[HN Gopher] Open source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' exits beta to challe...
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       Open source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' exits beta to challenge Visual
       Studio Code
        
       Author : avivallssa
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2024-06-28 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (visualstudiomagazine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (visualstudiomagazine.com)
        
       | philipwhiuk wrote:
       | Is Theia supposed to replace Eclipse IDE?
       | 
       | What's the point here?
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | _> What 's the point here?_
         | 
         | Hard to say.
        
         | TiredOfLife wrote:
         | Money laundering. Nonprofits can't just take the money out.
         | They have to do "work"
        
       | adamnemecek wrote:
       | Challenge in terms of having a stupid name? If yes, then they are
       | succeeding.
        
       | aidenn0 wrote:
       | Since this seems otherwise unrelated to the desktop Eclipse IDE,
       | does anyone have positive feelings about the Eclipse brand?
       | Granted I last used it about 20 years ago, but it was a less than
       | positive experience.
        
         | AtlasBarfed wrote:
         | I once used eclipse c development tools to hack frogcomposband
         | to my whim and desire, it was a decent experience for "free"
        
           | InfiniteRand wrote:
           | Eclipse is reliable decent for a wide variety of needs -
           | that's ultimately its selling point
        
         | exabrial wrote:
         | I use Eclipse desktop regularly. It has its quirks, as most all
         | source software does, but it's more than sufficient to get the
         | job done.
         | 
         | In the same vain, I did try to learn the ins-outs of vscode and
         | I wasn't impressed after a few months. It has about the 1/16 of
         | the capabilities of Eclipse, and things are very broken pretty
         | much 100% of the time, or it'll suddenly break when something
         | auto updates. It's also, just obnoxious to use: popups,
         | distractions that never go away, settings are in a schema-less
         | json, and a completely incoherent user experience when you do
         | something as minor as switch plugins. Compare that to regular
         | ol' Eclipse, which presents a unified editing interface for
         | every language and file type.
         | 
         | I used IntelliJ for a brief stint and I would say it's very
         | polished and a lot of small annoyances with Eclipse it doesn't
         | have, and it exceeds Eclipse in several areas, but not to the
         | point where I would go relearn an entire tool. So yeah... I'll
         | probably just stick with Eclipse until I can't anymore!
        
           | hobs wrote:
           | Yeah, I was lucky that early in my career a swdev turned me
           | onto intellij stuff, it's sometimes second best at stuff and
           | sometimes the bugs are 10 years old with no fixes in sight,
           | but it still feels way better all the time than vscode.
        
         | AshamedCaptain wrote:
         | It's ridiculous how bloated Eclipse used to be perceived, and
         | how lightweight it is now compared to VS Code. Eclipse can run
         | on a 256MB Java heap...
        
         | lelanthran wrote:
         | > Since this seems otherwise unrelated to the desktop Eclipse
         | IDE, does anyone have positive feelings about the Eclipse
         | brand?
         | 
         | I do.
         | 
         | It was used as the basis for code-sourcery, which was the
         | foundation for many a vendors embedded toolkit.
         | 
         | More recently, I used it for ESP development, and I was
         | absolutely floored that Eclipse is, in 2024, a lightweight and
         | featureful alternative to VSCode.
         | 
         | My prior memories of Eclipse was that, once started, it would
         | slow my machine to a crawl. Now it runs lighter than the most
         | popular "modern" editors; after doing the ESP project, I
         | noticed just how laggy VSCode is.
         | 
         | It could do with a few plugins, though. Copilot, and things
         | like that.
        
       | pessimizer wrote:
       | Get it into the Debian repos and I'll try it. If it's a good
       | replacement for vscode, getting it into the major distros will
       | get them a massive userbase in a month. Most people don't want to
       | install MS garbage on their computer, and they are willing to
       | take a mild quality hit in order to avoid it.
       | 
       | Otherwise I'm not messing with something likely to disappear
       | randomly. I value my workflow.
        
