appropriate assembly or add the appropriate project to be able to get Intellisense for it. I have never, ever seen it fail. Secondly, VS has been highlighting lexical and parsing errors for a LONG time. At this point it is quite clear you have never seen Visual Studio running. And lastly, VS can generate stubs for you (Edit->Intellisense in VS2005).

Re:Intellisense

[coryking]

I think the keyword for VS and C++ is "getting there". For whatever reason, VS2005 likes to somehow corrupt some internal component that then disables intellesense in my c/c++ project. I cannot get it back until I delete it's cache file. I haven't tried VS2007 yet, but I only can dream they have improved intellesense (and improved XMLDoc for C++ projects).

As for a comparison to eclipse? I don't think they target the same market honestly. Eclipse really seems like the IDE of choice for open source languages and VS2005 is all about doing Windows apps with Microsoft's set of languages. I don't think Visual Studio could even do PHP, Perl or any other dynamically typed language without making it feel awkward. On the same token, I dont think eclipse could ever make you feel at home in a .NET language.

Way off track now... does eclipse have dialog editors like VS2005? Can I go into eclipse and start drawing a form? If so, sweet!

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

...and thanks to Parallels, I can run VS for existing dotnet and C++ development

Good luck with that. I think it's great combo when it works, but after a honeymoon of around 2 months, I had a rather significant crash using parallels since which time my windows install has become extremely unstable and parallels crashes on startup. Parallels was running off a bootcamp partition, so perhaps that was the problem, but I just don't feel secure doing anything with parallels anymore, at least not for a while.

Re:Intellisense

[John Courtland]

Eclipse will show the most relevant method or property during code completion. If there's not enough information, it will falls back to alpha sort. I guess I don't see why "last used" is such a good paradigm; I can't foresee a reason I would want to continue accessing the same method or property, aside from using poorly crafted APIs.

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather mod you moron, cause your post doesn't make any sense.

Too bad there is no such option....

Then again, this is Slashdot, I should just consider ever post to have a +1 Moron rating...

Re:Intellisense

[Samus]

It doesn't even have to be poorly crafted. I find that when I'm working with an object I'm frequently accessing several different properties instead of the same one over and over. I have a personal rule anyway that if I'm accessing a property more than a couple times I should probably think about caching it in a local variable. I find the "last used" feature to be an idea that sounds good on paper but generally is just not helpful.

Re:Intellisense

[Myopic]

I've hardly used VS so I can't compare, but in Eclipse I like how when the 'intellisense' thing comes up to tell me what members are available, it tries to guess the right one. Yeah, it doesn't go to the last member used, but it will go to one with the same return type as the object I'm setting. I'm not sure if it does this, but I wish it would also try to match variable names, like variableName = object.getVariableName().

The only other IDE I've spent a lot of time with was Xcode. Xcode for Java dev was mediocre at best, and now having used Eclipse, I would absolutely never ever go back to Xcode.

Re:Intellisense

[xenocide2]

I can't say much about the specifics, but if the situation validly could be optimized by storing in a local variable, I'd hope that your compiler is already doing the duty for you. Available expressions is a fairly simple calculation to make.

Re:Intellisense

[julesh]

What version of Visual Studio are you comparing against? Visual Studio 2005 (which is the basis for the free Express versions, so you can try it out without risking any cash) has all of the features you claim are lacking.

First of all, the free versions are lacking many of the advanced features, including support for refactoring.

Secondly, while I haven't tried VS2005 for C#, I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding the kind of features he's talking about:

with C# the IDE will catch syntax errors, auto-complete for you if you wish (use ctrl+space to bring up intellisense), stub out methods and interface implementations (ctrl+F10 to open the SmartTag-like dropdown), allow you to easily refactor code into methods or wrap variables into Properties, declare "using" tags if you reference something from an assembly in the project references without declaring its namespace (you can alternatively tell it to use the fully-qualifed namespace if you don't want to add it to your "using" list), etc.

Will it do the following things that eclipse does:

* Given a line of code with an undeclared identifier, give you a menu option to automatically declare that identifier?
* When a method call doesn't match the types of existing versions of that method, does it automatically offer to create a new overload of the method with the types you specified, or add missing parameters to an existing overload?
* When cutting and pasting code, will it automatically add any namespace imports that are necessary to support that code?
* If code in a method can throw an exception that isn't handled, can it automatically add a declaration that the method will throw that exception? Automatically wrap the method in a try/catch block customized for the exception type?
* Can it automatically generate interfaces with declarations that match selected methods from an existing class? Superclasses?
* Will it extract selected statements into a new method, automatically declaring any necessary parameters and determining the appropriate return value?

I have heard people say that these features are available before, but they normally suggest you need additional plugins to achieve them (e.g. resharper). These features are all available with a default install of eclipse.

Re:Intellisense

[gbjbaanb]

or access a method/field that doesn't exist Eclipse will offer to make a stub for you. Really? Sounds like Eclipse is the programmers verison of Clippy: "hi, you seem to be adding a new method, would you like me to add WrtieToFile to the class definition for you?"

(just a joke, I don't use Eclipse).

Re:Intellisense

[Anonymous Coward]

Biggest difference is that Eclipse's Intellisense is intelligent. It will offer you things that make sense in that place first. Visual Studio's intellisense is not intelligent.

For example Eclipse will prefer not to offer

    int aNumber = myClass.getSomeString();

bit Visual Studio will offer that, and also offers completely bonkers things like keywords.

    int aNumber = case??

Eclipse's refactoring beats Visual Studio hands down.

The one advantage of Visual Studio is its Visual Design, but I've found that more a cost on anything non-trivial. The time saved drawing things visually is lost again and again in maintenance.

Re:Intellisense

[Mr2001]

Secondly, while I haven't tried VS2005 for C#, I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding the kind of features he's talking about [...] Will it do the following things that eclipse does: * Given a line of code with an undeclared identifier, give you a menu option to automatically declare that identifier?

No, but if the identifier is declared in a different namespace, it'll give you the option to import that namespace or qualify the identifier.

* When a method call doesn't match the types of existing versions of that method, does it automatically offer to create a new overload of the method with the types you specified, or add missing parameters to an existing overload?

Yes, the former.

* When cutting and pasting code, will it automatically add any namespace imports that are necessary to support that code?

Not automatically, but you can do it with a few clicks (see above).

* If code in a method can throw an exception that isn't handled, can it automatically add a declaration that the method will throw that exception? Automatically wrap the method in a try/catch block customized for the exception type?

Not applicable because methods don't have exception signatures in C#. Actually, VS supports J# too, but I'm not sure whether it has this feature there.

* Can it automatically generate interfaces with declarations that match selected methods from an existing class? Superclasses?

Interfaces, yes.

* Will it extract selected statements into a new method, automatically declaring any necessary parameters and determining the appropriate return value?

Yes.

I have heard people say that these features are available before, but they normally suggest you need additional plugins to achieve them (e.g. resharper). These features are all available with a default install of eclipse. Everything I mentioned comes with the default install of VS 2005 Standard Edition. Some of the ones it's lacking might be available with a plugin; I don't know, I've never tried Resharper or anything similar.

Re:Intellisense

[jsight]

Yes, VS offers those features. But they are more awkward, slower, and more quirky than Eclipse. Eclipse's parser is much smarter at handling errors than VS.

A small syntax error can make virtually all of the intellisense features in VS worthless, whereas eclipse will just highlight the error and move on.

Eclipse isn't really an IDE anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a platform for making IDEs among other things.

It's a great platform but it's an utter pain dealing with the plugins and the varying degrees of compatibility. MyEclipse makes it substantially better though.

Re:Eclipse isn't really an IDE anymore

[Constantine XVI]

So you mean it's turned into Emacs?

Re:Eclipse isn't really an IDE anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Dare I say it: Eclipse is Emacs... 2.0

Re:Eclipse isn't really an IDE anymore

[Constantine XVI]

They'd be a bit behind. Emacs (at least the version in the Ubuntu repos) is at version 21.4

This is why i use notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

multiple language support, plugin support, open source:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Call graphs and type hierarchies

[locster]

I use the call graph and type hierarchy views in Eclipse all the time. They're particularly useful for learning the structure of code you haven't written or come into contact with before and they allow you to navigate code almost effortlessly. Visual Studio's equivalents are pretty dire in comparison, the 'Find References' view just gives a flat list and lists methods with the same name but different signatures and as such I often resort to compiling C# and navigating it with the excellent .Net Reflector tool.

Oh and automatic insertion of import statements and import re-organisation is pretty useful.

Also Eclipse's incremental compilation generally seems to be of a higher quality than VS, e.g. it shows you errors as you type whereas VS does so only after an explicit compilation. VS's incremental compilation appears to be limited to driving syntax coloring of class names and code completion (AKA Intellisense(TM) I believe).

Eclipse's local history of file changes has saved my arse on one occasion (no equivalent in VS) and the file comparer when checking into CVS is pretty cool, far ahead of the (admittedly dated) Visual Source Safe V6 we still use at my workplace (Team Studio was too expensive apparently).

Speaking as a mainly VS user I find that setting up projects in Eclipse can be pretty bewildering at times, but that could just be lack of experience.

Eclipse has *never* crashed on me. VS crashes very occasionally now, but it does still happen.

On balance I would say Eclipse is a far higher quality product than VS, and considering it's free it's a pretty amazing IDE. You can of course get VS Express editions for free now with some functions disabled, multithreaded debugging and compilation for 64bit environments being the missing bits that I have come across.

