Panasonic Youth rob sanheim writes about software, business, ruby, music, stuff and things

Two points for Eclipse

Mathias wrote about why he is switching to IDEA. From talking with IDEA users and watching demos at conferences, its obvious that IDEA has the polish and finish that Eclipse + web tools + duct tape doesn’t.

However, Eclipse has two key points going for it that keep me loyal:

1. Eclipse has dominant market share. If you are doing consulting or contracting with clients who use WSAD or Eclipse, coming in with your own IDE is often not an option.
2. Plugins: RadRails, PHPEclipse, Ruby Dev Tools, and SpringIDE are without an equivalent in IDEA. Point #1 means that Eclipse will remain the leader in the plugin war. This will be key as experienced Java developers increasingly turn towards using non-Java languages, either as a wholesale replacement for selected apps or for bits and pieces while talking to core Java on the same JVM.

Counterpoints :

1. The same things that made Eclipse popular are now making NetBeans and IDEA popular. So marketshare numbers are illusory because many Eclipse users also use other IDEs.

2. If you use Java you don’t really care. On the other NetBeans also provides plugins for PHP, Jython and Groovy. More coming.

Cheers.
Charles

1) Netbeans and Idea gaining share, but I think its obvious that Eclipse still has the majority. If I am using Eclipse 8 hours every day at work, I don’t want to have to “switch mental modes” to use something else at home.

2) Not sure I follow the “don’t care” reasoning. I don’t disagree that Netbeans is getting more friendly to non-java development, it just seems it will be playing catch up to Eclipse’s lead.

Standard disclaimer: choice and competition are good, the rise of netbeans can only be good for the market, etc…

I for one definitely agree with the first point in Rob’s reply above. My comment on top of that would be that if your corporate standard is IDEA, it’s easier for you to “sneak” in Eclipse/NetBeans (free and no licensing hassle) than when the standard is Eclipse/NetBeans and you try to install IDEA by yourself.

IDEA has the best support for Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, JSP, property file, and other languages that Java programmers *really* care about. Besides, IDEA’s new Language API is opening the doors for superior support for other languages.

Marketshare is not a very convincing argument to me. For a professional programmer, the key argument should be productivity, in my opinion, which I think IDEA dominates, also in my opinion.

Sure, if I’m doing PHP, Eclipse or NetBeans may currently be the best choice, but if I’m doing Java, IDEA is the best for me, no question.

I’m with Rob on this one. I used to think of Eclipse’s vast amount of different plugins as being great, but I’m more a right-tool-for-the-job-guy. I prefer to use the tool that’s best for the task at hand, and, as Rob said, IDEA is top-notch, when it comes to Java development in general, and of course web development with Java.

Marketshare is important, no doubt, and I’m better off knowing how to use Eclipse, but if I can choose what tool to use for Java development, IDEA would be it.

Cheers, Mathias

Whoops, there are two Robs here ;)
I meant the letter, Rob Harwood.

Cheers, Mathias

Beta was better than VHS as well, but sometimes those things don’t matter.

Eclipse’s market share isn’t going to get smaller, and as the user base grows, so will the demand for features. Going with the “hot hand” will probably give you whatever product is the best in the end anyway.

I personally use other tools anyway for editing JSPs, CSS, javascript or whatever. But in reality, i’m avoiding any kind of complexity in those client or client-side-type files that would require me to use an IDE.

But Rob’s right, a monopoly on IDE’s breeds laziness. More power to IDEA, in that respect.

Rob,

I take your point about not caring about marketshare, but at the end of the day, that is the single most important factor to take into consideration. I like IDEA as well, but I personally don’t believe there are enough (if any) convincing reasons for a user familiar with Eclipse to change to IDEA. The Betamax/VHS analogy is a remarkably good one.

Rory,

I think Rob’s point here was productivity, not converting users. The guys in my team are perfectly fine with using Eclipse and WTP, and I’m fine with that too. If someone’s more productive with Eclipse, then nobody should take this away from her, no doubt about that.
The metaphor with VHS/Betamax somehow implies that the opposite is true, and that one should rather use whatever’s huge on the market. While Eclipse has its good share of market share, there’s still some room left, and I hope it will be filled by a good combination of other IDEs than Eclipse. While there may be (or are) companies that have something like a corporate culture when it comes to IDEs, I’m glad there are some that prefer sheer productivity over something like a unified development environment.

Cheers, Mathias

Rob Sanheim here, responding to Rob Hardwood:

You think java developers don’t *really* care about other langauges like Ruby or Python or even PHP? From what I’ve seen the top java people increasingly want to mix and match java with other languages, and that will only increase going forward. So while having the absolute best tool for Java productivity is great, what happens when developers only spend 1/3 to 1/2 of their time editing actual .java?

Note that I’m not saying IDEA won’t have support for Ruby/Jython/whatever, only that the best all in one option will remain Eclipse.

I think the VHS/Beta analogy is way off. VHS players only play VHS tapes. Beta players only play Beta tapes. Java code will work in any IDE. I think a much better analogy is buying a racing vehicle like a bike or a car. If I’m a professional race-car driver racing for money, am I going to worry about a car that saves me $500 if it slows me down and causes me to earn less money (it’s just a metaphor, the point being performance vs. cost)? Saying that Eclipse *might* end up being the better IDE ‘in the end’ is the same as saying that it is *not* the best IDE now, BTW. When Eclipse is better, I will switch, but for me, it is not better now.

@Rob Sandheim: Take a poll of what percentage of Java developers use Ruby or PHP or Python on a daily basis. You will see that the number is quite low. And, as I said (maybe you missed it), IDEA has a new Language API which will make it the best tool for these languages when, in the future, people start using them on a more regular basis. I think you are underestimating the power of the Language API and overestimating Eclipse’s abilities in this area. See http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/open_api.html for a brief list of current features, which are already being expanded.