
Friends don't let friends use Eclipse - PaulHoule
http://blog.databaseanimals.com/friends-don-t-let-friends-use-eclipse
======
Tharkun
What a load of crock. I thought we were over this sort of nonsense. It's 2013
for crying out loud. Next up: vim vs emacs. Windows vs *nix. Your dick vs
mine.

If you like eclipse, use it. If you don't like it, stay away from it. Should
you try something new every once in a while? Of course, you're a developer,
trying out new things should be a matter of course. Should you share your new
find with others? Of course! Should you claim that your latest gem is da bomb
and that friends don't let friends use yesterday's socks? No.

~~~
kperry
I switched a year ago and the usability improvement is substantial. This isn't
vim vs. emacs, this is emacs vs. MS Wordpad. Is it perfect, no, but it is so
much better than Eclipse. Eclipse is one tool for all jobs which makes the UI
very clunky and not very intuitive. Even C++ developers on our team when
switching back and forth between Eclipse and Visual Studio (we do cross-
platform development) would loath at their time using Eclipse. I used to
defend it, but not any more. Sure, maybe this will turn into an Android vs.
iPhone debate, but let someone use IntelliJ for 6 months (after having
experience with Eclipse) and tell me how many people want to switch back.

~~~
hrjet
I wanted to switch back after about 9 months with IntelliJ. But anyway, why
would you care how many people want to switch back! To each his own...

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stelonix
I couldn't agree more. I don't work with Java, but when I had to, I used
Eclipse. People kept telling me about how great it is, how powerful and how it
just works. I didn't see any of that. I found the UX non-intuitive, the UI is
pretty laggy (even on this year's Ivy Bridge) and the DE for languages other
than Java were lacking (CDT was awful and useless).

The best IDE I have used is Visual Studio. I no longer work with IDEs, I
prefer a text editor like Sublime Text, but I wish it had debugging
capabilities, some refactoring/file management and more powerful plugins.

------
davidjgraph
In one of our projects the largest JS file is 12k lines. In eclipse I can work
with it no problems. In WebStorm/other JetBrains IDE it runs like a dog with
that file open, I ran away screaming after 15 seconds.

Inability to be able to effective edit my files is a major problem, though I'm
interested if anyone knows how to speed WebStorm up for JS files. If that were
resolved I'd be very happy to switch to flee Eclipse's git functionality.

Before someone says it "reduce the size of the file" is not an answer. In
answer to split the file and re-make it in a build step, why on Earth should I
have to get around a shortcoming in a tool? Tools are there to make me more
productive, not dance when the music starts.

~~~
Joeri
It's slow because of the code quality inspections. You can override these per
file by clicking the Sherlock Holmes icon in the statusbar.

~~~
sesm
His name is Hector the Inspector.

------
rdsubhas
Just face it. Eclipse is no longer an IDE. Eclipse _has an_ IDE too, but
Eclipse is no longer just an IDE.

It is the Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse Platform, comprised of various
projects like Eclipse Modeling Framework, Mylyn, Scout, EGit, BIRT, etc. They
are packaged in different editions (popularly called the release train) and
incidentally produce an IDE.

To be serious, they are _so damn_ focused on selling a Platform, whereas all I
need is _just an IDE_. Want to know why JetBrains is kicking their ass with a
paid product? Its because they stick to building a coherent IDE. Not a
platform full of projects which magically get integrated together to form a
half-assed IDE.

Sorry did I say IDE?

Edit: I feel Eclipse is a classic example of what happens to a project when it
loses its original direction and tries to be everything else at the same time,
except what it was originally meant for.

Edit 2: Typo

~~~
ethomson
Eclipse was never _just_ an IDE it has _always_ been a platform. At its
inception it was a framework for building IDEs by IBM. If you think the
different editions of Eclipse are baffling, make sure to check out the
different Rational branded Eclipse-based IDEs. There you'll find not just
myriad J2EE IDEs but also IDEs for building software on p- and iSeries.

Around Eclipse 3.0, it really just became an OSGI container. So it's been an
excellent pluggable framework longer than it's been a very usable Java IDE.
And has been used to build plenty of non-IDE toolings like IBM Jazz.

You may complain about this "platform", but it's also the reason for its
popularity. I can build a plug-in that works in Eclipse 3 and 4, almost all of
the IBM products (some of them disable plug-in loading for unknown reasons),
MyEclipse, JBoss IDE, Adobe FlashBuilder, Wolfram Workbench... etc. That's a
very compelling position for an ISV.

Also, please don't conflate the Eclipse Platform with the Eclipse Foundation.
What the Foundation does has only a little overlap with the Eclipse Java IDE
itself. Its breadth does not indicate crazy feature creep on the part of the
IDE; that the Eclipse Foundation supports (say) Hudson doesn't mean that
suddenly you'll have a CI server in your IDE.

------
jandrewrogers
I have tried to love Eclipse several times over the years but every time I try
it to see if it has improved, it is still the same awkward, buggy, unstable
environment it was the previous time I tried it. Obviously many people use and
apparently like it but the user experience leaves a lot to be desired,
particularly for a product that has been around for so long.

I have no strong preferences in IDEs (I use a mixture of Xcode, Sublime, and
Vim for code) but Eclipse quickly irritates me to the point where I stop using
it.

------
kirktrue
Say what you will about SWT, but Eclipse's font rendering (use of hints, etc.)
on Linux is great. As much as I tried to look past it (and tweak settings ad
infinitum), the inferior font rendering of Java-based IDEs is intolerable for
me :(

~~~
LaSombra
I agree. To get good Linux font rendering on Java one has to apply a patch to
OpenJDK and build it.

