6 ms·

Depending on your machine (this obviously doesn't matter much to someone with a beastly dev box), IDEs like Eclipse or Netbeans sometimes can't keep up with typ

Depending on your machine (this obviously doesn't matter much to someone with a beastly dev box), IDEs like Eclipse or Netbeans sometimes can't keep up with typing speed. This isn't a brag about WPM because I'm not that fast. But the code verification and error highlighting sometimes really slows things down which can result in hair-pulling. The best set up I think is something like Eclim - best of both worlds.

djhworld 16y ago
This is the reason why I've developed a dislike for IDEs What you say is correct, an IDE is just a text editor with a bunch of features tacked on, but those features lead to the environment becoming hungry for resources after every keyboard command you type. It doesn't surprise me to find Eclipse using 1GB of RAM after a few hours of development. My main development machine right now is a Macbook laptop, so I have limited resources in terms of RAM (2GB) and processor (2GHZ) and hate to see programs becoming greedy
- Someone 16y ago
  If you have 2GB of RAM, why are you worried that the program that you basically bought and booted your computer for takes half of it? Are you sure that it would still use 1GB if you ran a program that needed memory harder?
  - dkarl 16y ago
    I have a Windows laptop with the same specs, and I can slow it down pretty easily. Chrome with thirty tabs -- switching to a tab I haven't looked at in a while sets the disk grinding and brings everything to a halt. When I start up Outlook, or just click on Outlook after waking up the laptop, there's a couple minutes I can spend getting coffee, because it takes take that long to switch to another program and start using it. (Waiting for Outlook to finish starting up is another few minutes after that.) Eclipse with fifty or more files open (damn these big Java frameworks) -- grind grind grind every time I switch between views, or at unexpected times while I'm typing. I wish I knew more about Windows, because when I look at the processes in the Task Manager, their combined memory footprint is well under 2GB, but all my programs become nearly unresponsive while the disk goes grind grind grind grind grind... what the hell is that about? Whether it's misconfiguration or some spyware crap my company installs on our laptops (I disabled the "backup" feature that just copy files around on the hard drive, but I'm sure there's more) it certainly helps if I keep the resource usage of my programs down. tl;dr: As long as people are bothered by performance problems, they'll worry about the resource consumption of their tools.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      Chrome with thirty tabs I found it very helpful to actively and violently close down tabs. 4-5 is just about the ideal maximum. I keep a separate lightweight browser, Opera, open to API documentation, and firefox for other stuff. For wifi, I removed the internal one and use an external one. Whenever I need to focus, I close firefox without saving sessions and unplug the wifi. When I go out to cafes for reading, I leave the wifi at home.
      - adbge 16y ago
        > I keep a separate lightweight browser, Opera Opera is not particularly lightweight, even compared with Chromium. Check out Midori.
        mahmud 16y ago
        That was an excellent suggestion. It is more lightweight than any other full-functional, graphic browser I have used so far.
    - mikelward 16y ago
      Turn off Aero, upgrade your RAM, you're doing a lot of work.
- lyso 16y ago
  It would surprise me, as on my Macbook, Eclipse with the default .ini is set to run the JVM with a maximum size of 512M by using the -Xmx512m argument. (I am, however running Eclipse "Classic", maybe the other bundles have larger limits). In fact, it might run a little better if I boosted the amount of RAM available to its JVM. Maybe someone knows otherwise; but I think it is a fact of life that when you set your JVM to use (say) 1GB and keep a java app open and creating objects for long enough, it will tend to grow to 1GB rather than spend time running the GC.
- mthoms 16y ago
  FWIW, I had the same issues on my Macbook with Eclipse and switched over to Netbeans. Feels a bit leaner and has a nicer interface (but also has it's share of flaws). Now that Sun is no longer I sure hope Netbeans doesn't go down the tubes.
nailer 16y ago
I've found the same issue re screen updates, but I believe the issue its more to do with the well known ui latency of most java toolkits than the resources used by the app. Eg, eclipse may not be placing much load on memory if cpu but right clicking a project still produces an obvious lag before during the dialog on both linux and osx.
stuff4ben 16y ago
you can always turn all that off. I always disable spell check and validations since I really only use Eclipse as a glorified text editor.
- topek 16y ago
  I don't see any reason why I would use an IDE as a glorified editor. Either I use an IDE as what it is - a heavy weight environment - or I use a text editor configured down to me needs. It's true that Eclipse can be quite memory hungry, but if you let it eat some memory, it's features can be fast. Still, the standard configuration of Eclipse is a joke. If you are trying to edit files, Eclipse will hang all the time. In recent days I play a lot with Vim. Even though I configured it to my needs, it still lags behind an IDE when it comes down to IDE specific features - e.g. search in a project: it's neither as comfortable nor as fast as an IDE in this area. (I'd like to be proven wrong on this feature, because that's the main thing that's bothering me) - But Vim is good in what it is: a text editor. And that's what I'm doing most of the time: editing text files.
  - Nick_C 16y ago
    Searching in a project: There is a builtin command vimgrep to search through external files, there is also a grep plugin that makes it easier and more versatile. As well, there is ctags, which basically builds up a list of function calls and where they are in a file. Vim understands tag files by default and will use them automatically. You can then toggle between the function declaration and your current line (useful for searching for functions' and what their parameters are).
    - topek 16y ago
      If I'm not completely wrong, Eclipse's search is powered by Lucene. On small projects you won't notice a great difference, but on larger projects an indexed search is a great difference. Does the ctags plugin work for other languages as well, e.g. python, ruby, javascript?
      - 16y ago

djhworld 16y ago

This is the reason why I've developed a dislike for IDEs What you say is correct, an IDE is just a text editor with a bunch of features tacked on, but those features lead to the environment becoming hungry for resources after every keyboard command you type. It doesn't surprise me to find Eclipse using 1GB of RAM after a few hours of development. My main development machine right now is a Macbook laptop, so I have limited resources in terms of RAM (2GB) and processor (2GHZ) and hate to see programs becoming greedy

