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Theia developers: The Eclipse brand in the IDE/code editor world is toxic to many developers; You may want to disassociate Theia from Eclipse if you’re hoping f

by jtdev 7y ago

Theia developers: The Eclipse brand in the IDE/code editor world is toxic to many developers; You may want to disassociate Theia from Eclipse if you’re hoping for wide usage or pulling devs away from VS Code.

leejoramo 6y ago
While I understand your point about “Eclipse”, as a long time open source web developer, macOS user who has had to work at times with Microsoft servers, I did not think the best of “Visual Studio” Now I spend much of my day in Visual Studio Code.
- sdegutis 6y ago
  I was under the impression that VS is amazing and the best-of-the-best IDE as long as you're entirely working within the MS ecosystem and your employer is paying for all of it. I never heard anyone hating VS itself, just MS or perhaps M$.
- jefft255 6y ago
  I worked professionally with VS doing Windows app development in C++ and I found it super powerful, especially for handling our 20 years old gigantic codebase. I don't get the hate, and I spend most of my days in Emacs nowadays (doing more research-y coding). Yes, it's huge, but it's huge because it is full of powerful tools for developers.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    I think hate for giant IDEs & their corresponding resource consumption will generally come from devs who don't need all the features, or who have the usage of the features forced on them by their org when they may not be needed or there are more lightweight alternatives outside the IDE. It's kind of an even-more-resource-intensive Microsoft Excel - almost no one needs all the features, but they all need a different subset.
  - leejoramo 6y ago
    I don’t hate Visual Studio or Eclipse IDE’s It is just that I have always done a different style of coding for over 20 years. More focused on text editors (BBEdit, Sublime, VSCode, vi, etc) and supporting command line tools. I have seen the power that my IDE colleagues have for their use cases. But honestly, I think many of us text editor focused developers where very skeptical of Visual Studio Code due to its VS branding. For myself, I don’t see Eclipse’s brand any better or worse than Visual Studios.
- tomp 6y ago
  The difference is, Visual Studio is a world-class IDE produced by a company that sucks, while Eclipse sucks as an IDE.
  - meddlepal 6y ago
    > produced by a company that sucks Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
      Most prominent companies have just a criticism section. That particular company has a dedicated page. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Visual Studio is awesome because it's a native app (which means it's fast) and it has ReSharper (which means it's smart).
Icathian 7y ago
Genuinely curious here, how can an IDE be toxic? I haven't heard any such thing before.
- lovemenot 7y ago
  Any brand is toxic when the market deems your product overwhelmingly in a negative light. Not saying that is or isn't the case wrt Eclipse.
- timw4mail 7y ago
  Slow, memory hogging, and not that useful.
  - gowld 7y ago
    Modern devs prefer that to be a feature their language (JS), not their IDE.
    - happymellon 6y ago
      And yet VSCode...
  - sigzero 7y ago
    I don't find the latest Intellij any faster. I currently have the latest of both installed.
    - tempodox 6y ago
      No soap, both are built in Java.
- Kihashi 7y ago
  > how can an IDE be toxic If people associate the IDE with negative emotions, which a lot of people have for eclipse, I'd say it's fair to call it toxic.
- jtdev 7y ago
sam_goody 7y ago
Eclipse is known for being clunky, but at least it is _known_. It is also trusted. When I wrote my first Android app, it was the only practical way to write and test. Not sure if that has since changed (am no longer doing apps), but my guess is that a lot of people have Eclipse on their system. There is a saying that even negative publicity is still publicity. The most important thing that Theia needs to convince would-be contributors, is that they will still be around tomorrow. Eclipse has been around forever, and most devs assume it will stay around. That has a value that should not be underestimated.
- ken 7y ago
  > Eclipse has been around forever, and is going nowhere. That's true of everything, right up until the day it's gone. I heard the same thing about Borland. And Perl, Fortran, 1-2-3, Netware, Lycos, Blackberry, ... The history of computers is littered with brands which were once impossibly dominant, and now just a footnote.
  - fock 7y ago
    In my research field, about 80% of the software is Fortran. Actively developed Fortran. I wouldn't really compare it with 1-2-3/other DOS-apps or blackberry which are basically the software equivalent of consumables.
    - markstos 6y ago
      Fortran is no longer dominant.
      - ryl00 6y ago
        Neither is it a "footnote", especially in its strongest domain, numerical computation.
      - tempodox 6y ago
        That obviously depends on the field.
jankeromnes 7y ago
