[HN Gopher] Eclipse IDE 2021-03 is released
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       Eclipse IDE 2021-03 is released
        
       Author : pjmlp
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2021-03-17 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.eclipse.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.eclipse.org)
        
       | tibiahurried wrote:
       | I was a strong Eclipse supporter, I'd always advocate Eclipse at
       | work (vs IntelliJ) ... but eventually I had to give up. The maven
       | integration was breaking with each release. Not to mention the
       | often half broken, incompatible plugins that would make the IDE
       | unstable.
       | 
       | Switched to IntelliJ and never went back.
       | 
       | Also: IntelliJ's superior scala support also played a huge role
       | in the decision.
        
       | runningmike wrote:
       | I always feel that Eclipse is Foss but mainly supported by large
       | corporations who put real improvements first in their commercial
       | version. When I see eclipse, I directly think big blue's toy
       | project. But the basic IDE is still feature complete, but lacks
       | the real needed innovations imho.
        
       | legerdemain wrote:
       | I can say one thing in favor of Eclipse. Out of the box, it would
       | show you compile errors across our whole Java project, so you
       | could do interface refactors and method renames fearlessly.
       | 
       | In Intellij, for years and years and years and years and years,
       | you had to enable a changing and unpredictable set of options to
       | get the same set of behavior, maybe. You'd try to find the most
       | recently edited answer in this question[1] and hope that it
       | worked. Note how one of the upvoted suggestions is "use the
       | Eclipse compiler instead."
       | 
       | So yeah, switching to Intellij killed off like 30% of what made
       | Java development bearable for me.
       | 
       | [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19364949/how-to-view-
       | the...
        
       | zetazzed wrote:
       | Having an Eclipse release sit on HN for 3 hours with zero
       | comments seems like the most accurate depiction of the market's
       | current feelings towards Eclipse...
        
         | rbut wrote:
         | Not really. Eclipse has been my daily driver for python and web
         | development the past 12 years. Every time I try another IDE, I
         | find myself missing features that PyDev does so well, and end
         | up going back.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Happy Eclipse and NetBeans user for what concerns Java
         | development.
         | 
         | I rather suck it up and use Electron for Java development
         | (VSCode + Microsoft/Red-Hat plugins) than having to deal with
         | InteliJ.
        
         | dig1 wrote:
         | boring == stable, and I'm perfectly fine with that for serious
         | projects. I'll leave to hipsters to pave new paths, and I'm
         | going to learn from their mistakes ;)
        
           | serverholic wrote:
           | Lol at this point we are way past hipsters paving new paths.
           | The paths are established and have been for awhile.
        
             | dig1 wrote:
             | Speaks like a true foot soldier. I'm very grateful for your
             | service; we always need fresh meat :D
        
             | mbreese wrote:
             | _> The paths are established and have been for awhile_
             | 
             | I'd rather say that old paths keep getting rediscovered.
             | Such is the cyclic way of tech. There are always new
             | "hipsters" that are freshly paving old paths, putting their
             | unique spin on it.
        
               | jlengrand wrote:
               | Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised to see Eclipse come back
               | into fashion in a couple years :D. Maybe in the form of
               | Che. Who knows. Things come and go.
        
         | jimbob45 wrote:
         | Is there a use case for Eclipse that VS/VSC doesn't outperform
         | it at?
        
           | Skhalar wrote:
           | Defense industry.
        
           | skinkestek wrote:
           | Refactoring?
           | 
           | Speeding up Maven compiles?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | thrower123 wrote:
           | IntelliJ is probably the better comparison. It's not free,
           | but for $100/year or whatever it is, it's worth it to not
           | have to use Eclipse.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | So why pay for turning the laptop into an airplane getting
             | ready for take off, lack of incremental compilation, no
             | support for mixed language debugging with JNI, 10 key
             | combos, having to explicitly search issues (inspections),
             | no javadoc tooltips by default?
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | Plenty of people use Eclipse for their daily-driver. 2021-03
         | has been out for merely hours and already has clocked up over
         | 11K downloads[1]. That, of course, doesn't count all the people
         | happily using a previous version.
         | 
         | Eclipse itself has certainly improved dramatically in the last
         | couple years. Speed, UI, Installation, etc. Lots of polish
         | going into it...
         | 
         | [1] https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/
        
         | albertopv wrote:
         | Any recent (2y) Eclipse release with Darkest Dark theme is
         | pretty good for me. Tried Intellij, VS Code... still prefer
         | Eclipse. Maybe I'm just getting old.
        
         | BenoitP wrote:
         | That's actually par for the course for a lot of Java content,
         | and that's ok.
         | 
         | I'm not the youngest developer, and I like to see content on my
         | steady bread-winner so I upvote it. Java is in a mature phase,
         | so there are not a lot of surprises, and things to discuss.
         | Even the shiny new things that make the platform unique like
         | Loom have been years in the making.
         | 
         | Just Java being Java, where 'boring' is what you actually want
         | from it.
        
