Why does anyone still use Eclipse?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7467894

by Zisko • 12 years ago

22 30 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Why does anyone still use eclipse? It's the most tedious, slow, unusable piece of software that makes java a pain to use.

rythmshifter• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

Netbeans, Idea, Bluejay

lutusp• 12 years ago

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.

tqh• 12 years ago

Google has switched to Idea with Android Studio: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

herbig• 12 years ago

"Obviously one can struggle to get around this assumption"

blisterpeanuts• 12 years ago

Google's IntelliJ-based Android Studio is at version 0.4.2. It's still a little rough but very promising. I suspect when it reaches 1.0 or thereabouts, Eclipse numbers will go down.

But Eclipse is still pretty useful for creating Java web services.

quotemstr• 12 years ago

I use a text editor.

dragonbonheur• 12 years ago

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.

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

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.

watwut2• 12 years ago

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.

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

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

boobsbr2• 12 years ago

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

umenline• 12 years ago

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

watwut2• 12 years ago

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.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

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.

peapicker• 12 years ago

XText and DSLs.

mindcrime• 12 years ago

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".

biggerfisch• 12 years ago

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.

re_todd• 12 years ago

The "time and energy" was a big factor for me as well. One day I realized that I was spending too much time learning about code editors and hardly anything about frameworks and languages. Since most code tutorials that use an IDE are using Eclipse, I decided to focus on Eclipse as my primary IDE.

smartician• 12 years ago

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.

theandrewbailey• 12 years ago

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.

joeevans• 12 years ago

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.

courtf• 12 years ago

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.

peterashford• 12 years ago

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

mmorett• 12 years ago

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.

kjs3• 12 years ago

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

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

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.

Zisko• 12 years ago

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

jitendrac• 12 years ago

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.

Why does anyone still use Eclipse?

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