“Eclipse, the open source, extensible integrated development
environment, has been attracting a lot of well-deserved attention
lately. It’s always had its supporters, something many people found
baffling when it lacked features that were long common in other
IDEs such as JBuilder. Developing software is mostly (but not
entirely) about writing code. No matter how many features an IDE
provides, if it gets in the way of that essential task, it’s going
to hinder rather than help the programmer. That’s why many
programmers have long preferred a simple text editor to an IDE.“Interestingly, many early adopters of Eclipse migrated from
text editors rather than from other IDEs. This, of course, explains
why they didn’t mind the lack of features. For many, this was the
first IDE that didn’t get in their way and simply let them get on
with their work…”
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Community:
Beyond an Open Source Java(Feb 24, 2004)