But the Eclipse Foundation is a pretty good place to develop vendor-neutral open-source software, kind of like the Linux Foundation. There are many great open-source projects under the Eclipse Foundation umbrella, and anyone is free to use them; contribute to them; build businesses on them; etc.
- andybak 7y ago
  Yes but when someone mentions Eclipse all I can think of is that huge, slow, bloated, ugly IDE I was happy to flee from many years ago.
  - gowld 7y ago
    That's fine. They want people who appreciate Eclipse during these early stages, and young people who haven't used Eclipse before don't have preconceived notions.
    - therealdrag0 6y ago
      Yep, in my university everyone used Eclipse. Shrug.
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    IntelliJ is prettier, but just as bloated. Buch of that bloat is just features. I've used both for years and thought both were good with different strengths/weaknesses.
    - qwerty456127 6y ago
      The last time I checked (long ago, when no IntelliJ frorks like PyCharm etc existed) Idea' code autocompletion was a way more smart than that of Eclipse. Also the screen space is less bloated with IntelliJ.
      - therealdrag0 6y ago
k__ 7y ago
I have to admit, my first impression wasn't positive. I thought this was an another attempt, after Eclipse Orion, to get that bloated beast into the modern world.
- kls 7y ago
  Will second this. Saw the name Eclipse and shortcut-ed to will stick with VS code.
  - kls 6y ago
    Replying to my own post but I also did this with VS Code. Brand has a lot to do with first impression. When someone I knew told me to try out VS Code my first impression was I have spent too many years in Visual Studio already why would I want to go to what is obviously the lite version. It was only after seeing it, and seeing the support it had in the community did it overcome that initial bias. I hold that same bias towards Eclipse and my initial reaction was great web enabled Eclipse, no thanks.
    - k__ 6y ago
      Yes, same here.
    - crocodiletears 6y ago
      Out of curiosity, what sold you on VS code over VS? I use Sublime to edit smaller code bases, and web technologies because it gets out of my way, and obfuscates nothing from me. I use VS if I need to work with larger codebases in compiled languages with static typing, complex build processes, or multiple dependencies. I tried it about a year after it first launched, but only for a couple days. VS code strikes me as a hybrid between the two, but from what little I've tried of it, my experience has been that it's less snappy than Sublime, while attempting to obfuscate the things the way VS proper does, which I find distracting when working with js/Python/html. When it came to the large CPP code-base I was toying with, its felt slower to work in than VS, and I couldn't find any compelling reasons (killer features) to learn its conventions. I know quite a few people using code for web development, but they haven't really told me why ("it's just better"). I get the impression I'm missing out on something wonderful here, and I don't want to be an anachronism. But I just don't know why I'd want to switch unless I needed a heavier IDE on my Linux box.
725686 6y ago
What are you talking about. Just because a bunch of hipsters dislike Eclipse doesn't mean everyone does. Eclipse rocks.
- _ZeD_ 6y ago
  I agree. You pry it from my cold, dead hands.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I turn 40 soon and am about as far away from a hipster as you can get, but I have only negative associations with eclipse.
jpalomaki 6y ago
Maybe they are not so much trying to convince end users about the project, but other companies who might be willing to incorporate this into their products and contribute back to the project. For that kind of use case having an organization like Eclipse Foundation, Apache Foundation or Linux Foundation on the background adds credibility.
fxtentacle 6y ago
Agree. When I read Eclipse, I thought "icky" and scrolled down to see if maybe JetBrains will turn it into something usable. Since they're not in the list, I'll pass on this. I'd rather rent a Windows Server so that I can remote desktop into IntelliJ than suffer through another IDE. The productivity boost that you can get from using a great tool that you are intimately familiar with is just way too much to sacrifice in exchange for what boils down to less setup work for getting a new laptop ready for duty.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  You needn't even remote in IntelliJ runs on windows mac and linux.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    Agree, but then what's the point of using a Cloud IDE instead?
kitd 6y ago
Which is amusing, since the latest standard Java desktop IDE is now no more or less clunky than IntelliJ's offering IMHO. IME what adds to the bloat is all the poorly-written and/or neglected plugins users seem to want to install.
an_d_rew 6y ago
I second the vote about “Eclipse” being toxic. That is just my personal opinion, and I recognize that tastes differ, but due to years of (bad) experience across multiple domains for a plethora of reasons, I won’t allow and will actively root out any whiff of Eclipse near my codebase. Yes, others have different options and IDE selection is only slightly less polarizing than politics or religion but... that’s the branding quagmire right there.