       | hipadev23 wrote:
       | i still have nightmares of waiting for eclipse to load
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | First thing I thought is "damn, that looks a lot like vscode"
        
       | JasonSage wrote:
       | Eclipse Theia IDE is to Eclipse as Visual Studio Code is to
       | Visual Studio?
       | 
       | I think the naming is much less interesting/important than the
       | idea, but lots of folks seem only interested in whether the name
       | is good or bad. In my experience, a good project tends to
       | eventually live by a good name, and the early focus should be on
       | the outcome. It looks to me like the folks behind this project
       | know exactly what they're doing.
        
       | curiousdeadcat wrote:
       | I've been following Theia for years (hi GitPod people), though
       | mostly lost interest when vscode started being browser
       | accessible, and back when they were using that old UI stack.
       | 
       | But I'm confused, how does this compare with code-server, or
       | openvscode-server?
       | 
       | I use the latter in a web browser to do fully remote dev on my
       | beefy machine hooked up to Google Fiber.
       | 
       | It kind of seems like this isn't something I need to consider,
       | unless I wanted to ship my own custom white-labeled IDE.
       | (Which... Nah, and why?)
        
         | cbxyp wrote:
         | because the tooling for VS code extensions to be part of the VS
         | code UI is lackluster. It shoehorns people and prevents the
         | development of something like a fully integrated SQL workbench.
         | Or a form editor. Or reusable property panes, editor widget UI.
         | If vscode had those things, it would be a proper IDE. Take for
         | example this outline view:
         | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-theia/theia/master...
         | - not something that would be easy to integrate into VS code as
         | an extension. Very nice work. Why VS code doesn't have it is
         | probably related to cannibalizing other MS products.
        
       | aniviacat wrote:
       | On the Eclipse Theia IDE download page [0] it still says:
       | 
       | >NOTE: The Eclipse Theia IDE is currently in beta.
       | 
       | Does "exits beta" mean that it will at some point in the future
       | exit the beta? I understood it to mean that it is out of beta
       | today.
       | 
       | [0]: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload
        
       | TiredOfLife wrote:
       | So it's another reskined VS Code.
        
       | cbxyp wrote:
       | Used this a few years ago in early stages before VS code remote
       | was a thing. It's very useful to add some interface extensibility
       | components into VS Code's framework. I suspect microsoft made
       | some intentional design decision to make this harder to do in VS
       | code's apis, totally eschewing any real editor extensibility in
       | favor of a "apps in the editor, not extending the editor" design
       | vs Atom's much more open ended allowance for modifications. For
       | example, if you wanted to make a form builder in VS code for VS
       | code extensions - that would not be usable outside of the Webview
       | tab functionality without modifying the editor source. Glad
       | eclipse foundation recognized this and is providing some
       | groundwork to make a real IDE out of VS code. Theia was also the
       | first to provide support for running vscode-as-a-platform and run
       | via web browser, at least support that was functional and
       | working.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Theia: Cloud and Desktop IDE_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22792258 - April 2020 (183
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Eclipse Theia 1.0 - Open-Source Alternative to Visual Studio
       | Code_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738607 - March
       | 2020 (147 comments)
       | 
       |  _Theia: A cloud and desktop IDE framework implemented in
       | TypeScript_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19466001 -
       | March 2019 (12 comments)
       | 
       |  _Theia - One IDE for Desktop and Cloud_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14687858 - July 2017 (58
       | comments)
        
       | sporedro wrote:
       | Is there actually any point in using it? My initial thought was
       | they would allow a more "atom" approach while still keeping all
       | the vscode functionality.
       | 
       | But it looks like it's aimed more for "building your own IDE"
       | without having to start from scratch, feels just like the old
       | eclipse.
       | 
       | Maybe I'm missing something but why would anyone bother using
       | this?
        
       | zer0zzz wrote:
       | Nope. Nope. Nope. There is literally no fond memory I've ever had
       | of anything relating to eclipse.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-28 23:00 UTC)