Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I am normally a command line and emacs editor developer. Lately I have started using Eclipse just because everyone says its so great and I want to be able to use something other than println for debugging. For the uninitiated Eclipse is an open source IDE project backed by IBM.

After strolling around with it Eclipse is indeed great. Its MUCHO faster than NetBeans because its not a java app, it can manage java projects of course (thats its main function although it can manage all other kinds of projects it also claims) but it is not a java app itself, unlike NetBeans.

In my limited use (and lack of experience) I have still found it very useful right off the bat. It can reformat all the code in a project properly (other tools can do this as well of course, and note that by "properly" I mean GNU style with brackets on the next line and 4 SPACES not tabs). It provides a very good editor built in that has all the fancy color coding and formatting tools and can use "templates" for classes, interfaces, methods and so on. It has a workbench that enables you to browse project directories. It of course has a debugger. It has many "plugins" that greatly extend functionality such as building default getter and setter classes for a given data model. Again these are just cool things I have noticed in the few days I have used Eclipse.

For more info or to get yourself a copy check the Eclipse site and for upcoming stuff in the new version 3 see the linked JavaBoutique article.   Review: Eclipse 3.0 Milestone Build 2: JavaBoutique