Comment Who cares if it's novel; it's interesting (Score 1) 266
I find all these comments about Eclipse not being novel, etc. boring. (that was a nice inviting way to start a reply eh?). Who cares if it's novel or not? Not much is these days. All that matters is if it is worth using.
One other thing that's interesting. A lot of folks tout it as a great IDE/editor/environment because it does a nice job with their Java work, etc. I primarily work in Java, but, as I would guess many others do, I also use Perl, HTML, XML, Python, PHP, bash/sh, and various others.
I've used JBuilder, and if you truly only work in Java, it's pretty rockin (I found it nicer than NetBeans, VisualAge, Together, Emacs, etc.). But, at least for me, I like to have a single editor (which is what I spend 80%+ of my time in) that works for everything I do. This is pretty tough, as various languages and tasks are can have wide ranging needs. Personally, I've solved this for my needs with Visual SlickEdit. It won't be for everyone, but for me, it supports all the languages I use, and does so very well, provides a nice UI, starts up just as fast as vi (and massively faster than Emacs), isn't as cryptic to use as Emacs, yet is equally as powerful (in my use/needs), and runs on the platforms I need (Linux, Windows).
Secondly, as others have pointed out, my environment (i.e. place I work, companies I work for, etc.) require the ability to integrate or use a variety of other tools, including varying source code control systems, build/make systems, debuggers, and so on.
Therefore, to me, Eclipse is very interesting because it is language and tool independent, yet provides a nice environment to work in, that works on all the platforms I need (although I'd like to see this further expanded say to MacOS X), and has the potential to appeal to nearly any developer because of it's flexibility and expandability. Once they have variety of keybindings, and probably get a few more versions along (with more tool, language, etc. support), it seems like it may be incredibly appealing to a huge number of developers. Throw in the open source and free aspect and it becomes that much more appealing. The money I spent on SlickEdit is hands down the best money I've ever spent on software, but I'd still prefer it be open source, and secondarily, free.
For the time being, "X Windows" as someone else said, is my IDE. Now I just wish Windows 2000 had a nice virtual desktop system like X Windows :)
One other thing that's interesting. A lot of folks tout it as a great IDE/editor/environment because it does a nice job with their Java work, etc. I primarily work in Java, but, as I would guess many others do, I also use Perl, HTML, XML, Python, PHP, bash/sh, and various others.
I've used JBuilder, and if you truly only work in Java, it's pretty rockin (I found it nicer than NetBeans, VisualAge, Together, Emacs, etc.). But, at least for me, I like to have a single editor (which is what I spend 80%+ of my time in) that works for everything I do. This is pretty tough, as various languages and tasks are can have wide ranging needs. Personally, I've solved this for my needs with Visual SlickEdit. It won't be for everyone, but for me, it supports all the languages I use, and does so very well, provides a nice UI, starts up just as fast as vi (and massively faster than Emacs), isn't as cryptic to use as Emacs, yet is equally as powerful (in my use/needs), and runs on the platforms I need (Linux, Windows).
Secondly, as others have pointed out, my environment (i.e. place I work, companies I work for, etc.) require the ability to integrate or use a variety of other tools, including varying source code control systems, build/make systems, debuggers, and so on.
Therefore, to me, Eclipse is very interesting because it is language and tool independent, yet provides a nice environment to work in, that works on all the platforms I need (although I'd like to see this further expanded say to MacOS X), and has the potential to appeal to nearly any developer because of it's flexibility and expandability. Once they have variety of keybindings, and probably get a few more versions along (with more tool, language, etc. support), it seems like it may be incredibly appealing to a huge number of developers. Throw in the open source and free aspect and it becomes that much more appealing. The money I spent on SlickEdit is hands down the best money I've ever spent on software, but I'd still prefer it be open source, and secondarily, free.
For the time being, "X Windows" as someone else said, is my IDE. Now I just wish Windows 2000 had a nice virtual desktop system like X Windows