Re:Call graphs and type hierarchies

[Shados]

VS will definately show you errors you make without compiling. I've never paid enough attention (because I'm a chronic compiler for other reasons) to see which one was better, but VS definately catches a lot of compile-time errors on the fly.

Also, Source Safe really, really blows. Team foundation is actually great though.

Its true that for the price, Eclipse can't be beat though :)

I have to choose..

[nrgy]

Eclipse as my personal favorite. Now granted I'm no programming wizard and I'm not part of some OSS project. I create plugins for The Foundry's Nuke film compositor.

Up until about 4 months ago I used nothing but gedit for all my programming. Then I ran into the problem of to many tabs open and the need for using version control. I like Eclipse with CDT, it does it's job for me and the Subclipse plugin works quit well for my small needs. One feature I really like is the perspectives that Eclipse has, one of the first things I did was setup a few for while I am working.

After I had released only Linux versions of my plugins for a while I picked up a cheap copy of Visual Studio 2005 at a computer flee market. So I setup VMWare to do all my Windows compiling and bug fixing things that would compile ok under Linux but Windows would throw a fit. I agree my opinion isn't based from in depth knowledge or long term use of Visual Studio but for my needs I just prefer Eclipse.

I'm sure Eclipse has its pitfalls just like Visual Studio does, in the end they are both just tools and like anything in this world it comes down to personal preference in the end.

Re:I have to choose..

[SteevR]

...I picked up a cheap copy of Visual Studio 2005 at a computer flee market.
This is the point where I imagine pandemonium as folks run in terror from the local bingo hall on computer sale weekend. As they should. Those places are out to get you.

tongue->cheek

So what you mean is that you picked up a Chinese copy of MSVS 2005? If you're going to aid and abet piracy, you might as well not give the other pirates encouragement in the form of hard currency.

tongue->back-in-normal-place

Recognizing that MSVS was facing real competition in the IDE arena, MS got smart and offered up a relatively non-encumbered free version, Visual Studio Express. For the major differences between Express and the other versions, see this page.

If all you are interested in is a C++ compiler and IDE, Express works. Its free as in crappy domestic (US) beer. The comparison seems to indicate that you don't get full access to MSDN, but that seems to be a lie. Granted, with Express you don't have it locally, but who wants to install all (eight last time I checked) gigs of the stuff when it is all online anyhow?

Re:I have to choose..

[nrgy]

I'm sorry but no I didn't pick up as you call it "A Chinese copy", I actually made a type-o and meant to say I had picked up a 2003 version.

Regardless of which version I picked up are you saying that one can't find good deals at roaming computer shows? I can't count how many great deals I've found at the local computer shows, once a month they move around the surrounding area "60 miles or so" and hold these events.

The booths are usually made up of surrounding computer stores and ebay sellers trying to get rid of old hardware or huge quantities of a product that they obtained in bulk. I picked up my first version of Visual Basic 4 way back when at one of these shows for next to nothing. Most of the whats being sold is old hardware, hardware/software bought in bulk, hardware/software obtained from liquidation sales or going out of business auctions.

Maybe next time you can keep your bullshit on your own side of the fence instead of flinging it in other peoples direction.

Re:I have to choose..

[SteevR]

If there were a Computer Flea Market-Goers Anonymous, I'd be in and out of their support groups for life. I scrape up a lot of awesome hardware for almost nothing all the time; I've also sold surplus hardware and Linux CDs (back before the advent of widespread broadband and cd-burners) at these events.

However, every time I have bought business software at these shows, it inevitably consists of bundled or licensed software with non-transferable clauses, or nice Chinese copies. Some even have the holograms on the Certificates of Authenticity, and look quite official. You can only tell the difference if you regularly handle the real thing; indeed, I was bamboozled until I began taking contracts doing lease refreshes and hardware/software installs wherein I handled the genuine articles on a daily basis.

I wasted a lot of money buying the fakes.

I was also Not Really Serious.

Check out what tongue->cheek means.

Re:I have to choose..

[bladesjester]

I know you were saying it tongue in cheek, but I just had to say that I paid a whopping $10 for my copy of VS2005 Standard from Microsoft.

They were running a promo a few months ago where you watched a couple of short films on the web, filled out the form, and paid shipping costs. I just let the films run in the background and a week later, I got a nice bubble mailer from the local Microsoft office with my copy.

Who would want to compare different religions?

[Husgaard]

There is so much religion involved on this topic that this discussion is likely to evolve into a big flame war. Some people really like Microsoft products, while other people hate them.

You may call me religious, as I have never really liked products from Microsoft, and my knowledge of Visual Studio is limited.

I use Eclipse on a daily basis and I'm quite happy with the IDE unlike other IDEs I've got to know, like NetBeans.

Having said that, the article from IBM looks fine to me. If we ever get a new employee who knows Visual Studio but not Eclipse, I would point him to it hoping that he would spend a few minutes on it (but no more) and that it would help him getting started a bit faster in the Eclipse world.

Re:Who would want to compare different religions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people really like Microsoft products, while other people hate them. And most people just use the best tool for the job, and don't give a damn about evangelism from either of the two minorities mentioned.

Re:Who would want to compare different religions?

[doas777]

I'm kinda surprised actually, the expected flame war has not yet materialized.
everyones been rather reasonable, and while we all have favorites, I'm glad to see so many people who use both platforms regularly coming down on one side or the other amicably.

I personally work with both tools regularly, but I tend toward VS, cause i find it much faster, and a little more reliable. your right, part of it is what your used to, but I'm glad this hasn't degenerated into a M$ vs the OSS world cacophany.

Well, that's the first page, where the fuck is

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's the first page, where the fuck is the rest? Wasted my time. What do you think I have, the attention span of the mtv generation?

total eclipse of the heart

[__aapspi39]

Eclipse does require a lot of computer resources, but when you consider the job it does, its actually an amazing bit of kit. also there are memory management plugin that can keep it under control if are trying to get it to run on a celeron with 256m ram.

as tfa, once you get over the initial hassle of setting the thing up, its a joy to use. also, its dammed stable.

the svn, the code completion, error checking, and the countless lovely little features (i love you all) work a treat, and make it a winner every time. i don't know a single developer thats used both who doesn't recognise visual studio to be a vastly inferior product.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

i don't know a single developer thats used both who doesn't recognise visual studio to be a vastly inferior product.

Hi. I'm a developer, I've used both, and I don't recognise Visual Studio to be a vastly inferior product. There, now you know one. :-)

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[TrancePhreak]

There's a plugin for VS that does SVN. That's what plugins are for, don't ya know.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a developer too, and I do not consider VS to be inferior at all. You have rocks in your head.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[TrancePhreak]

I forgot to mention... I'm a developer who feels Visual Studio is the vastly superior product. I like to debug. I write lots of tools and have to deal with malformed data all the time, without debugging I'd feel like I was in the stone age. Being able to debug easily is something any IDE should have, expecially after 1995.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[zlogic]

Could you tell me the name of the memory management plugin? 'Cause I'm currently running Eclipse on a Celeron with 512 megs of RAM and its memory consumption is HUGE. I've added JVM parameters to the launch command but a special plugin would be much more convenient.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the "stone age" people understood their code. They reasoned out and fixed problems rather than stepping through the symptoms of one specific case and avoiding it. If you need a debugger, you are just not qualified to maintain that code.

But if you must, at least use windbg, the integrated one in vs.net isn't even very powerful in comparison.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[RZA_Legend]

Eclipse has at least comparable debugging capabilities. Actually I personally find them vastly superior compared to VS. And yes I use both IDEs on regular basis.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[captain random]

Oh, please. I see your Strawman and raise you a Reductio ad Absurdum.

Sure, lazy developers are going to use debuggers and edit/continue to avoid thinking. But that doesn't mean that everybody needs to code with a soldering iron and debug with an oscilloscope.

And windbg? For 90% of cases, that's simply masochism (I, for one, don't use obtuse tools just so I can feel smart about being able to use them).

For example, you don't need to load up windbg, load SOS, and do a gcroot command just because an InvalidCastException was raised by some piece of code you haven't worked on in a couple of months. Just step in there, and see what object is being passed in (and, probably, track it up the call stack to see what's changed).

Keeping the entire source tree in your head slows you down (and probably drives you crazy). I tend to keep an overall map of the codebase in my head and just re-familiarise myself with bits while I'm working on them.

When an app has an unhandled exception, VS launches for JIT debugging, attaches, and takes me right to the place in the source where the error was raised. It shows me the full call-stack (a double-click on any entry in the call stack will take me to the source there) and, for each level in the call stack, automatically picks likely variables of interest (as well as being able to show me the contents of pretty much anything else I choose).

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[CryBaby]

Are you implying that Eclipse doesn't have a debugger? Or that Visual Studio's debugger is better than Eclipse's? If so, how?

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[TrancePhreak]

Eclipse has no debug mode -- just the Debug perspective you can switch to and from. The main Debug view lists all the programs being run or debugged and lets you debug several prograDebuggingms at the same time, which is a little more difficult to do in Visual Studio.

Straight from the article.

Re:total eclipse of the heart

[CryBaby]

OK, so the article is pointing out that Eclipse's debug perspective is easier to use and more flexible than Visual Studio's debug mode. That sounds about right to me.