by jtdev 7y ago

leejoramo 6y ago

While I understand your point about “Eclipse”, as a long time open source web developer, macOS user who has had to work at times with Microsoft servers, I did not think the best of “Visual Studio” Now I spend much of my day in Visual Studio Code.

sdegutis 6y ago
I was under the impression that VS is amazing and the best-of-the-best IDE as long as you're entirely working within the MS ecosystem and your employer is paying for all of it. I never heard anyone hating VS itself, just MS or perhaps M$.
jefft255 6y ago
I worked professionally with VS doing Windows app development in C++ and I found it super powerful, especially for handling our 20 years old gigantic codebase. I don't get the hate, and I spend most of my days in Emacs nowadays (doing more research-y coding). Yes, it's huge, but it's huge because it is full of powerful tools for developers.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  I think hate for giant IDEs & their corresponding resource consumption will generally come from devs who don't need all the features, or who have the usage of the features forced on them by their org when they may not be needed or there are more lightweight alternatives outside the IDE. It's kind of an even-more-resource-intensive Microsoft Excel - almost no one needs all the features, but they all need a different subset.
- leejoramo 6y ago
  I don’t hate Visual Studio or Eclipse IDE’s It is just that I have always done a different style of coding for over 20 years. More focused on text editors (BBEdit, Sublime, VSCode, vi, etc) and supporting command line tools. I have seen the power that my IDE colleagues have for their use cases. But honestly, I think many of us text editor focused developers where very skeptical of Visual Studio Code due to its VS branding. For myself, I don’t see Eclipse’s brand any better or worse than Visual Studios.
tomp 6y ago
The difference is, Visual Studio is a world-class IDE produced by a company that sucks, while Eclipse sucks as an IDE.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  > produced by a company that sucks Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    Most prominent companies have just a criticism section. That particular company has a dedicated page. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
qwerty456127 6y ago
Visual Studio is awesome because it's a native app (which means it's fast) and it has ReSharper (which means it's smart).

Icathian 7y ago

Genuinely curious here, how can an IDE be toxic? I haven't heard any such thing before.

lovemenot 7y ago
Any brand is toxic when the market deems your product overwhelmingly in a negative light. Not saying that is or isn't the case wrt Eclipse.
timw4mail 7y ago
Slow, memory hogging, and not that useful.
- gowld 7y ago
  Modern devs prefer that to be a feature their language (JS), not their IDE.
  - happymellon 6y ago
    And yet VSCode...
- sigzero 7y ago
  I don't find the latest Intellij any faster. I currently have the latest of both installed.
  - tempodox 6y ago
    No soap, both are built in Java.
Kihashi 7y ago
> how can an IDE be toxic If people associate the IDE with negative emotions, which a lot of people have for eclipse, I'd say it's fair to call it toxic.
jtdev 7y ago

sam_goody 7y ago

Eclipse is known for being clunky, but at least it is _known_. It is also trusted. When I wrote my first Android app, it was the only practical way to write and test. Not sure if that has since changed (am no longer doing apps), but my guess is that a lot of people have Eclipse on their system. There is a saying that even negative publicity is still publicity. The most important thing that Theia needs to convince would-be contributors, is that they will still be around tomorrow. Eclipse has been around forever, and most devs assume it will stay around. That has a value that should not be underestimated.

ken 7y ago
> Eclipse has been around forever, and is going nowhere. That's true of everything, right up until the day it's gone. I heard the same thing about Borland. And Perl, Fortran, 1-2-3, Netware, Lycos, Blackberry, ... The history of computers is littered with brands which were once impossibly dominant, and now just a footnote.
- fock 7y ago
  In my research field, about 80% of the software is Fortran. Actively developed Fortran. I wouldn't really compare it with 1-2-3/other DOS-apps or blackberry which are basically the software equivalent of consumables.
  - markstos 6y ago
    Fortran is no longer dominant.
    - ryl00 6y ago
      Neither is it a "footnote", especially in its strongest domain, numerical computation.
    - tempodox 6y ago
      That obviously depends on the field.