         | Nicksil wrote:
         | >Having an Eclipse release sit on HN for 3 hours with zero
         | comments seems like the most accurate depiction of the market's
         | current feelings towards Eclipse...
         | 
         | This is a really strange observation.
         | 
         | Do a search here on HN for the Visual Studio Code editor and
         | you'll find a number of posts with 0 comments. I use that
         | editor as an example as it seems to be among what's popular at
         | the moment.
         | 
         | I don't think you can derive much from the number of comments a
         | post has after 3 hours. Some of the more popular posts on HN
         | exist after the link had been submitted a number of times
         | prior.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | azinman2 wrote:
       | A little bit ago I tried to revive some old Java code by
       | downloading Eclipse and trying to use it again. I can't believe
       | it's improved so little UI/UX compared to 10 years ago, and still
       | had what felt like all these weird behaviors like forcing me into
       | a workspace. I actually was getting enough strange errors that I
       | couldn't figure out how to deal with I just ended up porting the
       | code in Python using VSCode. Granted I'm sure with enough
       | googling I could have figured it out, but it didn't seem worth
       | it. I used to love eclipse back in the day-- those days are long
       | gone.
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | Eclipse (and any IDE for the matter) is an incredibly complex
         | piece of software.
         | 
         | I don't think it's reasonable to say Eclipse is bad because you
         | haven't used it for 10 years and had trouble finding your way
         | around, etc. The same could be said about Visual Studio,
         | VSCode, IntelliJ or whatever else someone wants to program with
         | today.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | I don't think that's true. I used Emacs for a couple of
           | decades, then decided to try VS Code one day and was
           | productive and comfortable in a couple of hours. My first
           | impression of it was "oh, a programming editor with some
           | options I can ignore for now".
        
             | Alupis wrote:
             | As an alternate anecdote, I spent hours trying to figure
             | out how to compile some basic C code in VSCode - neck deep
             | in configurations and hidden menus with special button
             | combinations, etc - only to break down and install some
             | random plugin.
             | 
             | The point is, any new environment is going to be jarring at
             | first. You have to learn how to use your IDE - and once
             | your do, productivity can go way up (this is why people do
             | not switch IDE's very often, you must invest in your IDE to
             | master it). Every IDE has different productivity-enhancing
             | features (beyond basic code suggestions and auto-complete).
             | 
             | If you can master a brand new (to you) IDE in minutes, then
             | it's frankly not a very powerful IDE. The basics, like
             | refactor some code, move some source files around, create a
             | new file, etc - sure, those should come easy. Things that
             | don't come easy is how to create new file templates,
             | enforce code styling, configure database connections (if
             | you work that way, I don't), how to package your software,
             | and the plethora of other things IDE's do for us these
             | days.
        
               | powersnail wrote:
               | VSCode, being a text editor, of course would need some
               | random plugins to behave like a IDE (i.e. compile some
               | basic C code).
               | 
               | You can prefer an IDE, or a text editor + plugins. Either
               | would be fair.
               | 
               | But the complaint that text editor without plugins
               | doesn't "compile" your C code is misdirected.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | I don't think you can call VSCode a text editor. Their
               | own website champions IntelliSense, Debugging, and Built-
               | in Git for starters. That sounds like an Integrated
               | Development Environment to me...
               | 
               | We've strayed from the initial point - IDE's are
               | complicated because they do complicated things. Any new
               | IDE is going to be difficult to use at first, unless all
               | you need is the absolute basics (a la text editor).
               | Criticizing Eclipse for not knowing how to use it after
               | 10 years (effectively using it for the first time I'd
               | argue) is definitely unfair.
        
               | kstrauser wrote:
               | You said it's not reasonable for someone who hasn't used
               | a certain IDE for 10 years to be able to navigate around
               | in it easily. I countered that VS Code was very easy for
               | me to find my way around even though I'd never used it.
               | 
               | For giggles, I just installed Eclipse for the very first
               | time on this computer. I opened a Python file, and it's
               | visible in the middle third of the window, surrounded by
               | wide sidebars and a bottom section with labels like
               | "Markers", "Servers", "Data Source Explorer", and so on
               | [0]. I have literally no idea what I'm supposed to do
               | next, or how to fix that I can only see a tiny bit of my
               | code by default. Contrast with opening a file in a brand
               | new, unconfigured VS Code setup [1].
               | 
               | I'm not saying that Eclipse is bad, just that _I_ don 't
               | know how to use it. That's not a criticism of it.
               | However, I strongly thing that the first-time experience
               | of opening VS Code is miles better than that of Eclipse,
               | and I guess I _am_ criticizing that a little bit.
               | 
               | [0] https://imgur.com/a/ImVGDgN
               | 
               | [1] https://imgur.com/I34NT9r
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | We can nitpick this all we want - because in your VSCode
               | screenshot I do not see where I can add a new file, or
               | rename my open file, or create a project structure, etc.
               | 
               | In your Eclipse screenshot, it seems pretty obvious you
               | can click-drag the window to be larger.
               | 
               | So, what is it we're arguing about then, if we both agree
               | a default UI layout isn't indicative of a good or bad
               | IDE?
               | 
               | I'd wager if you spent a few hours in Eclipse you'd feel
               | comfortable navigating your project too. AKA, invest the
               | time and learn the tool you will be using.
        
             | albertopv wrote:
             | Exactly, VS Code is just an editor, a very good editor. In
             | fact Java language support is provided by headless Eclipse
             | integrated with Visual Studio Code via the Language Server
             | Protocol (LSP) (just google visual studio code java
             | headless eclipse)
        
       | diegocg wrote:
       | >79.6 million lines of code
       | 
       | Amazing
        
         | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
         | And 40 million of those are just declaring inheritance
         | hierarchies and factories.
        
         | fctorial wrote:
         | Why is it so big? Intellij is ~6 million lines of mostly java.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-17 23:01 UTC)