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I have a love / hate relationship with Eclipse. On one hand it's everything I've always wanted development to be: Technically correct, free, pluggable and open

I have a love / hate relationship with Eclipse. On one hand it's everything I've always wanted development to be: Technically correct, free, pluggable and open source. On the other hand I've upgraded my computer 8 times in the past 10 years and Eclipse is constant in its ability to always be way to slow to do anything. I now use JetBrains IDE's and VIM and it's a totally different world. It's nice to not have to think about what random Eclipse plugin is colliding with what other random minor version update that is stopping me from using the debugger correctly. Sometimes if a task is complex, annoying and specific enough, it's better to just pay a company to produce a maintained tool rather than relying on the open source community to just "solve it for you". A good analogy might be Gimp vs Photoshop. Gimp is great for learning and gets you there, but if your job depends on it, it starts making economic sense to pay someone for something better. I started using Eclipse back at School and it was great at getting me into programming. It will always have a place in my heart ... just not on my hard drive :/

hugi 11y ago
I have the exact opposite experience. I've attempted to switch to IntelliJ on multiple occasions in the past couple of years but I've never gotten it to feel as fast and flexible as Eclipse. Is it possible you're comparing to old versions; Eclipse used to be really slow 4-5 years ago, but the current versions running on an SSD are blazing fast. If there's one thing I hate about Eclipse, it's that it's kind of ugly :).
- lchengify 11y ago
  So it's totally possible, my Eclipse journey ended about 3 years ago and I've never looked back. Also for the past 2 years I haven't been coding much java, mainly python django / javascript. And I will say the tooling for django debugging in PyCharm is really excellent, both in setting it up and daily use. The Eclipse plugin might work but really PyCharm is the meth of debugging setups: It'd be hard to leave.
- tokenizerrr 11y ago
  Whenever I try to switch IntelliJ I hit a few roadblocks that force me to turn back to eclipse, sadly. * No true multiproject/workspace support (with maven integration) * Slower compile times than in Eclipse, somehow * Have to hit an extra shortcut after editing a file for a hot reload to happen while debugging Am I just crazy, or are these really areas that IntelliJ is weaker in than Eclipse?
  - brianpgordon 11y ago
    What do you mean by "true multiproject/workspace support?" You can add other maven projects as modules into your IntelliJ project using the "Add Maven Projects" icon in the Maven Projects tool window. And you can also open multiple IntelliJ projects at once in different windows.
    - tokenizerrr 11y ago
      I want to be able to have 10-20 projects open and be able to view their sources without switching between windows. The project files should also not depend on each other, but if one of its maven dependency is another opened project it should use that during maven dependency resolution.
      - daddykotex 11y ago
        You can do this just fine with IntelliJ! IMHO, IntelliJ support for multi-project with maven is better. There are no duplicate resource or type when looking for something. There is a correct hierarchy view in the sidebar.
        tokenizerrr 11y ago
        Could you explain how? Whenever I open another project it seems to become it'd own window. I must be missing something.
        brianpgordon 11y ago
- Fishkins 11y ago
  I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ about a year ago, on a machine with an SSD, and found IntelliJ to be way faster and to have more useful features. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference.
creshal 11y ago
> A good analogy might be Gimp vs Photoshop. Gimp is great for learning and gets you there, but if your job depends on it, it starts making economic sense to pay someone for something better. If only Adobe hadn't enough of a monopoly to be able to demand arbitrary prices.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  I finally got on the Adobe train this year, because the cost of the photographer bundle is trivial. It's less than a Dropbox subscription at this point. If ~$10/month is too much for the best photo organiser and the market leading photo manipulation software, then you're basically saying no-one should be able to make any money out of software, ever.
  - creshal 11y ago
    In the EU it's more $15… for the photographer special offer that can disappear any time. Anything else, $25 per app or $70 for everything. With a yearly subscription. Otherwise it's $100. That's a lot of money considering the old creative suite used to cost less than $2000 in total. More like ~$500 per year or less.
Drdrdrq 11y ago
I have a hate / hate relationship with Eclipse. It uses too much RAM, is slow and throws random messages about some exception in connection with some cvs I don't even use. Unfortunately I can't use anything else because of some custom plugins... Also, I learned that the most efficient way to find something in its menus is to google it. Horrible UX. Even Netbeans was better (I am still using an old version which supports python).
carterehsmith 11y ago
"Sometimes if a task is complex, annoying and specific enough, it's better to just pay a company to produce a maintained tool rather than relying on the open source community to just "solve it for you"." Hey, if you feel like paying for Eclipse, you totally can :) That because, Eclipse is a basis for IBM's commercial IDEs such as "Rational Application Developer", "Rational Software Architect", etc. IIRC, some of these go for $5,000+ a pop. So, anyways, Eclipse is not built by some random open source enthusiasts, it is mostly built by IBM employees.
davnicwil 11y ago
In case anyone is considering the Eclipse -> IntelliJ switch, I made it myself a few months ago and haven't looked back. I wrote up some notes on the experience - differences in shortcuts (on a mac) and features and whatnot, here: http://www.davnicwil.com/eclipse-to-intellij-on-a-mac/ http://www.davnicwil.com/eclipse-to-intellij-on-a-mac/ Should be a useful to skim through it as a quick-start, will save you some shortcut/setup googling at the very least.
johnmcclean 11y ago
Increase the max heap settings in eclipse.ini (I have mine at 4gb). Correctly configured, no other IDE touches Eclipse for speed.

