5 ms·

What happened to Eclipse, is it still big for Java developers ??

DarkNova6 4y ago
For the most part, Eclipse has fallen into obscurity. But I doubt that it's competitors work any different in that regard.
- winrid 4y ago
  Yeah, pretty sure Intellij does the same thing. A few bad lines rarely affects syntax highlighting/suggestions further down in the same file.
  - nindalf 4y ago
    Fun fact - The author of this post used to work at JetBrains on IDEs.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  While everyone I know moved away from Eclipse years ago, if you look at the stats it is still a very widely used IDE. Maybe universities still get students to use it?
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I hope not, that would be malpractice However, I wanted to make the distinction that while @systems asked about Eclipse as a Java IDE, which it is objectively terrible at, Eclipse is like NetBeans in that it is multi-language[1] and is likely more accessible as an open-source C++ IDE for university use than trying to get CLion licenses (and, ahem, then explain CMake to students :-/ ) 1: yes, I'm acutely aware IDEA is also multi-language but the open source distribution only covers Java and Python, unlike Eclipse and NetBeans
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      CLion licenses are free for people with university email addresses, and perhaps you can figure out some basic subset of CMake to just compile a few files.
    - strbean 4y ago
      In my experience, university CS courses are always pushing woefully outdated tooling and avoiding any remotely modern standard practices like the plague. I was lucky to have one course in 2018 in which the professor actually included the most bare bones `git` usage. I actually never had a class in which an IDE was recommended. In 2008 I did have a class on C (first half C, second half Java) in which we were restricted to using C89 because that was most widely adopted in industry. I really missed block-scoped variables in for loops (`for (int i = 0...)`).
      - mirekrusin 4y ago
        Students should be learning how to move industries forward, not backward.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > For the most part, Eclipse has fallen into obscurity. I guess it depends on the locale/company/environment? In most conferences, online videos, as well as among the people I know personally, JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA for Java) seem to reign supreme: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ They have a community version, personally I pay for the Ultimate package of all the tools. They're slightly sluggish, want a lot of RAM, but the actual development experience and features make up for that. Hands down, the best set of IDEs that I've used from a pure development perspective - refactoring enterprise codebases mostly becomes something you can actually do with confidence. Running tests is easy. Integrating with app servers, containers, package managers or container runtimes is easy. Even remote debugging is easy to set up, as is doing debugging, or even testing web APIs. I'd say that all of the features that should exist do exist, which is more than I can say about many other IDEs. I know that Eclipse is sometimes used more in an educational setting, however there are also both some specialized tools, as well as customized versions for something like working with Spring in the industry: https://spring.io/tools https://spring.io/tools In my experience, the idea behind the IDE is nice (a platform that you can install whatever you want on, entire language support packages, or specialized tool packages), but the execution falls short - sometimes it's unstable, other times it works slow and so on. That said, it's passable. I would say that personally I'd almost prefer NetBeans to Eclipse, even after it was given over to the Apache Foundation, which have released a few versions since: https://netbeans.apache.org/ https://netbeans.apache.org/ It seems to do less than either Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA do, but for general purpose Java editing and limited work with other stacks (PHP, webdev stuff, some C/C++) it is good and pleasant to use. However, if you have projects that get close to half a million lines of code, it does just kind of break and gets way slower than the alternatives. It still somehow feels more coherent than Eclipse to me, would pick it if IntelliJ IDEA didn't exist. Some also try doing something like using Visual Studio Code with a Java plugin: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java That said, I only used that briefly when I needed something lightweight for a netbook of mine, the experience was somewhat underwhelming. The autocomplete or refactoring wasn't as good as IntelliJ IDEA and just felt a little bit tacked on. Then again, that was a while ago, I don't doubt that progress is being made.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
- delusional 4y ago
  That's not quite fair. I don't have any numbers, but i suspect a few developers are using vscode which uses the jdt.ls language server. jdt is basically just a wrapper around the non-ui parts of eclipse. Eclipse lives on, although the IDE itself might not see much use anymore.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I guess we are obscure developers, with our Visual Studios and Eclipses. Eclipse headless is also what powers VS Code Java support, with Red-Hat and Microsoft as main developers. You know, the reason why JetBrains had to rush out Fleet.
  - DarkNova6 4y ago
    I've seen many people begin projects with VS code and end it with Intellij or another jetbrain product. To be fair, I use VS Code as well. It works well as a text editor.
    - tooltitude 4y ago
      You actually could do a lot of stuff in VS Code. See rust-analyzer or our extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tooltitudeteam.tooltitude https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tooltitu...
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Eclipse may not be as popular as it used to be, but saying it has "fallen into obscurity" is wild hyperbole. It's still very popular, albeit maybe not so much with the SV startup crowd which is so prevalent on HN.
IshKebab 4y ago
I don't think so (IntelliJ is way more popular). I think Eclipse is mostly popular these days as a platform for companies offering custom tools. For example Team Center (which is awful btw). Honestly Eclipse was always pretty awful and I have yet to use any Eclipse based software upon which that awfulness didn't at least leave a mild stench. Check out this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eclipse-based_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eclipse-based_software
3836293648 4y ago
Eclipse the IDE is mostly dead, but its Java analysis was moved into a language server and is the goto option for people in vim, emacs and presumably VSC, though the last option isn't as open as the first two in what the extension actually uses under the hood.
pkphilip 4y ago
I still use it.