In case you're still under the impression that Eclipse doesn't have a debugger, I'll you save the effort of actually using Eclipse and mention that it's built into the IDE, allows for effortless remote as well as local debugging, has all the features you would expect from a debugger and is incredibly well integrated. So well integrated, in fact, that you don't have to "switch modes" to use it.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if...it was compiled?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems there are compiled versions of Eclipse, maybe that will help with some of the bloat.
http://sourceware.org/eclipse/

However I do find the autocomplete features quickly grind to a halt whilst using APIs with large numbers of methods such as jogl.

I hope Ecipse gets better and better because it really is an excellent IDE, and at the moment the only thing holding it back is the performance issue.

Biggest Thing in Eclipse

[Kazrael]

Honestly, I think one of the nicest features in Eclipse is the highlighting of a selected object/class/variable. I never realized how annoying using "find" or "bookmark all" was until I moved to eclipse.

Re:Biggest Thing in Eclipse

[icydog]

This is the biggest thing that I hated about VS. Clicking on a variable, type, function, ..., in Eclipse highlights the others like it in the editor, and there just is no equivalent in VS. There is not even a plugin that can provide this functionality. Also, the automatic parenthesis/bracket/brace pairing (type a { and it shows the } automatically) was pretty nice. In VS, you can get this too but you have to buy a plugin from a 3rd party.

Re:Biggest Thing in Eclipse

[cnettel]

Matching braces is available and on by default in VS2005. I've no idea what you mean...

A few things

[JNighthawk]

First off, the article is *not* about Eclipse vs. Visual Studio.

Secondly, people keep talking about how Eclipse is used via plugins, mostly, and with plugins, it's better than Visual Studio. Well, if you're going to have plugins/add-ons for Eclipse, let's make it fair and do the same for Visual Studio. Let's toss in Visual AssistX and Incredibuild.

I'm not saying one is superior to the other, since I've never used Eclipse, but I am saying that if you're going to compare them, be fair about it.

Re:A few things

[Shados]

The problem is that people here will always write off anything that costs money, in which case any MS based development is serverly hurting. Visual Studio has amazing plugins, but a lot of the best ones (not all) cost a few bucks (like the full edition of Refactor, which is downright amazing). For a large corporation, that gets written off, and they'll get back half of it from taxes anyway.

For someone doing personal projects for fun, thats simply not possible. Just as an example, I recently switched workplace and lost access to my MSDN Premium subscription with Team System. I still have team system, but I lost access to all the MS tools around it. Not plugins, but I'm hurting now (it was just a side example).
If you consider a large software firm who pays its senior developers as much as in the 3 digits/hour, saving them 3-4 hours of work is worth a 400$ tool or plugin, and thus they'll end with machines loaded with everything, and THEN you can compare VS with full plugin against Eclipse with full plugin...

I still think like you that counting VS without plugin vs Eclipse with plugins is a bit unfair, but its not as simple as a 1:1 comparison.

Re:A few things

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, Visual Studio Express is free. Sure it doesn't have some of the higher end team management systems stuff in it but it's an incredible package for no money. And if you are woking for a company the cost of VS is like... nothing? I have never worked ANYWHERE where the cost of VS was a concern for even a microsecond. Maybe some f the VERY expensive tool libraries yes... VS? never.

Re:A few things

[Shados]

Uh, Visual Studio Express is free. Sure it doesn't have some of the higher end team management systems stuff in it but it's an incredible package for no money. And if you are woking for a company the cost of VS is like... nothing? I have never worked ANYWHERE where the cost of VS was a concern for even a microsecond. Maybe some f the VERY expensive tool libraries yes... VS? never.

VS Express doesn't support plugins, which is what that was about. And that was my whole point. For companies the price isn't a concern, but when comparing the two in your basements for fun little projects, it definately IS relevent, which will most definately affect the options of people still in college or who work for tiny companies (which is a lot of people on these boards.).

Also, even for large companies, VS team Suite at 8-12 grands a pop depending on which country you buy it from will hurt if its not a software oriented firm.

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you, but have to see things from other people's perspectives sometimes.

Re:A few things

[EraserMouseMan]

Fairness regarding any comparison with OSS and Microsoft? You must have forgotten what website this is. MS products are mediocre at best. And even that is being very generous.

Mind you, if there was a half-assed Mac-based IDE in this comparison it would have gotten rave reviews for ease of use. Of course, when it only has 4 features it becomes pretty simple to figure out.

Flame away. Censor this post into oblivion.

Re:A few things

[Tony Hoyle]

Nobody is going to pay 12 grand for team suite. Get MSDN for about a grand (depending on where you live) and MS will send it to you along with visual studio etc. (in fact they send about 3 different versions). Even as a solo developer it makes sense to pay that if you're doing anything with MS products.

Re:A few things

[Shados]

No, they won't. To get Team Suite (without a volume license agreement or a microsoft partnership/certification of the company), you only have a single option: MSDN Premium with Visual Studio Team Suite (you cannot buy the Team edition products without an MSDN subscription, they're part of it).

That is incredibly expensive. If you're upgrading from MSDN Universal, its not -too- bad (a few grands), but if you're a newcomer, an MSDN Premium (not Pro, which sucks, missing too much stuff like Expression Blend for XAML, and isn't available with the team editions at all) for VS2005 Pro is like 2000-2500$ US. For one of the partial Team Edition SKUs (aka: all of em except Team Suite), they're something of the order of 5 grands. And team suite (OUCH) is 10-12 grands US at first glance.

That -IS- with MSDN subscription. The cheap 1000$ MSDN subscription will -not- include Visual Studio Team Suite (or any team SKUs).

The only cheap way of getting the Team SKUs I know of, is to get your company certified by microsoft, then you get a few licenses (not many). Thats like 200$ but you need to be selling an app made using Microsoft products and get it tested by MS (easy, they don't test it much). But for a solo developer starting up, they'll need to shell out the 10-12 grands with 3 grands renewal/upgrade if they wanted it.

What about NetBeans?

[Theovon]

Why do we see do may articles that mention Eclipse as though it's the default IDE for Java development and whatnot, when so many of the professional programmers I know say they prefer NetBeans because it's a more intuitive, less busy interface?

Re:What about NetBeans?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree... I love NetBeans. Since 4.5 or 5 I feel it's blown Eclipse out of the water as the free Java IDE. Especially for web development. The GUI development tools I consider to be the best out of all commercial and free development tools.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netbeans only does Java really well, it doesn't have nearly as many good plugins as Eclipse and it's even more bloated. A lot of people dismiss it outright because it looks utterly horrible on any operating system besides Windows. Even when using Java 1.6, the GTK look and feel has loads of problems and the fonts look substantially worse than any other application on my system. If I'm going to be staring at code all day, it's an absolute must that the fonts don't make my eyes bleed.

Applications that are written in Java are bad enough. Throw in Swing and it's pretty much a death blow.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[Theovon]

Ok, well, I've been using NetBeans on a Mac, and it looks really nice. You say it looks good on Windows. So it sounds like they need to really seriously work on the Linux version.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of my complaints do indeed relate to Swing being an absolute abomination on Linux.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[shis-ka-bob]

This is an IBM article aimed at getting Visual Studio developers to feel comfortable using Eclipse. IBM is a huge Eclipse supporter, they can be excused for not writing about Sun's NetBeans. I guess we can ask where the Sun articles are that try and get developers to try NetBeans.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[postmortem]

NetBeans font don't look worse than any other; it is simply using Java fonts, and I tend to like their anti-aliased fonts.

NetBeans beats Elcipse in UI development like 100:0

Re:What about NetBeans?

[fbjon]

I was under the impression that you can change the look-and-feel of it completely, which might be a good idea. Also, I find it hard to believe anything could be more bloated than Eclipse. NetBeans is less than half the download size, at least.

Re:What about NetBeans?

[jamestks]

> prefer NetBeans because it's a more intuitive, less busy interface? I would second that. Version 6 should be even speedier and more integrated. I use Eclipse occasionally and I find that I spend too much time picking plug-ins and figuring out how to to use them. Web/JSF development, profiling... is buitt right into NetBeans and these tools are arguably the best of their kinds.

In A Comparison Between Eclipse and Visual Studio

[SteevR]

...KDevelop wins!

Refactoring

[John Jorsett]

The thing I like best about Eclipse vs Visual Studio was refactoring. I tend to, ahem, revise my thinking during programming, and the ability to rename everything from the project itself down to the lowest-level variable was like heaven. Having to go back and use VS where I can't do that (at least, not easily) is torture.

Re:Refactoring

[ChadAmberg]

Yeah, because it is so damn hard to right click on a variable name, select Rename, and type in the new name. And then it does it all for you.

Re:Refactoring

[TrancePhreak]

VS2005 has stuff like this. Visual Assist adds it to earlier versions of VS.

Re:Refactoring

[weicco]

In VS2005:

1. Write class/method/property/variable definition
2. Rename it
3. Press SHIFT+ALT+F10
4. Press Enter

Now tell me again why it is so hard to rename in VS.

Re:Refactoring

[gatesvp]

As mentioned, VS2005 has some powerful renaming tools.

However, the other thing you're missing is that your case is largely irrelevant. Names should be accurately picked during the analysis and design phases. Why you're even re-naming things more significant than a class level private variable while programming, I don't know.

If you can afford to rename something from the project level all the way down, then you're clearly the only person working on the project. If you're the only person working the project, then who cares about the naming, you're the only one using it. Either way, your case is largely irrelevant.

Re:Refactoring

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And what does that do in Visual C++?

Re:Refactoring

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

However, the other thing you're missing is that your case is largely irrelevant. Names should be accurately picked during the analysis and design phases. Why you're even re-naming things more significant than a class level private variable while programming, I don't know.

