Eclipse Review
October 25, 2019
Eclipse Review
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Eclipse
The Eclipse project that is being used at our organization is the Integrated Development Environment.
It is used exclusively within the Development Teams as the primary code editing tool. It was, for an extended period of time, the only code development tool that was used in our department (approximately 100 team members). However, we now have a more heterogeneous code development tooling environment. The Eclipse IDE is really an integrated code development environment, that allows for code editing, building/compiling, version control, code quality checking, web development, and more.
It is used exclusively within the Development Teams as the primary code editing tool. It was, for an extended period of time, the only code development tool that was used in our department (approximately 100 team members). However, we now have a more heterogeneous code development tooling environment. The Eclipse IDE is really an integrated code development environment, that allows for code editing, building/compiling, version control, code quality checking, web development, and more.
- Eclipse uses the concept of plug-ins to extend it's core capabilities. This is a highly efficient concept, as you'll be able to add only what you want to. Don't need maven build integration? No need to add the M2E plugin. Need to hook up to an SVN repo? Feel free to add in the Subversive plug-in. This goes for every aspect of the features that are made available.
- It is actively maintained. There are scheduled releases every year. at least 2 if not more. They come packed with all sorts of enhancements and feature upgrades.
- It's open-source. Now, this is a more philosophical point. If you believe in Free Software, and the Open Source paradigm, then this will ensure that your organization continues to align with those principles. It is community-driven, and even the plugins that it supports are themselves open-source. So you'll continue to have a thriving ecosystem.
- It is very strange that the Eclipse IDE has such a long startup time. And feels very bloated. The core product doesn't come with any additional features or capabilities, and yet, with every release, it seems to get slower and feels bulkier. It behooves me to understand how this is possible.
- Despite their regular releases, it almost seems as if the Eclipse team is focusing on the wrong things. Their updates and enhancements are certainly very welcome, and it's clear they are actively working on fixing defects. But they are continually behind the 8-ball on supporting new industry standards and anticipating where the field is going.
- It's wonderful to have choices, and that is a testament to the Open Source ecosystem. However, compatibility issues continue to plague the eclipse project. Plugins often are incompatible with different versions, or are unusable and just crash upon installation, yet continue to be offered as compatible plugins. This causes a mess.
- Setting up and configuring Eclipse can range anywhere from a tedious, but necessary task, to an absolute nightmare. Although the core product is highly portable, the customizations, the plugins, the configurations that make it works exactly the way you want, or more importantly, the specific setup that you want your entire team to use to ensure consistency, can be hellish to port over if and when you switch to a new laptop.
- The monetary cost of Eclipse is free. However, there was a cost in terms of our developers' time in setting up and configuring eclipse. But also in wading through the various broken plugins, or strange quirks in order to get code to compile, or package, properly.
- The various features and capabilities that other products would license, are just a click away with Eclipse. The ability for developers to access an entire ecosystem of features provides us with the ability to really experiment and see what accelerates productivity.
Eclipse used to be the defacto standard for code development. But in recent years, as it has started focusing on its other products, like Orion and Che, it's core IDE (with focus on the 'I'), has seen a slowdown in its prominence. It cannot be compared to just the massive capabilities and integration of Visual Studio Code. Nor can it match up to the features and optimized execution of IntelliJ. It does not offer the simplicity and responsiveness of NetBeans.
Do you think Eclipse delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Eclipse's feature set?
Yes
Did Eclipse live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Eclipse go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Eclipse again?
Yes