For the most part, Eclipse has fallen into obscurity. But I doubt that it's competitors work any different in that regard.

winrid 4y ago
Yeah, pretty sure Intellij does the same thing. A few bad lines rarely affects syntax highlighting/suggestions further down in the same file.
- nindalf 4y ago
  Fun fact - The author of this post used to work at JetBrains on IDEs.
sebzim4500 4y ago
While everyone I know moved away from Eclipse years ago, if you look at the stats it is still a very widely used IDE. Maybe universities still get students to use it?
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I hope not, that would be malpractice However, I wanted to make the distinction that while @systems asked about Eclipse as a Java IDE, which it is objectively terrible at, Eclipse is like NetBeans in that it is multi-language[1] and is likely more accessible as an open-source C++ IDE for university use than trying to get CLion licenses (and, ahem, then explain CMake to students :-/ ) 1: yes, I'm acutely aware IDEA is also multi-language but the open source distribution only covers Java and Python, unlike Eclipse and NetBeans
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    CLion licenses are free for people with university email addresses, and perhaps you can figure out some basic subset of CMake to just compile a few files.
  - strbean 4y ago
    In my experience, university CS courses are always pushing woefully outdated tooling and avoiding any remotely modern standard practices like the plague. I was lucky to have one course in 2018 in which the professor actually included the most bare bones `git` usage. I actually never had a class in which an IDE was recommended. In 2008 I did have a class on C (first half C, second half Java) in which we were restricted to using C89 because that was most widely adopted in industry. I really missed block-scoped variables in for loops (`for (int i = 0...)`).
    - mirekrusin 4y ago
      Students should be learning how to move industries forward, not backward.
KronisLV 4y ago
> For the most part, Eclipse has fallen into obscurity. I guess it depends on the locale/company/environment? In most conferences, online videos, as well as among the people I know personally, JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA for Java) seem to reign supreme: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ They have a community version, personally I pay for the Ultimate package of all the tools. They're slightly sluggish, want a lot of RAM, but the actual development experience and features make up for that. Hands down, the best set of IDEs that I've used from a pure development perspective - refactoring enterprise codebases mostly becomes something you can actually do with confidence. Running tests is easy. Integrating with app servers, containers, package managers or container runtimes is easy. Even remote debugging is easy to set up, as is doing debugging, or even testing web APIs. I'd say that all of the features that should exist do exist, which is more than I can say about many other IDEs. I know that Eclipse is sometimes used more in an educational setting, however there are also both some specialized tools, as well as customized versions for something like working with Spring in the industry: https://spring.io/tools https://spring.io/tools In my experience, the idea behind the IDE is nice (a platform that you can install whatever you want on, entire language support packages, or specialized tool packages), but the execution falls short - sometimes it's unstable, other times it works slow and so on. That said, it's passable. I would say that personally I'd almost prefer NetBeans to Eclipse, even after it was given over to the Apache Foundation, which have released a few versions since: https://netbeans.apache.org/ https://netbeans.apache.org/ It seems to do less than either Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA do, but for general purpose Java editing and limited work with other stacks (PHP, webdev stuff, some C/C++) it is good and pleasant to use. However, if you have projects that get close to half a million lines of code, it does just kind of break and gets way slower than the alternatives. It still somehow feels more coherent than Eclipse to me, would pick it if IntelliJ IDEA didn't exist. Some also try doing something like using Visual Studio Code with a Java plugin: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java That said, I only used that briefly when I needed something lightweight for a netbook of mine, the experience was somewhat underwhelming. The autocomplete or refactoring wasn't as good as IntelliJ IDEA and just felt a little bit tacked on. Then again, that was a while ago, I don't doubt that progress is being made.
- fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
delusional 4y ago
That's not quite fair. I don't have any numbers, but i suspect a few developers are using vscode which uses the jdt.ls language server. jdt is basically just a wrapper around the non-ui parts of eclipse. Eclipse lives on, although the IDE itself might not see much use anymore.
pjmlp 4y ago
I guess we are obscure developers, with our Visual Studios and Eclipses. Eclipse headless is also what powers VS Code Java support, with Red-Hat and Microsoft as main developers. You know, the reason why JetBrains had to rush out Fleet.
- DarkNova6 4y ago
  I've seen many people begin projects with VS code and end it with Intellij or another jetbrain product. To be fair, I use VS Code as well. It works well as a text editor.
  - tooltitude 4y ago
    You actually could do a lot of stuff in VS Code. See rust-analyzer or our extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tooltitudeteam.tooltitude https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tooltitu...
mindcrime 4y ago
Eclipse may not be as popular as it used to be, but saying it has "fallen into obscurity" is wild hyperbole. It's still very popular, albeit maybe not so much with the SV startup crowd which is so prevalent on HN.

IshKebab 4y ago

I don't think so (IntelliJ is way more popular). I think Eclipse is mostly popular these days as a platform for companies offering custom tools. For example Team Center (which is awful btw). Honestly Eclipse was always pretty awful and I have yet to use any Eclipse based software upon which that awfulness didn't at least leave a mild stench. Check out this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eclipse-based_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eclipse-based_software

3836293648 4y ago

Eclipse the IDE is mostly dead, but its Java analysis was moved into a language server and is the goto option for people in vim, emacs and presumably VSC, though the last option isn't as open as the first two in what the extension actually uses under the hood.

pkphilip 4y ago

I still use it.