Ah, so you're the guy who works on the project that gets developed in isolation according to a strict waterfall model, with no external influences such as changing requirements or new features being added to new versions of the software. I kept hearing about this person from naive managers and academics, but I never met him until now.

Re:Refactoring

[John Jorsett]

Why you're even re-naming things more significant than a class level private variable while programming, I don't know.

Exactly: you don't know.

Bless you if you've never worked in an environment where your development software is a generation or more out of date and management suddenly decides that what you're working on is now an image analysis tool instead of a image data collection tool.

If you can afford to rename something from the project level all the way down, then you're clearly the only person working on the project. If you're the only person working the project, then who cares about the naming, you're the only one using it. Either way, your case is largely irrelevant.

If that were so, I wouldn't have brought it up. Even a lone developer is developing code for at least one maintainer (himself).

I've worked in multi-developer teams in the past where we planned everything thoroughly before a single line of code was written, and yet refactoring was necessary during the coding phase. Perhaps its because what I've been doing has been in the realm of R&D/experimentation and not straight-line development, but in my experience, as the saying goes, "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

Re:Refactoring

[gatesvp]

No I'm the guy who works on multi-person projects where you can't just check out the source tree and rename a project without breaking a lot of other projects.

Don't get me wrong, I've done this before. I've had to rename large swaths of code, but unless you're basically alone or working on a completely fresh project, the actual renaming is the smallest part of the process. You have to let people know, you have to isolate whole sections of the source tree and lock out co-workers (who all have to know what you're doing) you have to bring in some type of testing etc. The whole problem gets worse if you've developed an API or some form of interface.

So two reasons: new project; work alone. If you have a new project, sure maybe the utility is useful to have, however the utility is definitely making up for some questionable planning. I mean, why would you change the product name on the third week of development? Product branding change? You were working on an important and relevant project that didn't even have branding in place? Change in functionality makes the names you selected incorrect? Design / planning problem. If you work alone, well hey good for cleanliness!

Point is, this mass-rename feature is "nice to have", but it's fundamentally there to correct big mistakes. This functionality comes at the expense of a dangerous amount of power. It's a giant eraser that can cost hours of time and the people who pay the most for licenses (enterprise) are the people who least want to see this tool. From a financial standpoint that counts as "largely irrelevant", even though I'd have liked such a tool once or twice.

Re:Refactoring

[gatesvp]

Mass renaming, simply does not scale. If you've written an API or a common library or even just an interface you can't run around just renaming stuff. Sure it's good on your one little project, but the software giant paying MS millions instead of hundreds probably don't developers renaming pieces of the API they released last month!

If they image analysis tool becomes the image data collection tool, why do you have to rename tons of libraries? Can you even rename these existing libraries? How are you going to coordinate with the other 10 developers on your team?

We're not talking about plans gone mildly awry here "upon contact with the enemy" here. We're talking about a mass refactoring that affects large swaths of people. We're talking about a deliverable product that has to make money and you're telling me that we have to spend time renaming Public parts of the API, updating the documentation, update related database items, update the Test Cases, inform the VARs of the updates, etc...

No you're talking about small-time development with none of these constraints. That stuff generally counts as "largely irrelevant". I know, I work at a small software co with less than 10 guys, we're not paying thousands of dollars for Team Studio, we count as largely irrelevant :)

Re:Refactoring

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sorry, but I just don't follow your logic. If you're talking about changing names in interfaces, then sure, you have to be careful about that just as with changing parameters, return values, exception policies, etc. But most code is not part of an externally visible interface.

Any widespread change in a code base also has to be worth any potential trouble it causes down the line with diffs in your source control system. However, any change that justifies renaming something may well be that big, so this isn't necessarily a problem.

Apart from those concerns, I don't see why you should ever have a problem. If you need to notify more than a small number of fellow developers who may be working in the same areas, then it sounds more like either your design or your project management is broken than anything else.

I keep trying to like eclipse

[coryking]

But it always feels slightly off. I think half my problem is just their website really stinks. There is no diffinitive "this is eclipse, click here to download". And by download, I mean "setup.exe". Right now it is more like "here is a bunch of random eclipse like stuff with random names and no sense".

Am I right to assume eclipse is kind of like the linux kernel, and you need to pick a "eclipse distribution" to get any kind of coherent package?

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[nurb432]

Try easy eclipse.

Its a 'click here and install' sort of thing. Both for windows and OSX.

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[motokochan]

Well, it really depends on your needs and how picky you are. The big problem with the Eclipse website is that it also contains a lot of the plugins and other stuff on the site, so it is somewhat cluttered. It would be nice to see a lot of the clutter go to a different site so one can focus on Eclipse, and the other can focus on the plugins and such.

The big thing with Eclipse is that it is a framework. You can make it as heavy or light as you want it, and people are encouraged to contribute "distributions" for others. Naturally, you can grab one of the items directly on the eclipse.org site and build your own IDE with all you want, or you can pick up a pre-configured copy with plugins already bundled. The nice thing is that no matter what distribution you use, the environment is consistent, so you don't need to worry about stuff changing around on you a whole lot.

As another poster said, EasyEclipse makes some nice bundles for focused areas that you can pick up. Heck, they even have a nice installer and everything. Once you get the base bundle, then you can always add on other tools as you need. If you don't like that, you can just look at the list of what each edition has and build it from scratch.

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[coryking]

Awesome! Thanks to both you and your sibling for the tip.

I'm trying to do perl right now. I've been spoiled rotten with Visual Studio (C# / C++ work) and want the same kinds of goodies for my perl stuff :-)

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[MythMoth]

Yep, I absolutely love Eclipse, but their website is utterly incomprehensible unless you already know exactly what you need.

The auto-installer isn't much better; it doesn't default to resolving dependencies for you, so you either have to notice an obscurely named checkbox to switch it on, or manually figure out why it's bitching about some TLA prefixed library when you only want to install some other TLA prefixed library.

Seriously it's an amazing environment but they need to do some usability testing, at least of the website, and address the problem.

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

You are very correct. It's disorganized like every other Java project seems to be. If Sun had put some thought into actually trying to make Java scale beyond first-year CS programmers, we wouldn't be stuck with this C# garbage. If Java was as simple as standard C where all you usually had to do was to just type "tar -Zf project.tar.Z; cd project; make; make install" then Java would have been successful. Instead we're stuck with a pain in the neck almost was that just won't go away like it should.

Re:I keep trying to like eclipse

[CryBaby]

There is no diffinitive "this is eclipse, click here to download"

You mean something like the huge yellow button at the top of their home page that says "Download Eclipse" and then takes you to a download page that displays and explains the available versions (and automatically filters them for your particular OS)?

Hot Swapping Code

[MarkEst1973]

This is a java-centric feature, but it's something that frustrated the hell out of me when I worked on my first ASP.NET application (v1.1) after coming from a Eclipse/Tomcat environment...

Mix up this recipe:

• Eclipse's autobuild-on-save feature
• JVM's ability to hot swap code (typically accomplished by replacing the classloader at runtime)
• Eclipse's ability to host the container (Tomcat in my case, but it can be WebLogic or any other)

Eclipse starts Tomcat in debug mode by default. Automatically compiled classes in Eclipse are piped over the debug socket to the container. The class is swapped out in real time, and you've got a brand new piece of code to run without having an entire build/deploy cycle. Better than that, you can be stepping through your code debugging a method, see your mistake, fix it, hit ctrl-S to save, and the debugger backs up to the top of the method and evaluates your new code!!!

VS.NET (v1.1 when I used it) simply could not do that. IIS was not as cleanly integrated with VS.NET (as far as I am aware, maybe I'm wrong)

Eclipse plug-ins exist for all major containers. MyEclipseIDE makes a killing marketing a bunch of them. Even IntelliJ (my preference for Java development) cannot match it, because you have to explicitly build (which can hot swap) but it'll take seconds, as opposed to milliseconds in Eclipse. big big fan of the hot swapping ability.

Re:Hot Swapping Code

[Shados]

Indeed. ASP.NET 1.1 sucked ass. And it definately had all the problems you mentionned. In VS2005/ ASP.NEt 2.0, for example, VS starts Cassini (a web server) automatically on F5 debug, for example.

Aside for posts like this, I refuse to acknowledge that .NET 1.1 and below ever existed. And thats coming from a pro-.NET guy.

My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[AndyCR]

I used to use VC++ for all my C++ development work. I have switched to Eclipse/MinGW.

- There is SVN integration, task integration with Mylyn which can help you focus on only one task at a time, etc. - stuff you simply can't do in VC++ or, if you can, not without paying a lot of money
- The ability to compile one file on each CPU is, laughably, apparently worth $5,000 to Microsoft. Even then, I've heard it doesn't work properly
- I can easily make automated compile/test scripts thanks to switching to MinGW from VC++, and run them automatically on a Linux server which will notify me if a build goes awry
- EASILY extensible. I can compile every bit of the C++ toolset in about 30 seconds, since it is written in Java. If your machine can't run it, you deserve a better machine anyway to soothe compile times...
- The intellisense in both are pretty much comparable with the Europa release.
- If I decide to switch to Linux, all my hotkeys, knowledge, and features are still available.

I could go on and on, but those are the main reasons.

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

We've never had any problem compiling one file per CPU. The catch is it works as one project per CPU, but that isn't a problem for us. The main problem is linking takes forever.

