

Why does anyone still use Eclipse? - Zisko

Why does anyone still use eclipse? It&#x27;s the most tedious, slow, unusable piece of software that makes java a pain to use.
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lutusp
In a word, Android. Google pretty much requires one to use Eclipse in order to
develop Android software. Obviously one can struggle to get around this
assumption, but the adjustments required take more effort than using Eclipse,
granted its many limitations.

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tqh
Google has switched to Idea with Android Studio:
[http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html](http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html)

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herbig
"Obviously one can struggle to get around this assumption"

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mindcrime
Because it "just works" and no other platform has yet convinced me that it is
sufficiently better to justify the investment of time and energy which would
be required to switch.

Take Netbeans - I've tried it, and it's nice enough. But it never wowed me as
being so much better that I could justify throwing away all the accumulated
knowledge and experience of dealing with Eclipse that I've built up over the
years.

IntelliJ? For years was purely a closed-source, proprietary program which
completely ruled it out from the get-to. Now, they have some kinda open-
source'ish "community edition" or something, but I still think of their outfit
as being largely a vendor of proprietary crap, which diminishes my interest in
investing time there.

And outside of Eclipse, Netbeans, and IntelliJ, what is there in the Java
world?

Sure, Eclipse has its flaws, and performance has always been one, but, for my
purposes anyway, it remains "good enough".

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biggerfisch
This is the exact reason I still use eclipse too. Another point you didn't
mention is that there are a lot of other products built on eclipse. For
example, in high school, when I did FIRST robotics, the IDE we used for
programming the microcontrollers, WindRiver, was/is built on eclipse. Knowing
eclipse before I got to that stage was incredibly useful and really helped my
productivity. Eclipse is also "vulnerable" to the fact that nearly everyone
has at least tried it and has some idea of how to use it, which when choosing
an IDE for group projects tends to swing the balance in its favor since fewer
people have to learn a new environment.

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joeevans
If you're a polyglot/polyplatform developer then eclipse based IDE's are
awesome. You can drop an eclipse into a directory, untar it, and run it... and
toss it away later if you want. Titanium Studio, SpringSource Tool Suite, and,
of course, basic Eclipse are all versions of Eclipse. I don't pay a cent, and
can make my way through several projects with the same IDE skill set as they
all use variations of the same commands. I don't have to deal with annoying
and expensive licensing issues. The IDE is free, and the plugins I choose are
also usually free. By free, I mean free in all senses. If I want to get
someone going on my project, they can download an Eclipse based IDE and get
rolling without paying a cent. As a final bonus, most tutorials reference
Eclipsed based IDE's... not a paid IDE.

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jitendrac
I am an android developer with low-end hardware(2gb ram and core 2 due cpu). I
can do every work in eclipse with ease.

But when i tried IntelliJ-based android studio, it pretty much stucked in
every five minutes and even crashed a lot. after struggling for 2-3 weeks i
went back to eclipse.

and it still works great.

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dragonbonheur
Eclipse works fine on my Acer Aspire Netbook. I agree it could be better but
it's essentially a very capable and adaptable piece of software that's
available for free.

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Justsignedup
IntelliJ is a significantly lesser resource hog. I need 3 gigs with eclipse
but only 1 with intellij in ram, and cpu utilization is way better in
IntelliJ.

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watwut
There is something weird with Eclipse on your setup. I just checked mine and
it takes 0.5. I normally keep three eclipse instances open (I switch projects
and do not care about closing them) and they do not take much memory.

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boobsbr
Definitely something strange there. I'm using IBM RAD (Proprietary Eclipse
with tons of custom plugins) at work and it's about 650-ish MB.

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watwut
Neither idea nor netbeans seem to have killer feature that would motivating me
to move. I know eclipse too well, I am used some its plugins and I can write
my own plugins and use some of those.

Netbeans was too slow last time I tried and Eclipse is not unstable for me.

If I would work with android, I would switch to IntelliJ. I heard that one is
better and Android plugin for Eclipse is horrible.

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Zigurd
Netbeans performance was for most of its history a step better than Eclipse.
But I can recall a time when neither would run worth a damn and Visual Studio
and Visual J++ was the best Java implementation and toolchain.

NetBeans also behaves like a GUI is supposed to. I wish the Android SDK was
built on NetBeans. But with Google and Oracle being at loggerheads, it ain't
going to happen.

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kjs3
Why do you care? Seriously. This sort of question has all the intellectual
gravitas of the vi v. emacs wars.

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boobsbr
It works fine for me. So does Netbeans. Haven't tried IntellyJ, but it will
probably work fine too.

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theandrewbailey
The ecommerce platform I work with, Demandware, makes its Eclipse plugin a
critical part of the workflow. I don't really mind, seeing as how I've used
Eclipse (or variants thereof) just about every day of my career.

If I write some Java on my own, I go Netbeans.

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courtf
I've been using the community edition of IntelliJ for years now, primarily for
Android work. I can't imagine switching back to Eclipse, and the switch to
IntelliJ was not at all difficult. The Android plugin for IntelliJ does a lot
for you.

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smartician
It's not that bad actually. The refactoring tools are pretty good, and other
things like CTRL-Shift-T to open any file by name are nice too. Sometimes it
throws a small to medium sized wrench into my spokes, but that's pretty rare.

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rythmshifter
what do you suggest instead?

jGrasp wont install on my linux machines for some reason and I have never had
anyone propose anything else.

(i'm an entry level java student)

~~~
billrobertson42
Netbeans, Idea, Bluejay

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Justsignedup
We still haven't migrated to IntelliJ. No other reason, though IntelliJ is
expensive. What are the alternatives? Netbeans doesn't support aspectj.

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mmorett
Because it's free. Or they learned it over the years (and began with it,
because it's free). IntelliJ is only $199, yet "professional" developers
insist on using Eclipse. Like, $199 is too much to spend on your craft.

Screw FizzBuzz...the first question on an interview should be: Do you use
Eclipse? That speaks volumes, far more than a silly set of "if" statements and
making use of the modulus operator.

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umenline
CDT c++ for linux, free java IDE its slow but no alternative i wish someone
did java IDE build with c++

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peterashford
I only use eclipse for APIs that only have an eclipse release/build/plugin.

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peapicker
XText and DSLs.

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Zigurd
Tedious: Yes. It thinks it is a platform. It thinks users care about its
architecture, which is over-engineered. It has it's own package manager. It is
tedious.

Slow: Buy a new computer. With memory. Sheesh.

Unusable: Well, it can be used. But it is a travesty of a GUI. A GUI should
offer only valid operations. Eclipse lets, nay offers, nay presents on a
silver platter just a click away the opportunity to do senseless destructive
things. Thousands of them for every one sensible right thing you can do. It is
my nominee for Least Discoverable Human Interface.

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

I use Eclipse. I don't find Android Studio to be materially better. I am
constantly offended by Eclipse being the most rule-breaking in-a-bad-way GUI
ever. If it didn't have great refactoring (that works about 80% of the way
when Android XML files are involved) and pretty good code completion and
documentation pop-ups I would be more motivated to replace it.

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Zisko
This is exactly how I feel. Frustrated that it's easy to ruin an entire
project just by one mistaken click of the mouse.

