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Being used to Visual Studio, every time I needed to use Eclipse I kept wondering how Java developers could tolerate such an environment. Now I know ofc some of

Being used to Visual Studio, every time I needed to use Eclipse I kept wondering how Java developers could tolerate such an environment. Now I know ofc some of it is due to less familiarity and exposure, but it realy felt like stepping back 15 years in time each time I launched it.

astura 9y ago
In what way?
Elrac 9y ago
I'm not sure in what way your Eclipse experience was so atavistic, but I'd like to point out that at least for several years I was aware of, Eclipse had a significant competitive advantage: Incremental compilation. You could make a small change, do a Ctrl-S, and Eclipse would compile the change nearly instantly, where all competing products (that I was aware of, correct me if you know better) needed to fire up a Java compiler and feed it at least all changed source files. For me, this was difference of 2 seconds versus maybe 20-30.
- dominotw 9y ago
  > atavistic I remember this word from the movie submarine. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440292/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440292/
  - coldtea 9y ago
    It just means regressing to a prior, more primitive, state
- hiccuphippo 9y ago
  Was that a feature of the IDE or the compiler? Or does the IDE have its own integrated compiler that can't be used standalone?
  - shadowfacts 9y ago
    I believe Eclipse has it's own Java compiler, so it was probably a compiler feature.
    - Lionsion 9y ago
      > I believe Eclipse has it's own Java compiler, so it was probably a compiler feature. It does, and it's much better than javac for IDE use cases. That's one of my biggest pain points with IntelliJ. They've tried to implement some kind of incremental compilation on top of javac, but it doesn't work reliably and often forced 5-minute from-scratch recompiles on the last project I worked on.
      - shadowfacts 9y ago
        The Eclipse compiler is natively supported in IDEA: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/java-compiler.html#javac_eclipse https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/java-compiler.html#javac...
- yndoendo 9y ago
  Incremental compilation is not tied to the compiler, since it has this ability when coding C/C++ applications too. I always disabled it since does not work properly with multi-project with custom libraries. Main project, it worked just fine.
  - astura 9y ago
    You sure about that? Eclipse comes with its own compiler and ONLY requires the JDE to develop Java application, not the JDK. They also claim that its their compiler that implements the incremental compilation https://www.eclipse.org/jdt/core/ https://www.eclipse.org/jdt/core/ >JDT Core is the Java infrastructure of the Java IDE. It includes: >An incremental Java compiler. Implemented as an Eclipse builder, it is based on technology evolved from VisualAge for Java compiler. In particular, it allows to run and debug code which still contains unresolved errors... >...The JDT Core infrastructure has no built-in JDK version dependencies, it also does not depend on any particular Java UI and can be run headless. Not only that, but what does it matter if incremental compilation is "not tied to the compiler" if Eclipse was the only software that utilized it at the time?
- Bizarro 9y ago
  And not only that, but but being able to debug and change code without restarting the debugger was something I was always envious of coming from the .NET side of things. Java Hotspot has always been a huge productivity booster.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    I think that's supported for 32bit applications in the paid version of Visual Studio. At least it was 10 years ago for C#.
    - Bizarro 9y ago
      With a whole laundry list of restrictions of what can and cannot be changed while running. I think they've retrofitted Mono to run in interpreter mode or something in order to get around those restrictions
Bizarro 9y ago
From purely a standpoint of how smart the IDE is with the language (C# vs Java) then Eclipse and Intellij have always trounced Visual Studio - even with Resharper installed and to this day.

astura 9y ago

In what way?

Elrac 9y ago

I'm not sure in what way your Eclipse experience was so atavistic, but I'd like to point out that at least for several years I was aware of, Eclipse had a significant competitive advantage: Incremental compilation. You could make a small change, do a Ctrl-S, and Eclipse would compile the change nearly instantly, where all competing products (that I was aware of, correct me if you know better) needed to fire up a Java compiler and feed it at least all changed source files. For me, this was difference of 2 seconds versus maybe 20-30.

dominotw 9y ago
> atavistic I remember this word from the movie submarine. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440292/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440292/
- coldtea 9y ago
  It just means regressing to a prior, more primitive, state
hiccuphippo 9y ago
Was that a feature of the IDE or the compiler? Or does the IDE have its own integrated compiler that can't be used standalone?
- shadowfacts 9y ago
  I believe Eclipse has it's own Java compiler, so it was probably a compiler feature.
  - Lionsion 9y ago
    > I believe Eclipse has it's own Java compiler, so it was probably a compiler feature. It does, and it's much better than javac for IDE use cases. That's one of my biggest pain points with IntelliJ. They've tried to implement some kind of incremental compilation on top of javac, but it doesn't work reliably and often forced 5-minute from-scratch recompiles on the last project I worked on.
    - shadowfacts 9y ago
      The Eclipse compiler is natively supported in IDEA: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/java-compiler.html#javac_eclipse https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/java-compiler.html#javac...
yndoendo 9y ago
Incremental compilation is not tied to the compiler, since it has this ability when coding C/C++ applications too. I always disabled it since does not work properly with multi-project with custom libraries. Main project, it worked just fine.
- astura 9y ago
  You sure about that? Eclipse comes with its own compiler and ONLY requires the JDE to develop Java application, not the JDK. They also claim that its their compiler that implements the incremental compilation https://www.eclipse.org/jdt/core/ https://www.eclipse.org/jdt/core/ >JDT Core is the Java infrastructure of the Java IDE. It includes: >An incremental Java compiler. Implemented as an Eclipse builder, it is based on technology evolved from VisualAge for Java compiler. In particular, it allows to run and debug code which still contains unresolved errors... >...The JDT Core infrastructure has no built-in JDK version dependencies, it also does not depend on any particular Java UI and can be run headless. Not only that, but what does it matter if incremental compilation is "not tied to the compiler" if Eclipse was the only software that utilized it at the time?
Bizarro 9y ago
And not only that, but but being able to debug and change code without restarting the debugger was something I was always envious of coming from the .NET side of things. Java Hotspot has always been a huge productivity booster.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  I think that's supported for 32bit applications in the paid version of Visual Studio. At least it was 10 years ago for C#.
  - Bizarro 9y ago
    With a whole laundry list of restrictions of what can and cannot be changed while running. I think they've retrofitted Mono to run in interpreter mode or something in order to get around those restrictions

Bizarro 9y ago

From purely a standpoint of how smart the IDE is with the language (C# vs Java) then Eclipse and Intellij have always trounced Visual Studio - even with Resharper installed and to this day.