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Lightweight and extensible IDE for developers
June 26, 2017

Lightweight and extensible IDE for developers

Jordan Moore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Eclipse

I started with Eclipse development as a Java IDE, then discovered it could handle many more programming languages such as C, Python, HTML/CSS/JS, PHP, and it grew to become my go-to application for general programming.
  • Provides a broad range of programming language support. While the primary language support is Java, you can also add in support for C/C++, NodeJS, HTML/CSS/JS simply through the Eclipse Marketplace.
  • Provides easy tools for debugging code. I have primarily used these when writing faulty Java and Python code.
  • Provides an extensible plugin API for writing custom widgets. The Eclipse Marketplace hosts many useful utilities and extensions.
  • I would like to see a better dark theme. The first few versions I used did not have one, but since, a few have been released, but I still find IntelliJ IDEA's Darcula theme to be better.
  • It would be nice for Eclipse to work cleanly with other IDE projects without relying on external build tools. I once used a non-Maven/Gradle Java project to work with IntelliJ, and I managed to get it working, but I needed to re-write a few configuration files.
  • The Eclipse "workspace" is where it stores the projects on the computer. There should be a better detection of modifications to this folder, or at least make the error conditions more understandable. For example, there have been times I have had projects not able to be opened or imported due to differences in the folder name or file structure of the folder in the workspace.
  • Eclipse makes it quick and easy to write and debug code in the numerous programming languages it supports.
  • When developing in teams, make sure build tools and version control are properly setup, otherwise configuration files get out-of-sync.
  • Eclipse seems lighter on system resources, but IntelliJ seems smoother on newer hardware. For the cases where the Community
I primarily only use Eclipse if a project requires it or there is a plugin that is not supported by IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition
I had been a heavy user of Eclipse for years until Android Studio came around and showed me how nice IntelliJ IDEA can be. However, I still fall back to Eclipse when I need to work in languages or frameworks that aren't supported by the Community Edition of IntelliJ. That is the area where I think it shines the most - the breadth of plugins and features that can be added all in one IDE.
I still like IntelliJ's less cluttered UI and project based workspaces.