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[AndyCR]

Right... When comparing products, we have to consider actual productivity benefits. When coding, how often to you modify two projects before compiling? Very, very, rarely. How often do you modify two files in the same project, or a header file that two or more source files include? For me, almost every time.

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[shutdown -p now]

The intellisense in both are pretty much comparable with the Europa release.

It's not, if you ever use templates and STL. VS2005 IntelliSense thingy can actually make sense out of moderately complicated template constructs, as seen in STL and some of the Boost libs, and expand and specialize members of templates. Eclipse CDT can't do it (and the only other IDE I know of that can do it is SlickEdit).

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[AndyCR]

Yes, you are right. My usage of heavily template-based libraries is rare, so it doesn't hurt me personally much.

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[mrosgood]

I have switched to Eclipse/MinGW.

Nice.

Now that I've upgraded to Europa (Eclipse 3.3), trying Eclipse with the Cygwin toolchain is on my todo list. I'd like to develop in one environment for all my target platforms and then cross-compile.

Re:My switch from VC++ to Eclipse

[AndyCR]

Sounds great. My plan is to run MinGW on my dev machine, then have a server running Linux which does automated hourly builds from public SVN for Windows (using MinGW under Wine) and Linux, alerting me and emailing the dev mailing list if a build fails, host a private, working copy SVN repository, and automatically package releases for Windows including installers (running the installer script compiler under Wine), etc.

Lack of GUI tools

[nurb432]

Seems to be the biggest difference.

Eclipse and folders == el suckedero

[Ansible42]

I was thinking about trying out eclipse on my C++ projects, but I find this thing of integrating folders and projects to be highly irritating. I like to keep common source files in a directory and include them as needed on different projects. Not every project needs to link to every file in my common directory, but that's how you have to do it in eclipse. I spent a weekend trying to get going with eclipse on ubuntu (visual studio user), but when I realized that I'd have to reorganize my whole code base to have the folders and projects be the same, I got pissed frustrated and had to quit back to windows for a while. Trying to get SVN and eclipse to cooperate is a complete nightmare too. You say you want to check out your whole SVN repository and then work with individual projects within it? Good luck with that. Only top level directories are projects. Gah. There's some hack you can do with making one project that checks out the whole SVN tree, then have another project _outside_your_svn_repository_ that refers to a project within the SVN repository. I guess you have another SVN repository for those eclipse projects?? It makes my head hurt. I've thought about transitioning to eclipse at work, but the idea of revamping the company's whole SVN repository just so folders and projects are identical is just fucking retarded, and I would be justifiably mocked were I to bring up something like that to my coworkers. I want to like eclipse, I really do. This folder thing just sucks too much for me to like it.

Re:Eclipse and folders == el suckedero

[Osty]

I like to keep common source files in a directory and include them as needed on different projects.

Why not build a single library (or multiple libraries) with your common code and then just reference those libraries as necessary? Seems like that would be a much nicer way to handle common code, and it would give you the ability to patch your common functions and just ship a new copy of that single library rather than rebuilding all of your projects.

Re:Eclipse and folders == el suckedero

[Ansible42]

Maybe it would make sense to make our folders correspond to projects, and only have files in folders if they are part of a library, and never have files unless they are part of a specific project. But to do this would mean breaking a lot of existing projects, and moving a lot of code around. This it makes adoption of eclipse in my workplace much less likely - there's no way to just play around with it, you have to reorganize the whole code base before you can even get started. Not exactly friendly.

Plaintive...

[phunctor]

Sounds GRRRREAT! So I download the latest Europa, fire it up. Hmm, it comes with a "hello world" project preloaded. Fire it up!

Oho! Syntax errors! Clever demo, must use editor. Editor works, build again.

Launching helloWorld.... java.lang.NullPointerException...

And this.. is the demo.

Clue me in somebody, please, humbly. What am I missing here?

--
phunctor

Re:Plaintive...

[jma05]

I followed the HelloWorld walkthrough in Europa just to check. Everything is fine here. It must be something at your end.

> Editor works, build again.

What do you mean by "build again"? In Eclipse, you don't need to do that. It auto builds in a background thread as you type.

> NullPointerException

It is usually a common beginner problem for Java as they try Hello World (including myself several years ago). It usually means that the Java classpath is not properly configured with the current folder in it. However, Eclipse takes care of that. So, can't say in your case. Consult the Eclipse channel and provide more info.

Re:Plaintive...

[smartr]

What version of the JDK are you using?

Re:Plaintive...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are probably missing some basic Java knowledge. ;)

I've enjoyed both

[nate nice]

I've used both environments for different tasks and have been happy with both. Essentially, they serve the same function which is to make developing far more enjoyable and error free.

Personally now I use VS.net more often. From where I work I have an MSDN account and get free downloads of all their developer tools to play around with. So I've spent a lot of time playing with things.

I like the integration of everything. From the SQL browser to Team Foundation Server, it's really streamlined to have access to have everything all at once. Honestly, I've been pretty impressed with most of .net and this is shocking since I rarely did MS development before VS 2005.

Obviously the biggest problem with it all is that it costs money. A lot of money if you want the IDE with all the architecture tools, design tools, testing tools, compilers, SQL server, TFS for source control and deployment, etc. You're locked into a MS environment essentially. And sometimes this isn't a problem at all. Maybe you're developing an ASP.net site or something. But you're spent a lot of money on tools and when multiplied by 50 developers, this can add up to a lot. However, you get MS support and for a lot of business companies with developers that aren't the greatest thing around, this is very valuable.

Eclipse has limitless plug-ins and can do everything VS.net can in terms of hooking into things. I don't find it as seamless and the whole package isn't there for everything from sharing documentation to deployment, etc. And there isn't support either. So a company is essentially on their own. But it's empowering to be able to ala cart the components you want.

I like both but have been really impressed with Visual Studio and all the related tools.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[Osty]

Obviously the biggest problem with it all is that it costs money. A lot of money if you want the IDE with all the architecture tools, design tools, testing tools, compilers, SQL server, TFS for source control and deployment, etc. You're locked into a MS environment essentially. And sometimes this isn't a problem at all. Maybe you're developing an ASP.net site or something. But you're spent a lot of money on tools and when multiplied by 50 developers, this can add up to a lot. However, you get MS support and for a lot of business companies with developers that aren't the greatest thing around, this is very valuable.

I think the key here is that it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing small-time ASP.NET work, smaller .NET apps, or even writing games, the Express versions of Visual Studio (including XNA Game Studio) are quite nice and free. If you're doing enterprisey work, you'll probably want the full Architect edition and probably get an MSDN subscription as well. If you just want to do an ASP.NET website with a SQL Server backend, spend your money on SQL Server 2005 (or don't spend your money yet and use SQL Server Express to build your proof of concept) and use the free Visual Web Developer Express.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[nate nice]

Thanks for the information. I never had to search for free versions due to my MSDN account. I've had access to the "baller" versions for awhile.

I do use SQL Express at home when I'm messing around. I thought it was free with a Visual Studio install.

How well would that database hold up in a real world context? That is, how much abuse can it take? I want to deploy a little site that won't ever get a lot of traffic (few thousand a day at most) and don't want to pay for a SQL Server license. The isn't too database intensive, but it will make a query every time a user comes on. I'd rather use Express if I can (free). Is this practical?

Re:I've enjoyed both

[Osty]

How well would that database hold up in a real world context? That is, how much abuse can it take? I want to deploy a little site that won't ever get a lot of traffic (few thousand a day at most) and don't want to pay for a SQL Server license. The isn't too database intensive, but it will make a query every time a user comes on. I'd rather use Express if I can (free). Is this practical?

Honestly, I haven't actually tried SQL Express. It is the exact same engine as full SQL Server, but obviously with some limitations. Here's a decent comparison of Express vs. full versions of SQL. Assuming your data set is relatively small (4GB or less) and relatively simple (a limit of 1GB of RAM and a single CPU could make intensive queries suck), it should work well enough for you. Worst case, you try it out and find that you need a bigger version of SQL Server. If that's the case, your existing Express database will migrate over to a full SQL Server 2005 installation just fine, since it's the same engine.

Licensing-wise, it looks like what you want to do would be allowed. The only question is whether the Express engine will be robust enough.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[nate nice]

Thanks for the link. It basically comes down to how much RAM my DB will need, the size it will eventually get up to and how many CPU's I need.

Looks like express should be plenty powerful. Thanks.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[Osty]

Thanks for the link. It basically comes down to how much RAM my DB will need, the size it will eventually get up to and how many CPU's I need.

I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is

Re:I've enjoyed both

[Osty]

Gah! Should've previewed. That should read:

I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is < 1GB and you can put 2GB in your server (to give memory to more than just SQL, so that SQL can take its full 1GB and/or keep you from going into swap for other system processes), SQL Express will load the entire database into memory. On the other hand, if your dataset is between 1GB and 4GB (the Express limit) but your budget would otherwise allow you to purchase more memory, you will definitely see better performance with a full version of SQL Server that can access more of that RAM (and thus still load your full database into memory). Of course if your dataset is tiny, none of that really matters because you'll likely never run up agains the 1GB limit.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[Burz]

If you're willing to spend money for seamless integration re: deployment, decomentation and process tools then you should look at IBM's Websphere Application Developer, based on Eclipse.

All this comparing top-end editions of VS with free Eclipse is misleading, IMO.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[weicco]

Just a nitpick. You can use SQL Server Express on production environment too, not just for PoC type situations. It has some limitations though like db size, number of CPUs and so on but not any biggies for instance for a web shop.