It's doable, I've done it, but it's not a quick process.

------
ivan_gammel
Several years ago I switched to Eclipse from IDEA, because I was developing
Eclipse-based IDE. I still own IDEA license, periodically upgrade it and do
some tasks there, but cannot switch back on fulltime. Currently I'm using
latest STS package being very productive in it and I don't experience the
slowness (well, not more often than in IDEA), bugs or usability issues that
are mentioned in this article. It's definitely not the right tool for some of
the tasks, but, in general, "don't use" is a too emotional and irrelevant
advice.

------
Nickoladze
I have literally no problems with Eclipse, been using it for years. I use
stock Eclipse with the PHP and Team Concert plugins added.

I guess it takes like 15 seconds to start up, but who actually cares about
that?

~~~
ldh
_I have literally no problems with Eclipse, been using it for years._

Regardless of whether we're talking about Eclipse or some other tool here, one
often doesn't recognize the pain points they experience if they don't have any
perspective on other ways of doing it.

------
laureny
I like IDEA a lot but I ended up going back to Eclipse because it's so much
better at hotswap than IDEA. It's baffling to me that the talented engineers
at JetBrains still force me to restart my servers all the time for changes
that are explicitly documented in the JLS as hotswappable.

I restart servers all the time throughout the days, all the nice things that
IDEA offers still do not make up for the fact that in Eclipse, I hardly have
to restart any process ever as long as the changes I made to my Java code are
hotswappable.

There's that and the fact that Eclipse's incremental compilation is hard to
give up (another thing I don't understand why IDEA hasn't caught up to).

At any rate, anyone who says that one of these two IDE's is awesome while the
other one sucks probably needs to take a hard look at the way they work and
question their skill at assessing tools.

~~~
LaSombra
Have you tried exploded deployment? I don't have a problem with it usually

~~~
laureny
I tried both exploded deployment (artifact) and through Maven (tomcat:run), no
difference: IDEA pretends it has reloaded the new code but it hasn't, so I
lost trust in it completely and now I just restart all the time. It's much
more efficient with Eclipse.

------
stephenhuey
Half a dozen yeas ago, my investment bank team was too cheap to pay for an
IntelliJ license so I was stuck with Eclipse. I'm finally enjoying IntelliJ
because these days I use Rubymine. I do have TextMate, but IntelliJ's product
just makes sense, performs well, and also saves me some time.

------
adamb_
This article cuts off right when it should be getting to the meat: What are my
options? How do they compare?

------
swehner
I switched to vi (vim) a number of years ago after a number of years writing
Java with Eclipse (& JBuilder).

At first I thought it would be difficult to do without auto-completion. But
it's not much of a loss after all. One learns and adapts.

I like that I can work on any host that has vi, which all actually do.

~~~
hrjet
I love myself some vim whenever I get the chance, but to me, it is not auto-
completion that is the killer feature of IDEs; rather, it is the immediate
error checking that I get as I type code.

------
kyrra
Eclipse isn't slow, it's really that their plugin framework is extremely
complicated and writing fast plugins is difficult. It's important to note that
everything within eclipse (even their Java editor) is done as a plugin.

I've been using Eclipse for a long time and I'm fine with it. It has a lot of
quirks and can be difficult to learn them, but it gets the job done. For me,
moving to IntelliJ isn't really an option as my codebase has languages that
aren't supported by the IntelliJ, which would mean I'd get no code support for
that or I'd have to use a second editor.

Eclipse is nice as it has plugins for about every language out there. They may
not be great all the time, but having them all in a single IDE is nice.

~~~
FeloniousHam
"their plugin framework is extremely complicated"

This (along with the terrible plugin management UI)is the most annoying thing
about a product that is just a host for plugins. I suspect it's the reason
Google moved to IDEA for the Android IDE.

~~~
hrjet
No, I remember reading that JetBrains offered to help Google develop the IDEA
plugin. With Eclipse it would have been a solo effort.

I have written Eclipse plugins (one with a graph editor as well) and didn't
find it all that complicated. I haven't written an IntelliJ plugin, so can't
compare.

~~~
FeloniousHam
JetBrains support is interesting. But given that Google bought Instantiations,
and had much sunk effort in the Android plugin (not just code, but
documentation and training) there has to more too it. I think IBM reducing
their support to the Eclipse foundation must have had something to do with it.

Fair dues on the plugins; my own frustration with the plugin architecture is
probably just my own frustration :).