hugi 11y ago

I have the exact opposite experience. I've attempted to switch to IntelliJ on multiple occasions in the past couple of years but I've never gotten it to feel as fast and flexible as Eclipse. Is it possible you're comparing to old versions; Eclipse used to be really slow 4-5 years ago, but the current versions running on an SSD are blazing fast. If there's one thing I hate about Eclipse, it's that it's kind of ugly :).

lchengify 11y ago
So it's totally possible, my Eclipse journey ended about 3 years ago and I've never looked back. Also for the past 2 years I haven't been coding much java, mainly python django / javascript. And I will say the tooling for django debugging in PyCharm is really excellent, both in setting it up and daily use. The Eclipse plugin might work but really PyCharm is the meth of debugging setups: It'd be hard to leave.
tokenizerrr 11y ago
Whenever I try to switch IntelliJ I hit a few roadblocks that force me to turn back to eclipse, sadly. * No true multiproject/workspace support (with maven integration) * Slower compile times than in Eclipse, somehow * Have to hit an extra shortcut after editing a file for a hot reload to happen while debugging Am I just crazy, or are these really areas that IntelliJ is weaker in than Eclipse?
- brianpgordon 11y ago
  What do you mean by "true multiproject/workspace support?" You can add other maven projects as modules into your IntelliJ project using the "Add Maven Projects" icon in the Maven Projects tool window. And you can also open multiple IntelliJ projects at once in different windows.
  - tokenizerrr 11y ago
    I want to be able to have 10-20 projects open and be able to view their sources without switching between windows. The project files should also not depend on each other, but if one of its maven dependency is another opened project it should use that during maven dependency resolution.
    - daddykotex 11y ago
      You can do this just fine with IntelliJ! IMHO, IntelliJ support for multi-project with maven is better. There are no duplicate resource or type when looking for something. There is a correct hierarchy view in the sidebar.
      - tokenizerrr 11y ago
        Could you explain how? Whenever I open another project it seems to become it'd own window. I must be missing something.
        brianpgordon 11y ago
Fishkins 11y ago
I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ about a year ago, on a machine with an SSD, and found IntelliJ to be way faster and to have more useful features. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference.

creshal 11y ago

> A good analogy might be Gimp vs Photoshop. Gimp is great for learning and gets you there, but if your job depends on it, it starts making economic sense to pay someone for something better. If only Adobe hadn't enough of a monopoly to be able to demand arbitrary prices.

rodgerd 11y ago
I finally got on the Adobe train this year, because the cost of the photographer bundle is trivial. It's less than a Dropbox subscription at this point. If ~$10/month is too much for the best photo organiser and the market leading photo manipulation software, then you're basically saying no-one should be able to make any money out of software, ever.
- creshal 11y ago
  In the EU it's more $15… for the photographer special offer that can disappear any time. Anything else, $25 per app or $70 for everything. With a yearly subscription. Otherwise it's $100. That's a lot of money considering the old creative suite used to cost less than $2000 in total. More like ~$500 per year or less.

Drdrdrq 11y ago

I have a hate / hate relationship with Eclipse. It uses too much RAM, is slow and throws random messages about some exception in connection with some cvs I don't even use. Unfortunately I can't use anything else because of some custom plugins... Also, I learned that the most efficient way to find something in its menus is to google it. Horrible UX. Even Netbeans was better (I am still using an old version which supports python).

carterehsmith 11y ago

"Sometimes if a task is complex, annoying and specific enough, it's better to just pay a company to produce a maintained tool rather than relying on the open source community to just "solve it for you"." Hey, if you feel like paying for Eclipse, you totally can :) That because, Eclipse is a basis for IBM's commercial IDEs such as "Rational Application Developer", "Rational Software Architect", etc. IIRC, some of these go for $5,000+ a pop. So, anyways, Eclipse is not built by some random open source enthusiasts, it is mostly built by IBM employees.

davnicwil 11y ago

In case anyone is considering the Eclipse -> IntelliJ switch, I made it myself a few months ago and haven't looked back. I wrote up some notes on the experience - differences in shortcuts (on a mac) and features and whatnot, here: http://www.davnicwil.com/eclipse-to-intellij-on-a-mac/ http://www.davnicwil.com/eclipse-to-intellij-on-a-mac/ Should be a useful to skim through it as a quick-start, will save you some shortcut/setup googling at the very least.

johnmcclean 11y ago

Increase the max heap settings in eclipse.ini (I have mine at 4gb). Correctly configured, no other IDE touches Eclipse for speed.