Re:I've enjoyed both

[nate nice]

I'm guessing eventually a gig would be reached and beat. SQL Express only allows a gig of RAM it appears. That is, it will only consume a gig of RAM at any one time. So a large DB is going to suffer if it can't use more. But you never have to worry about it using more than a gig.

I think your original advice of using it until you find it's unusable is probably best. I'll just do that and see how it goes. Getting to over a gig in data is going to take some time. Looking at a DB right now, it's 2 MB with a decent amount of test data. I have to figure at peak the application will use 500 MB. This should do, for now.

Too biased for my taste

[Craig Maloney]

I think I'll wait for an article comparing the two from someone who doesn't have a dog in the fight. As much as I'm loathe to use Visual Studio, Eclipse isn't much better. Perhaps the term "sucks less" is apropos.

SS isn't part of VS

[motokochan]

I wouldn't really fault Visual Studio for Source Safe's failings, it isn't a required component. Personally, I wouldn't touch Source Safe with a very long pole in any voluntary manner (only if I was required to). Considering it is the only system marked as a system to avoid over at the Better SCM Initiative and even Forrester won't consider it anymore in ranking SCM products, I'm surprised it is being considered for any kind of current solution.

There are some decent tools for Visual Studio to work with CVS and Subversion, among other version control systems, and they work out fairly well. At work, we are using Subversion for our VCS, with AnkhSVN to handle the management inside Visual Studio. Except for some issues with using AnkhSVN back when it was first getting started (and was rather buggy), we have been very happy and productive with the solution.

Building projects automatically

[Spikeles]

In the article it mentions Visual Studio doesn't do automatic building. Well, that's kinda true. You can however, create a macro that will execute a build every time you press "ctrl-s" or press the "save" button. Visual Studio will only rebuild and re-link what changed, eg. the file you just edited. I did this for one of my projects and it worked pretty well.

Re:Building projects automatically

[Osty]

In the article it mentions Visual Studio doesn't do automatic building. Well, that's kinda true. You can however, create a macro that will execute a build every time you press "ctrl-s" or press the "save" button. Visual Studio will only rebuild and re-link what changed, eg. the file you just edited. I did this for one of my projects and it worked pretty well.

On the other hand, Visual Studio will automatically save when you build. IMHO, this is more useful because as I'm developing and want to test all I have to do is run a build and all my code is saved. If I'm quitting for the day, I don't want to have to wait for a build to run when I save my files and quit, even if the build only takes a second or two.

Re:Building projects automatically

[Spikeles]

You'd have to wait if you used Eclipse. I guess the difference is Eclipse will build in the background and interrupt and cancel it if you either build again or attempt to quit. One of the advantages of having the ability built in from the beginning

Re:Building projects automatically

[Petronius]

CTRL-ALT-B

Re:Building projects automatically

[LeafOnTheWind]

If you're working in Java or J2EE (like I am) it's not the same. Building the file in VS will recompile everything, while Eclipse uses the JVM and JIT to build incrementally, thus speading the process up and only recompiling what it needs to recompile. Pretty cool feature if i may say so myself.

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if...it was compiled?

[smartr]

Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) really sped up the autocomplete features... Here's a little review of it. http://rf2-dev.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!33114F6710 97246!136.entry and the europa site: http://www.eclipse.org/europa/

NetBeans

[DuncanE]

Have you tried NetBeans?

I find it is rapidly over taking VS.Net and Eclipse with things like its improved intelli-sense, built in profiler, tools for building handheld apps and many more improvements.

Re:NetBeans

[SeekerDarksteel]

I decided to try NetBeans about a year and a half back. I have a really good feeling about using it, and I'll tell you all about my experiences with it as soon as it finishes loading. XD

Re:NetBeans

[forgotten_my_nick]

Everything you described there eclipse already has.

I have to use NB and eclipse. Of the two NB sucks (this is the free one). There might some pay for version that is better but I found UI would misbehave, revert settings and no where near as polished as Eclipse was.

I would be interested to know what NB has that eclipse hasn't.

Re:NetBeans

[caluml]

I'd be interested in the community's opinion about this. I started with Netbeans, and have since moved to Eclipse, but can't find any compelling argument as to why I should use one over the other. NB 5.5 v Eclipse whatever-the-latest-is.

Re:NetBeans

[namekuseijin]

truth be told, it's not like that at all. Big bloated IDEs like Eclipse, VS or Netbeans run all at about the same speed at today's hardware. There used to be a time when Emacs was huge and bloated but came to be known as light next to the commercial IDEs. The same applies today to these IDEs.

I still like vim best though. Semantic code-completion is nice, but 90% of the time, simple text completion will do just fine.

Re:NetBeans

[CryBaby]

I've tried it, but I went back to Eclipse as soon as I found out it doesn't have an incremental compiler. It's more accurate to say that NetBeans is "rapidly catching up with, and in some areas surpasses, Eclipse." Having never used VS.Net, I can't comment on it.

Down With IDEs!

[aldheorte]

If you have to use an IDE to write code in your chosen language, you picked the wrong language, or failed to create the domain specific one.

Yeah, I know, off topic, troll-bait, but someone has to keep the candle burning in the dark times.

Re:Down With IDEs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Because no one who knows the language makes typos in a method call. No one who knows the language ever forgets to close a parenthesis or drops a semi-colon. Indenting code automatically is stupid pre-optimization--let me hit the space bar myself. Refactoring support? Please! Let me refactor those 4 similar classes by hand--I'm sure I'll get it right. Who needs an IDE anyways?

Ummm, are you on crack? Sorry, but why on earth would you NOT want an IDE? It saves tons of time, prevents easy mistakes, helps you debug your code, helps you keep things organized and on topic, and can promote good habits (for example, assuming "well, you're making a new class--let me set up a unit test outline for you"). What's not to love?

Or do you write all your code in "edit" because visual tools like vi or emacs are for babies?

Re:Down With IDEs!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that we should all be using assembly, because it's more efficient that way if it's done properly. These high level languages are for the birds.

Re:Down With IDEs!

[badzilla]

Moving to an IDE is just not intuitive. I'm what you might call a part-time developer and I've always used notepad.exe and a Windows command prompt when I have to write Java code at work. I thought I'd try an IDE and the very first thing it wanted was "Existing or new project?" WTF is a "project?" I invented some name like "Myproject" to keep it happy but I'm still not totally sure. What I actually thought I was getting was a better way to compile my existing source files and I already know where those are located thanks. There are numerous other gotchas just like this.

Re:Down With IDEs!

[dpiven]

REAL programmers use

cat >sourcefile

Re:Down With IDEs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded informative? All the features in the first paragraph are in Emacs/Vi, and the the 2nd paragraph is pretty much bollocks.

This idiot has clearly never used anything other than an IDE.

Re:Down With IDEs!

[eneville]

REAL programmers use

cat >sourcefile

no, real programmers use a deck of playing cards and a hole punch

EUPR?

[Anonymous Coward]

area. it is the FreeBSD project, long time FrreBSD

Re:Eclipse would be awesome if...it was compiled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compiling Java Code to x86 before run-time won't make it faster but a _lot_ slower. A JIT can do a lot of run-time optimization that just isn't possible with GCJ. For example, functions often cannot be inlined at compile-time, while they can at run-time. Also, you can use the whole instruction set when you JIT - if you don't, you're limited to i586 or i686. The next thing is that a JIT knows what kind of data is being processed allowing further optization, while an ahead-of-time-compiler can only guess about this. And GCJs garbage collector just sucks, since it's a non-moving Collector, which was originally developed for C and C++. Thus, it doesn't exploit the fact that java references are completely opaque, allowing yet more optimization (read: moving garbage collectors).
On the downside, a JIT uses more memory, because the code is in the memory twice (once in bytecode form, and once as native code). And of course, you have to do the actual JITing, which is negligible on today's machines once the program is up and running.
The only reason why Red Hat ships x86 binaries instead of java byte code is that for whatever reason they didn't want to include Sun's JRE (probably the same reason why they don't ship proper multimedia support or NTFS drivers).

Eclipse for C/C++

[Sabalon]

Eclipse is wonderful for Java. Great completion, "intellisense", etc... However, I really miss what VS has for C/C++, which is basically intellisense for the complete MSDN library. Whenever I've used Eclipse for C/C++, simple things like fopen and printf have no "help". That is the one thing that I would love to somehow see integrated into the CDT.

Apples and aeroplanes

[Rodyland]

My last job I had the option of choosing my own (windows) development environment. After a day trying to get Eclipse to work, I came to the conclusion that, based on the tutorials and documentation easily available on the web, most people use Eclipse for the purpose of writing Eclipse plugins. All very well and good, unless of course you want to write some code that actually _does_something_.

Maybe if an 'Eclipse for VS users' tutorial was available back then I would have given Eclipse more of a chance, but for something that works straight out of the box, VS had Eclipse beat hands down.

(Disclaimer: I'd spent the previous 2.5 years working with VS)

Visual Studio vs Eclipse, the winner is....jEdit

[hobo sapiens]

Agreed. Visual Studio, while having its faults (Windows only [duh, right?], pretty large footprint, and some rather unhelpful "help" features) is better than Eclipse. Visual Studio is quite nice if you just want to write Windows apps. C# is excellent. .NET is great. I just have too much cognitive dissonance when I totally ignore other operating systems, though. If MSFT would just provide .NET plugins for Linux / Mac they'd help themselves out a lot (and yes I know about MONO.) The annoying start page, and the MSDN search that returns nothing of use, and the !helpful code formatting notwithstanding, Visual Studio is pretty good.

