I have some questions for Riyad Kalla (MyEclipse)

[Jenson Chew]

Hi Riyad,

I'm still learning Java and I have not try or download MyEclipse before. I do download the official Eclipse IDE. By browsing through the MyEclipse website, I found out that MyEclipse is actually a plugin for Eclipse IDE, is that right? Or it can act as a standalone IDE?

May I know how can I benefit from using MyEclipse as a Java learner? I consider myself a beginner since I have long forgotten the language since I graduated from college and have not been using it ever since I start working.

What's the benefits of using subscription based MyEclipse service? What kind of support would I get?

Does MyEclipse come with built-in tutorial (text/flash/html/video) and hands-on examples?

I would love to see a better options offered by MyEclipse over Eclipse if I have to pay to use it since Eclipse also has quite a number of useful and powerful plugins, correct me if I'm wrong =) I'm not being offensive, just very curious from a Java beginner standpoint, and I have no prior experience in using MyEclipse or Eclipse, I just installed Eclipse to play around and have a feel of how it looks like and why it is so popular.

Ok, I know I'm not good at asking questions, one last question then. May I know whether MyEclipse provides tools for testing and project planning/management? As well as catering for deployment needs?

Thanks and hope that I do not annoyed you with my stupid questions =)

Regards,
Jenson

[Riyad Kalla]

Jenson,
Thanks for the post. I'll address your questions individually...

By browsing through the MyEclipse website, I found out that MyEclipse is actually a plugin for Eclipse IDE, is that right? Or it can act as a standalone IDE?

MyEclipse is an Eclipse-based product, so it is a set of Features and Plugins built ontop of the Eclipse platform. However, to make things easier for new users, we provide our "All in One" installer, which is a JRE, Eclipse and MyEclipse all bundled and pre-configured together to run with the optimal memory arguments. It also installs the SNAP applications for you in your Start menu.

If you are well versed in Eclipse plugin installation you can grab the Plug-in installer (which is JUST MyEclipse), or you can manage everything by yourself using the Manual Install. Lastly we also provide an Archived Update Site, you can download and just point the update manager at and "Next" your way through the installation... very handy.

May I know how can I benefit from using MyEclipse as a Java learner? I consider myself a beginner since I have long forgotten the language since I graduated from college and have not been using it ever since I start working.

At the stage you are at now, if you are going back through introductory Java-only books, using straight Eclipse will be more than enough for you. But at some point if you decide you want to start working with Swing (Matisse4MyEclipse) or you want to start working on some web development, adding MyEclipse to your tools is going to be a huge boost for you in productivity. It just depends on which portions of Java you want to tackle right now.

What's the benefits of using subscription based MyEclipse service? What kind of support would I get?

Support is free and included in your subscription. Also having an active subscription allows you access to any release we make as long as your subscription is active. So in 1 year, if we release version 6.0, 6.1 and 7.0, you have full access to all of those releases.

Does MyEclipse come with built-in tutorial (text/flash/html/video) and hands-on examples?

Yes, in addition to what is under our "Educational Material" portion of our website, all the tutorials and information you could want are available under the help menu in the "MyEclipse Learning Center" section.

I would love to see a better options offered by MyEclipse over Eclipse

It's a valid question and I've addressed it a few times, so the simple reply is this... we build MyEclipse ontop of Eclipse and WTP... so MyEclipse is a super-set of functionality ontop of those already existing great features. Visual designers, integrated technologies, wizards that make common tasks easier, etc. etc. We focus on the value-add ontop of all those existing tools to make things even easier.

May I know whether MyEclipse provides tools for testing and project planning/management? As well as catering for deployment needs?

Testing and Project management, no. You would need to look at a project like TPTP for testing and I'm not sure of a good one for project management though.

For deployment, yes MyEclipse will handle J2EE/Java EE deployment packaging and handling for you, even with things like dependent projects and so on.

I hope I addressed your questions.

[Jenson Chew]

Originally posted by Riyad Kalla:
Jenson,
Thanks for the post. I'll address your questions individually...



Testing and Project management, no. You would need to look at a project like TPTP for testing and I'm not sure of a good one for project management though.

For deployment, yes MyEclipse will handle J2EE/Java EE deployment packaging and handling for you, even with things like dependent projects and so on.

I hope I addressed your questions.

Hi Riyad,

Thanks for the great replies to my questions, seems like MyEclipse would be a must-have for various companies or organizations developing J2EE applications. I would say that they definitely wouln't be doing small scale projects which can be handled easily with just Eclipse (maybe they still could, with more hassle handling them).

From your reply, I can tell that, the features of MyEclipse would be quite powerful which sit on top of Eclipse and value-add to the existing feature, or perhaps I could say it boost the powerfulness and functionality of Eclipse to achieve tip-top performance.

Personally would like to give it a try by trying out first, now I'm still struggling to learn back whatever I have long forgotten now. Thanks for spending time to answer my very beginner's questions.

By the way, does MyEclipse plan to move on to include more features like the project management tool in the near future or some time later? Would love to see MyEclipse to be on of the most feature rich and ultra IDE

Really appreciate that Riyad!

Thanks.

Regards,
Jenson

[Riyad Kalla]

From your reply, I can tell that, the features of MyEclipse would be quite powerful which sit on top of Eclipse and value-add to the existing feature, or perhaps I could say it boost the powerfulness and functionality of Eclipse to achieve tip-top performance.

Yes you are exactly right, that is the benefit we provide.

By the way, does MyEclipse plan to move on to include more features like the project management tool in the near future or some time later? Would love to see MyEclipse to be on of the most feature rich and ultra IDE

I'm not sure of your requirements for project management, but if you mean things like project-wide tasks, dependency management and things like that, *most* of this will be addressed when support for Maven2 is added, and we will be adding Mylar (I forgot the new name) to our Community Essentials repository. If you had something different in mind it's possible through our partner network someone may offer a more suitable tool for you, but I don't know that we will necessarily tackle that in the near future.

Hope that helps.

[Jenson Chew]

Hi Riyad,

Thanks for the reply and I'm really sorry for the late reply. I hope you're still with us here =)

Glad to have you on board and looking forward to interact with you again.

Regards,
Jenson