Someone 16y ago
If you have 2GB of RAM, why are you worried that the program that you basically bought and booted your computer for takes half of it? Are you sure that it would still use 1GB if you ran a program that needed memory harder?
- dkarl 16y ago
  I have a Windows laptop with the same specs, and I can slow it down pretty easily. Chrome with thirty tabs -- switching to a tab I haven't looked at in a while sets the disk grinding and brings everything to a halt. When I start up Outlook, or just click on Outlook after waking up the laptop, there's a couple minutes I can spend getting coffee, because it takes take that long to switch to another program and start using it. (Waiting for Outlook to finish starting up is another few minutes after that.) Eclipse with fifty or more files open (damn these big Java frameworks) -- grind grind grind every time I switch between views, or at unexpected times while I'm typing. I wish I knew more about Windows, because when I look at the processes in the Task Manager, their combined memory footprint is well under 2GB, but all my programs become nearly unresponsive while the disk goes grind grind grind grind grind... what the hell is that about? Whether it's misconfiguration or some spyware crap my company installs on our laptops (I disabled the "backup" feature that just copy files around on the hard drive, but I'm sure there's more) it certainly helps if I keep the resource usage of my programs down. tl;dr: As long as people are bothered by performance problems, they'll worry about the resource consumption of their tools.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Chrome with thirty tabs I found it very helpful to actively and violently close down tabs. 4-5 is just about the ideal maximum. I keep a separate lightweight browser, Opera, open to API documentation, and firefox for other stuff. For wifi, I removed the internal one and use an external one. Whenever I need to focus, I close firefox without saving sessions and unplug the wifi. When I go out to cafes for reading, I leave the wifi at home.
    - adbge 16y ago
      > I keep a separate lightweight browser, Opera Opera is not particularly lightweight, even compared with Chromium. Check out Midori.
      - mahmud 16y ago
        That was an excellent suggestion. It is more lightweight than any other full-functional, graphic browser I have used so far.
  - mikelward 16y ago
    Turn off Aero, upgrade your RAM, you're doing a lot of work.
lyso 16y ago
It would surprise me, as on my Macbook, Eclipse with the default .ini is set to run the JVM with a maximum size of 512M by using the -Xmx512m argument. (I am, however running Eclipse "Classic", maybe the other bundles have larger limits). In fact, it might run a little better if I boosted the amount of RAM available to its JVM. Maybe someone knows otherwise; but I think it is a fact of life that when you set your JVM to use (say) 1GB and keep a java app open and creating objects for long enough, it will tend to grow to 1GB rather than spend time running the GC.
mthoms 16y ago
FWIW, I had the same issues on my Macbook with Eclipse and switched over to Netbeans. Feels a bit leaner and has a nicer interface (but also has it's share of flaws). Now that Sun is no longer I sure hope Netbeans doesn't go down the tubes.

nailer 16y ago

I've found the same issue re screen updates, but I believe the issue its more to do with the well known ui latency of most java toolkits than the resources used by the app. Eg, eclipse may not be placing much load on memory if cpu but right clicking a project still produces an obvious lag before during the dialog on both linux and osx.

stuff4ben 16y ago

you can always turn all that off. I always disable spell check and validations since I really only use Eclipse as a glorified text editor.

topek 16y ago
I don't see any reason why I would use an IDE as a glorified editor. Either I use an IDE as what it is - a heavy weight environment - or I use a text editor configured down to me needs. It's true that Eclipse can be quite memory hungry, but if you let it eat some memory, it's features can be fast. Still, the standard configuration of Eclipse is a joke. If you are trying to edit files, Eclipse will hang all the time. In recent days I play a lot with Vim. Even though I configured it to my needs, it still lags behind an IDE when it comes down to IDE specific features - e.g. search in a project: it's neither as comfortable nor as fast as an IDE in this area. (I'd like to be proven wrong on this feature, because that's the main thing that's bothering me) - But Vim is good in what it is: a text editor. And that's what I'm doing most of the time: editing text files.
- Nick_C 16y ago
  Searching in a project: There is a builtin command vimgrep to search through external files, there is also a grep plugin that makes it easier and more versatile. As well, there is ctags, which basically builds up a list of function calls and where they are in a file. Vim understands tag files by default and will use them automatically. You can then toggle between the function declaration and your current line (useful for searching for functions' and what their parameters are).
  - topek 16y ago
    If I'm not completely wrong, Eclipse's search is powered by Lucene. On small projects you won't notice a great difference, but on larger projects an indexed search is a great difference. Does the ctags plugin work for other languages as well, e.g. python, ruby, javascript?
    - 16y ago