I have gone through periods of trying Eclipse. People are incredulous when I tell them I hate Eclipse, so I feel like I have to see what I am missing and install it. Every time, EVERY TIME, I uninstall it, totally disgusted with the amount of RAM it takes and how heavy it feels. It's just another example of why I hate Java apps. Java on the server is fine, but on the client it just falls flat. Clunky look and feel, slow performance, and weird UI quirks seem to be the hallmarks of Java apps (and when people start using terms like percieved slowness, I reach for my Browning). Doesn't anyone else get annoyed by how slow Eclipse feels? Anyone?

To me, an IDE shouldn't get in the way of development. It should like a good waiter -- there when you want but otherwise out of your face. That's where both Eclipse and Visual Studio fall short.

My IDE of choice is jEdit. Yes, I know it's Java based. I do hate the fact that it's Java and it looks like every other Java application: butt ugly (and even with the Look and Feel plugin that is supposed to give more of a native OS look and feel...stupid swing components). But most importantly, it's a mighty fine text editor which has IDE essentials like syntax highlighting, comprehensive searching, and lots of powerful text editing tools (like block select, which my coworkers who use Dreamweaver just drool over.)

If you use Eclipse but hate it for being so heavy, I'd recommend jEdit. It's just the right amount of IDE. Not so much IDE cruft that writing code is less writing code than it is learning how to use the IDE, yet it's got enough utility to facilitate the business of writing code. Any web development I do (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, html, css, javascript) is all done in jEdit and I can code a page in the time it takes Eclipse to open a file.

I cant believe this is on slashdot

[talledega500]

I cant believe this article is on slashdot

Eclipse Memory Tip

[Temujin_12]

One of my gripes early on with Eclipse was that it used a ton of memory. One tip to minimize the memory load is to CLOSE THE PROJECTS YOU'RE NOT WORKING ON. I had been using Eclipse for a year before this was pointed out to me. Now that I close all projects but the one I'm working on, Eclipse is about 2-3 times more responsive than before.

I don't know why this isn't brought to the user's attention (via a startup tool tip or something). "You currently have 60 projects. You should close projects you're not currently using." That said, Eclipse is a lot like Photoshop, it will use up whatever memory you give it. For me, the sweet spot seems to have 2GB in the machine I'm using.

I think the Eclipse vs. Visual Studio debate has a lot to do with languages being used than features (it seems to me that both have comparable features).

Visual Studio - Dead for C++ (KDevelop!)

[tjstork]

Here's the thing. Visual Studio 2005 for C# is probably the most "cushy" environment out there. But, if you are writing in C++, then, I've found KDevelop to be pretty damn nice. For 64 bit C++, KDevelop and Linux are a long way ahead of Windows. For assembly language, KDevelop does remarkably well. OTH, Visual Studio is a huge pain in the rear and getting more so.

Autocomplete in C++ sucks, and a lot of that has to do with the language itself, but, in terms of the compiler telling you exactly what is wrong, I think GCC is better than Visual C++. I really think, for a number of reasons, even though I do like Windows, that Linux is the place to be for C/C++ 64 bit development, or for that matter, SSEn development, and I think most developers would prefer it to.

Visual Studio sucks for C++, what more do you need!

Confession

[MrCopilot]

I'm an open source fanatic. I prefer open to closed. Long live Linus and Stallman etcetera etcetera...

I use Kdevelop as exclusively as possible Compile in windows on the command line.

Naturally, when chained to a windows machine, I search for a comparative tool. I had been a party to more than one VB monstrosity, and the thought of going back made me want to retch. I used em all. CodeBlocks won out but only just.

The point of this story is Eclipse vs VisualStudio, So my Comparison: Based on previous the release of Eclipse CDT Hated it period next option. (I'll try the new one, but no big hurry) I am a fair person. I tried Visual Studio Express due to its new license. Man was it a breeze. It did exactly what is was supposed to and was completely free and unrestricted. I used it for two projects (1 was an upgrade to a previous VB monstrosity, Oh they all are.) I cant stand the .net framework, But I have to admit if you can stand it Visual Studio is the way to go.

I wish the guys at sharpdevelop and Monodevelop all the best and I know in the end you'll get it just perfect and Microsoft will change Back to real coding hence the codeblocks c++. Nice QT editor for windows. Cannot wait for KDE4 kdevelop on windows.

"Package Explorer"?

[Tablizer]

You just don't name a piece of software "Package Explorer". It invites jokes up the wazoo (oops, bad pun).

One Big Difference: Cross-Platform

[BBCWatcher]

Here is the list of operating systems that will run Microsoft Visual Studio 2005:

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2003

In addition to the list of operating systems above, here is the list of operating systems that will also run Eclipse:

• Mac OS X
• Linux
• Windows NT
• AIX
• Solaris
• HP-UX
• QNX
• Any other OS with JRE 1.4.2 or higher.

Re:One Big Difference: Cross-Platform

[the-stringbean]

Not wanting to rain on your parade or anything but just because a platform has Java on it doesn't mean that it will run Eclipse. Eclipse uses SWT which uses JNI calls to the underlying window manager - this JNI code needs to be ported to the OS before you can run Eclipse.

You can still run Eclipse on far more platforms than VS...

Re:One Big Difference: Cross-Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Java Swing version of SWT.

http://swtswing.sourceforge.net/main/index.html

Re:One Big Difference: Cross-Platform

[ClosedSource]

And here's the number of platforms any individual needs to run Eclipse on for their project: 1

Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to put and Vim in that comparison!

both are a mess

[m2943]

Both Eclipse and Visual Studio are a mess; programming doesn't need to be that complicated.

Re:both are a mess

[Da Fokka]

Both Eclipse and Visual Studio are a mess; programming doesn't need to be that complicated.

I really hope you do didn't work on the software that's used by my bank or my local nuclear power station.

Eclipse Intellisense blown up my mind...

[xtracto]

Haha, its curious that this article comes up now. I have been used Eclipse for quite some time (5 years now) and used VisualStudio .NET 2003 for some time too (while doing C# .NET WinForms and some WebForms apps for a real company) and just the other day I was really (gladly) surprised by one feature of the autocomplete intellisense in Eclipse:

First, create an Enum (must use JRE >= 5), then in any function create a swtich testing for a variable with the created enum type. Then start to add the 'case' terms and presss CTRL+SPACE to autocomplete them. You will see two things: first the autocomplete will show you the pertitnent Enum members as options for the "case", BUT it will *omit* those cases that you have already in the structure!

Granted, it is a small detail but it really made me go AAAAhhh!

Having said that, I have tried to use Eclipse for C++ or PHP development and I did not found it as good as VisualStudio or ZendStudio... of course those two are not free. Oh, and I also thing it suffers from the bloatiness of every Java program (hey, dont flame me, I *love* programming in Java, and do it everyday for a living =o] )

Dev-C++ or Geany

[Sectrish]

I've always preferred the simpler stuff. Geany for Linux and Dev-C++ for Windows, they have a compile/build button and syntax-highlighting (although Dev-C++ only emboldens type clarifiers like int and char). More than enough for me :)

Another problem with Intellisense-less

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that it so often makes the wrong guess as to what you want. I have to type StandardId dozens of times per day at work, and Microsoft always changes the variable name to Standarded like I'm tying a damn letter to my mother. Then when you go back and change the text to correct what Microsoft intentionally corrupted, Microsoft will then intentionally corrupt it again. You have to cut and paste the text from Notepad to keep Microsoft from molesting your input. I literally spend more time correcting Microsoft "corrections" than I do programming or testing. Of course because Microsoft is paying our company money to demonstrate that their crappy products will work (and no they won't, we've still got more Solaris/Linux systems than Windows) in this field, we have to do everything that is customer-facing in C#.

...and highlighting variable usages

[locster]

I missed the best function in Eclipse - if you double click on a variable all uses of that variable are highlighted and the RHS margin shows you were they all are in the current document as a whole. That margin also shows you where all the errors, warnings, TODO comments, etc are. Not being able to do that one simple thing in VS is actually starting to annoy me. :( Fingers crossed for VS 2008.

Visual studio is ok

[bh213]

But you have to install resharper v3.0, then you get amazing IDE. As a bonus point, both reshaper and IDEA (by the same company, IntelliJ) use same keyboard shortcuts, so if you do Java and C#, you only have to remember one set of shortcuts.

btw, once you get used to it, you cannot live without Alt-Ins, (vs.net) ctrl-click and ctrl-shift-alt-n :)

Ultimate++ TheIDE

[mofag]

If you do want:

=> to make applications quickly in C++

=> not to be Bill's bitch

=> to be able to write cross-platform code without having to worry about it

=> to be able to compile using mingw or MSC

=> to have an IDE like VS

=> to be able to see and modify the source code of the components you are using

Do yourself a favour and take a look at Ultimate++ on source forge. I discovered it a few months ago and haven't looked back.

(I looked at developing a plugin for Udigg under eclipse but found that in spite of what everyone says about java being fast, udigg was incredible slow. My GIS app in U++ is way slicker and is still cross-platform.)

This is a shameless plug but I feel justified cos those guys are doing incredible work for no money and it is truly open source unlike other offerings such as Qt.

