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Just face it. Eclipse is no longer an IDE. Eclipse has an IDE too, but Eclipse is no longer just an IDE. It is the Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse Platform, com

Just face it. Eclipse is no longer an IDE. Eclipse has an IDE too, but Eclipse is no longer just an IDE. It is the Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse Platform, comprised of various projects like Eclipse Modeling Framework, Mylyn, Scout, EGit, BIRT, etc. They are packaged in different editions (popularly called the release train) and incidentally produce an IDE. To be serious, they are so damn focused on selling a Platform, whereas all I need is just an IDE. Want to know why JetBrains is kicking their ass with a paid product? Its because they stick to building a coherent IDE. Not a platform full of projects which magically get integrated together to form a half-assed IDE. Sorry did I say IDE? Edit: I feel Eclipse is a classic example of what happens to a project when it loses its original direction and tries to be everything else at the same time, except what it was originally meant for. Edit 2: Typo

ethomson 13y ago
Eclipse was never just an IDE it has always been a platform. At its inception it was a framework for building IDEs by IBM. If you think the different editions of Eclipse are baffling, make sure to check out the different Rational branded Eclipse-based IDEs. There you'll find not just myriad J2EE IDEs but also IDEs for building software on p- and iSeries. Around Eclipse 3.0, it really just became an OSGI container. So it's been an excellent pluggable framework longer than it's been a very usable Java IDE. And has been used to build plenty of non-IDE toolings like IBM Jazz. You may complain about this "platform", but it's also the reason for its popularity. I can build a plug-in that works in Eclipse 3 and 4, almost all of the IBM products (some of them disable plug-in loading for unknown reasons), MyEclipse, JBoss IDE, Adobe FlashBuilder, Wolfram Workbench... etc. That's a very compelling position for an ISV. Also, please don't conflate the Eclipse Platform with the Eclipse Foundation. What the Foundation does has only a little overlap with the Eclipse Java IDE itself. Its breadth does not indicate crazy feature creep on the part of the IDE; that the Eclipse Foundation supports (say) Hudson doesn't mean that suddenly you'll have a CI server in your IDE.

ethomson 13y ago

Eclipse was never just an IDE it has always been a platform. At its inception it was a framework for building IDEs by IBM. If you think the different editions of Eclipse are baffling, make sure to check out the different Rational branded Eclipse-based IDEs. There you'll find not just myriad J2EE IDEs but also IDEs for building software on p- and iSeries. Around Eclipse 3.0, it really just became an OSGI container. So it's been an excellent pluggable framework longer than it's been a very usable Java IDE. And has been used to build plenty of non-IDE toolings like IBM Jazz. You may complain about this "platform", but it's also the reason for its popularity. I can build a plug-in that works in Eclipse 3 and 4, almost all of the IBM products (some of them disable plug-in loading for unknown reasons), MyEclipse, JBoss IDE, Adobe FlashBuilder, Wolfram Workbench... etc. That's a very compelling position for an ISV. Also, please don't conflate the Eclipse Platform with the Eclipse Foundation. What the Foundation does has only a little overlap with the Eclipse Java IDE itself. Its breadth does not indicate crazy feature creep on the part of the IDE; that the Eclipse Foundation supports (say) Hudson doesn't mean that suddenly you'll have a CI server in your IDE.