Eclipse

Today I did some programming in Java with the Eclipse IDE. I've been using Eclipse for about two months now, and I am really impressed. Having come from the Microsoft world and using Visual Studio .Net, I must say that my expectations were rather high. The learning curve for eclipse was rather steep, but I would expect that of any world-class IDE. I know that many C# developers out there are probably incredulous of what I'm saying, but I challenge them to give it a wholehearted try.

I used the book "Eclipse Distilled" to learn how to use eclipse, and I highly recommend it. The book was neither too short nor too long. It used a demonstration project as a learning guide, which helped immensely. Also after reading the introductory chapters you could choose from which chapters you would like to read a la carte.

Eclipse has all of the features that Visual Studio .Net has and then some. Plus, the developers are constantly adding new ones as their need becomes apparent. Visual Studio .Net has long release cycles (usually one to two years) that are at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Eclipse is also a platform, in that plug-ins can be developed for just about anything. Plus, you can use Eclipse as the foundation for your own application, much like a browser such as Firefox provides a GUI foundation for client/server applications. After going back to Visual Studio.net, I found myself saying many times: "Why doesn't Visual Studio have that? Why doesn't Visual Studio have this like Eclipse did?"

Finally, Eclipse also help me to see how customizable IDE's really are. I know it's rather simple, but being able to map Ctrl-L to do the same thing in two different IDE's helps my productivity immensely. Before eclipse, I usually just took Microsoft's defaults to be the one and only way. After Eclipse, I customize my shortcuts, perspectives, toolbars, etc. I feel I have been freed from one of Microsoft's shackles.