Nick

Not a shameless plug

[cgrayson]

This looks like a shameless plug, trying to get you to buy this Eclipse Sucks t-shirt, but really it's just anti-Eclipse evangelism (or is it, "Eclipse anti-evangelism"? ;-). It will fall on mostly deaf ears hear in Slashdot-land, where I expect most people who give a crap about Eclipse one way or the other will be of the uber-geek type who LOVE it.

But, what the hell. Maybe some will get a chuckle out of it. :-)

Here's a bit of the text from the "back of the box" image:

"The first version was the worst. And the second version, that was the worst too. The third version I didn't enjoy at all. After that it went into sort of a decline." -- Marvin, the paranoid android

"Eclipse is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." -- D. Knuth

"I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave." -- HAL 9000

Re:Not a shameless plug

[CryBaby]

It will fall on mostly deaf ears hear in Slashdot-land, where I expect most people who give a crap about Eclipse one way or the other will be of the uber-geek type who LOVE it.

If, by "uber-geek type", you mean "not retarded" then you are correct.
Please send your spam via email next time, as is the custom.

Re:Not a shameless plug

[cgrayson]

Dear not-retarded uber-geek, first let me point out the definition of spam (per Wikipedia): "Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages." Though commercial in nature, I also posted this link because it's funny. Yes it was unsolicited and bulk, but so is every comment on every Slashdot story. And it was not indiscriminate, it was relevant to the story. A link to buy drugs for male erectile dysfunction would be a different story, for example.

Please silently ignore messages which you think are spam next time, as is the custom.

Re:Not a shameless plug

[CryBaby]

So, according to your description, your post was "targeted spam" because it was not indiscriminate.

Please silently ignore messages which you think are spam next time, as is the custom.

If I could reply to spammers who send me email and know that they would read that reply, you bet your ass I would reply to each and every one of them. Thus my reply to you.

Eclipse *is* a C/C++ IDE

[Lost my low ID nick]

Insightful? While the great Java Development Plugin made Eclipse famous, the C/C++ Tools are now in a state that make Eclipse one of the best C++ IDEs around. They get released the same time as new versions of eclipse, and together with other plugins (Bugzilla Integration etc.) you get a very very powerful dev tool.

Re:Eclipse *is* a C/C++ IDE

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

While the great Java Development Plugin made Eclipse famous, the C/C++ Tools are now in a state that make Eclipse one of the best C++ IDEs around.

Speaking as someone who has used most of the major C and C++ IDEs around, on Windows or otherwise, including several versions of CDT including fairly recent ones, I find that unlikely. CDT used with the GNU tool chain is usable but unspectacular. CDT used with any other tool chain I've tried isn't even usable.

Over-engineering is software's curse

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What possible features could you be using that require 4 gigs of RAM? I'm not going to pretend Eclipse is lightweight, but I find that it's memory footprint has been under 300 megs.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that we're talking about glorified text editors running in "under 300 megs" as if this were some sort of praise?

If ever there was any doubt that the current trend towards prioritising developer productivity over performance of the resulting product was damaging the software business, and the idea that "the hardware will get faster to make up for it" was nonsense, modern IDEs are it. Sure, they do more than just display text these days, but not that much more. A lot of this, I suspect, is down to these modular, plug-in-friendly, VM-based architectures, which seem to be so over-engineered and generic that it might actually have been faster just to write several different, specialist tools, with the use of common libraries as appropriate.

This is not just Eclipse bashing, BTW. VS2005 loading my current project at work also requires nearly 300MB and runs like a dog. The total size of all the source code in the project is less than 1/10 of that.

What is perhaps most disturbing is that VC++ 6 offered me much the same useful functionality in the IDE, except that in those days, Intellisense usually found what I was looking for, help came up almost instantly and was on the page I wanted 99% of the time, it didn't pause for several seconds every time I opened the Tools->Options dialog, etc. Oh, and it was running on a machine less than 10% as powerful as what's on my desk today.

Someone say "release"?

[osgeek]

Notice that the comparison didn't talk about actually RELEASING the product.

I've spent some time building an application in SWT, which is reasonably sweet and sophisticated -- however, now that I'm looking to release my application, I'm having to experiment with applications to bundling third-party products, experiment with batch launchers, learning how to manipulate jar files, etc.

I wrote a C# program in VS a few months back, and on top of the immediately present and obvious GUI manipulation tools, the ability to just take my exe and run it on another machine without doing further research was a nice benefit.

Re:Someone say "release"?

[WWWWolf]

I've spent some time building an application in SWT, ...

Nothing in Eclipse forces you to use SWT, you can just use Swing (and more or less get just as good results in Java 1.6). Eclipse's Visual Editor also supports Swing.

That said, deploying stuff in Javaland is a bit challenging. In Java, if your libraries don't come with the SDK, your application can be a little bit unfunny to deploy, especially so if it needs native code, like SWT.

Funny you say that...

[Nik13]

Because I think that's very much the case for Visual Studio too. Stock VS2005 is usable, but look at some of the "plugins" made by jetbrains (ReSharper and dotTrace -- from the same guys that Make IntelliJ), devexpress (Refactor! and CodeRush), wholetomato (Visual Assist X) and a bunch of others.

I haven't seen such great plugins for any other IDEs.

you have it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that using VC or Eclipse is required for good programming than I hope *YOU* don't work on code for my local bank or nuke station. I do (banking software at least), and it is inevitably those people who only know the IDE's who are the worst programmers. When I do interviews for new hires, I never ask them "how do you setup a new project in Visual Studio", I ask them "how do you sort a list of strings backwards in C++".

Re:you have it backwards

[Da Fokka]

A good IDE can be a useful tool with huge productivity benefits. I'm not saying that knowledge of the underlying language is not important but saying IDEs are irrelevant is like saying there's no need for a carpenter to know how to properly operate a drill.

Used Eclipse a lot in college

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Eclipse a lot in college for the Java work that most of my classes required, but when I graduated I started working for a C# shop using Visual Studio 2003/2005. I have to say that for most things I do, neither IDE is remarkably better than the other. That said, I really miss Eclipse's superior refactoring support and error checking. I was quite surprised when I opened a VB.NET project in VS and found that it has similar features to Eclipse in that regard. If there's one thing they should be working on more than anything else for the next VS it is improving that feature.

Eclipse for OCaml?

[Cultural Sublimation]

Can the enlightened /. crowd tell me if Eclipse also handles (decently!) non-mainstream languages like Haskell or OCaml? I am particularly interested in the latter, and I'm curious to know if this Eclipse thingy will do a better job than vi at handling OCaml programmes.

Re:Eclipse for OCaml?

[hvrbyte]

Haskell support : http://eclipsefp.sourceforge.net/

OCaml : http://eclipsefp.sourceforge.net/ocaml/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocaml-eclipse

Granted, I haven't tried it, but then I do mostly Java/C/C++/Objective-C work.

The indexer is annoyingly slow

[Madsy]

I love Eclipse CDT, but in terms of auto-completion speed, it doesn't even compare to Visual Studio (yet). While Visual Studio Express instantly evaluates The . -> and :: operators, Eclipse CDT v3.2.2 uses between 10 to 15 seconds. It has been like this as long as I can remember. Also, the indexer triggers on a lot of weird things, like the operators >> and >, and even freezes when it encounters a new identifier name.
I'm using good old Vim until this is sorted out.
Eclipse is great, so it's sad that this feature alone ruins everything. It's impossible to get work done, when the IDE freezes every other line for 10 seconds.

If anyone knows how I successfully can disable the indexer, please let me know. Neither the option in the project settings, nor the option in the preferences work.

I believe the technical term is 'obsolete'

[Doctor Memory]

Oh yeah fun hint: Jythons XML-RPC server + Your Java monstrosity of choice = xml-rpc API for your app in under a page of code Hope it did that last year, because that's about the last time anybody developed anything using XML-RPC in Java. Wake me when they support basic WS-I functionality. Oh, and adding a WS API to your app in Java only requires you to write this:

@WebService()
public class WebServiceAPI {
        @WebMethod
        public String callSomeAppFunction(@WebParam(name='param1') final String param1,
                                          @WebParam(name='param2') final String param2) {
                return someAppFunction(param1, param2);
        }
}

Oh, and to make that an XML-RPC API, just add the line:

@SOAPBinding(style=Style.RPC, use=Use.LITERAL, parameterStyle=ParameterStyle.WRAPPED)

right after the "@WebService" annotation.

RAM-alama-ding-dong

[Organic Brain Damage]

At the moment, I'm running 3 instances of Visual Studio 2003 (I know, I'm a luddite, I've only moved one project to 2005 and already 2008 looms). They are taking 25 MB, 61 MB and 92 MB. I'm running a much smaller project in Flexbuilder/Eclipse and the javaw.exe process is taking 189 MB.

So, yeah, Eclipse (java) takes from 2-6 times as much memory. But so what? It's not like 189MB or 92MB is a significant chunk of the 2,500MB available on my aged and crusty desktop PC.

My gripes with Eclipse are:

1. Eclipse gets in my way when I'm programming. The editor is just plain slow. I am not The Flash on the keyboard, but I can often get ahead of Eclipse and I have to wait 2-3 seconds for the damn thing to catch up. This never happens to me with Visual Studio 2003.

2. The variable inspector in debug mode absolutely sucks. It often throws errors, is insanely slow and there's no way to evaluate an expression, or, if there is, it's not apparent.

3. Visual Studio provides better "in-line" help with methods and arguments.

If you think Eclipse is just as good as Visual Studio then you've not used Visual Studio or you've got significant mental deficiencies.