jankeromnes 7y ago

But the Eclipse Foundation is a pretty good place to develop vendor-neutral open-source software, kind of like the Linux Foundation. There are many great open-source projects under the Eclipse Foundation umbrella, and anyone is free to use them; contribute to them; build businesses on them; etc.

andybak 7y ago
Yes but when someone mentions Eclipse all I can think of is that huge, slow, bloated, ugly IDE I was happy to flee from many years ago.
- gowld 7y ago
  That's fine. They want people who appreciate Eclipse during these early stages, and young people who haven't used Eclipse before don't have preconceived notions.
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    Yep, in my university everyone used Eclipse. Shrug.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  IntelliJ is prettier, but just as bloated. Buch of that bloat is just features. I've used both for years and thought both were good with different strengths/weaknesses.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    The last time I checked (long ago, when no IntelliJ frorks like PyCharm etc existed) Idea' code autocompletion was a way more smart than that of Eclipse. Also the screen space is less bloated with IntelliJ.
    - therealdrag0 6y ago

k__ 7y ago

I have to admit, my first impression wasn't positive. I thought this was an another attempt, after Eclipse Orion, to get that bloated beast into the modern world.

kls 7y ago
Will second this. Saw the name Eclipse and shortcut-ed to will stick with VS code.
- kls 6y ago
  Replying to my own post but I also did this with VS Code. Brand has a lot to do with first impression. When someone I knew told me to try out VS Code my first impression was I have spent too many years in Visual Studio already why would I want to go to what is obviously the lite version. It was only after seeing it, and seeing the support it had in the community did it overcome that initial bias. I hold that same bias towards Eclipse and my initial reaction was great web enabled Eclipse, no thanks.
  - k__ 6y ago
    Yes, same here.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, what sold you on VS code over VS? I use Sublime to edit smaller code bases, and web technologies because it gets out of my way, and obfuscates nothing from me. I use VS if I need to work with larger codebases in compiled languages with static typing, complex build processes, or multiple dependencies. I tried it about a year after it first launched, but only for a couple days. VS code strikes me as a hybrid between the two, but from what little I've tried of it, my experience has been that it's less snappy than Sublime, while attempting to obfuscate the things the way VS proper does, which I find distracting when working with js/Python/html. When it came to the large CPP code-base I was toying with, its felt slower to work in than VS, and I couldn't find any compelling reasons (killer features) to learn its conventions. I know quite a few people using code for web development, but they haven't really told me why ("it's just better"). I get the impression I'm missing out on something wonderful here, and I don't want to be an anachronism. But I just don't know why I'd want to switch unless I needed a heavier IDE on my Linux box.

725686 6y ago

What are you talking about. Just because a bunch of hipsters dislike Eclipse doesn't mean everyone does. Eclipse rocks.

_ZeD_ 6y ago
I agree. You pry it from my cold, dead hands.
aidenn0 6y ago
I turn 40 soon and am about as far away from a hipster as you can get, but I have only negative associations with eclipse.

jpalomaki 6y ago

Maybe they are not so much trying to convince end users about the project, but other companies who might be willing to incorporate this into their products and contribute back to the project. For that kind of use case having an organization like Eclipse Foundation, Apache Foundation or Linux Foundation on the background adds credibility.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Agree. When I read Eclipse, I thought "icky" and scrolled down to see if maybe JetBrains will turn it into something usable. Since they're not in the list, I'll pass on this. I'd rather rent a Windows Server so that I can remote desktop into IntelliJ than suffer through another IDE. The productivity boost that you can get from using a great tool that you are intimately familiar with is just way too much to sacrifice in exchange for what boils down to less setup work for getting a new laptop ready for duty.

michaelmrose 6y ago
You needn't even remote in IntelliJ runs on windows mac and linux.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  Agree, but then what's the point of using a Cloud IDE instead?

kitd 6y ago

Which is amusing, since the latest standard Java desktop IDE is now no more or less clunky than IntelliJ's offering IMHO. IME what adds to the bloat is all the poorly-written and/or neglected plugins users seem to want to install.

an_d_rew 6y ago

I second the vote about “Eclipse” being toxic. That is just my personal opinion, and I recognize that tastes differ, but due to years of (bad) experience across multiple domains for a plethora of reasons, I won’t allow and will actively root out any whiff of Eclipse near my codebase. Yes, others have different options and IDE selection is only slightly less polarizing than politics or religion but... that’s the branding quagmire right there.