~~~
jebblue
I looked into IDEA when that was announced, I can't figure out at all why a
smart outfit like Google would do such a thing. Eclipse is very sophisticated
and complete. Unreal.

------
austinz
I don't like Eclipse either. Are there any good general-purpose open-source
IDEs like Eclipse, but without the cruft? And for those who've used both, is
JetBrain's PyCharm significantly better than the PyDev plugin for Eclipse?

~~~
aritraghosh007
I have been using PyCharm for the past few weeks now, and boy its sleek !
However, there is another Python IDE launched recently called Spyder which
looks promising too.

~~~
dagw
Spyder and PyCharm don't really compete and only minimally overlap. PyCharm is
an Integrate Development Environment designed for writing large python
applications, with particular support for python web applications.

Spyder (which has been around since 2009) on the other hand is an Interactive
Development Environment focusing mainly on scientific computing and
interactive data analysis and exploration, with lots of handy tools for poking
around in and plotting data.

Both are great, but they target different uses and complement each other
rather than directly compete.

------
dankoss
That's funny, many of the embedded chipmakers are finally standardizing on
Eclipse, which means I don't have to relearn a new proprietary IDE when we
change chipsets. In that sense Eclipse is way better than environments written
10+ years ago. That's Eclipse's biggest strength at the moment.

I wish there was a Sublime-based IDE with visual debugging support. As a low
level developer I still need immediate access to watch windows, memory and
registers, and that prevents me from using Sublime for anything more than code
refactoring.

~~~
davepage
Then, design in an Atmel part and enter the odd world of Visual Studio Shell

------
zmmmmm
I've never really understood the eclipse hate. When configured with enough
memory (yes, a lot) it "just works" for me and perfectly fast and responsive.
It's easy to have multiple workspaces and multiple eclipse installs to
separate out different projects and different plugins that you use (keep
Android development separate from other development, etc).

I don't doubt that IntelliJ is wonderful (and my own experience with it was
great), but I don't understand the level of enmity towards eclipse.

~~~
LaSombra
My main problem with Eclipse is the Maven plugin, which is close to worthless
and the concept of perspectives. The Run Configurations are quite a mess too,
but I usually can work around that.

------
FeloniousHam
I use Eclipse everyday, wrote plugins in the past, and the one thing I've
never understood:

Why does a tool that is explicitly a platform for plugins have such a bad
plugin UI?

(I don't think it's slow)

------
tanglesome
Your coding may vary, but Eclipse has always done well by me.

------
hrjet
I don't get the Eclipse hate at all. I have used both Eclipse and IntelliJ and
I much prefer Eclipse's overall interface. It was also much faster than
IntelliJ on a very large Scala project that I was working on.

Despite that, I think IntelliJ is a pretty cool IDE too. Its interface has
recently received an overhaul and I am sure they would have been improving the
speed as well (I haven't checked).

------
jmduke
Friends don't let friends spend significant amounts of time debating about
their IDE.

(Eclipse's tabbing scheme is _awful_ , though. Like the author said, its like
they have an algorithm to detect which tabs I'm going to need the most and
then they hide those tabs.)

------
bradleyjg
I keep on meaning to give IntelliJ a whirl. I got my boss to purchase a
license when they were doing a special several months back. But I just haven't
made the time to configure everything to work with my existing projects and
learn their way of doing things.

------
Executor
Does anybody have a recommendation for a win/linux IDE that supports:
c/c++/c#, java, python? I've considered Code::Blocks or one of Jetbrain's IDE
products but never had the time to try them out.

------
kanitw
Jetbrains is much nicer than eclipse. However, one thing that I hate is their
key bindings.

They delivered a number of options but none of them make sense to me. Sublime
Text's key binding is much nicer.

~~~
FeloniousHam
It's pretty easy (like 10 minutes effort) to set up your keybindings IDEA.

------
eip
Blog spam?

IntelliJ is irritating to use even when it doesn't crash during launch.

~~~
octo_t
If you have repeated crashes, please report them to JetBrains.

I had a problem with intelliJ crashing on some Scala code, sent them the logs
and they said they were aware of the problem and that a fix was almost ready
for deployment. I've never had a bad customer experience from the company.

------
mongol
Eclipse isn't that bad. It's not the best but you can get job done with it and
it is much better than what existed 10 years ago. I think the article is
exaggerating.

~~~
ldh
If it's not the best, why would you bother getting the job done with it when
you could be having a better experience?

------
CSDude
I agree that it looks horrible in Linux, but it can be easily fixed. Eclipse
>4 allows CSS styles, but in <4.0 you have to manually fiddle with .gtkrc-2.0.

------
trimbo
Absolutely agree. I switched to IntelliJ 3 years ago and have never looked
back.

------
Gepser
what about android development?

~~~
joekrill
I think the fact that they are moving to an IntelliJ-based IDE for Android
Studio confirms how bad Eclipse really is.

~~~
sourabh86
I have tried several times to shift to android studio for development but
everytime I have to come back to eclipse. Whatever I do, it just doesn't work,
it always messes up something and code doesn't work (which works perfectly
fine on Eclipse). What good an IDE is, if I can't compile a simple project on
it.

