Eclipse - Best IDE for Java Development
October 24, 2019

Eclipse - Best IDE for Java Development

Gabriel Samaroo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Eclipse

Eclipse has been my favorite IDE to use for Java development. Eclipse has great shortcuts that improve the speed at which you code, and have a lot of great built-in features, such as the debugger and a marketplace to add plugins for various frameworks like Spring and Maven. Like any good IDE, you can have your own custom settings and preferences to tailor things to your specific preferences.
  • Extremely easy to install and use
  • It's free to use (as opposed to competitors like intelliJ)
  • Great marketplace for add-ons like Themes and Spring / Maven plugins
  • Great IDE for Java development. Plugins available for other languages (ie: Python), but not as good compared to other IDEs (ie: PyCharm)
  • Uses a lot of system resources / CPU
  • There are so many features built-in and available for use, it can sometimes take a long time to learn them all.
  • Zero cost (compared to competitors) has saved money.
  • All the features and utilities available as improved the efficiency of the development team.
  • Most Java developers already have experience using Eclipse at previous jobs or in college, so there is no need to train on a new IDE (saves time/money).
Eclipse is the best IDE on the market for Java development. It has great error and warning handling, and many integrations with useful tools - debugger, sonarqube (static code analysis), Maven / Gradle / Ant, Tomcat / Wildfly / JBoss (web servers). The best part of eclipse is it is free to use, so anyone can download it at any time.
The support for Eclipse is very good. Since Eclipse has been around for so many years, there is a lot of documentation available online on usage and tips / tricks. There's also many online forums (ie: Stack Overflow) where questions and issues are reported and answered. Most Java developers have experience developing in Eclipse, so there is a huge open source community available as a resource.

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

I would highly recommend Eclipse as the IDE of choice for Java developers. It's great for both small and large teams, but particular good for large teams because it is free to use. If you are developing in other languages (such as Python), I would recommend using other IDEs (such as VS Code, Atom / Sublime, intelliJ, PyCharm, etc.)