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Why I don't like Eclipse

 
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I've mentioned before I'd rather debug with printf than Eclipse, although I haden't used Eclipse in over a year.  So I tried to use it to find a problem recently, and know why I hate it.  FWIW, when I fired up Eclipse it wanted to check for updates, found some, and updated.  That all went well.  So I'm running a 3 day old version.

1)   Non intuitive to the max.  Just about everything I do requires Google to figure out what to do.

2)   Projects from the past stick around.  I haven't worked on Starweb for 2 years.  It's a completely different project.  So why are it's files showing up as options in my current project?  They're completely unrelated.

3)  How do I import a file?  Not kidding, got 5 java source files in the project I want to debug.  How do I get them into an Eclipse project?  Google is less than useful here, seems various versions of Eclipse have changed the UI enough that what worked last year won't work now.  Hey asshats, how about File->Import, like the rest of the universe does.  How hard can that be?

4)  Why is it showing me breakpoints for projects I'm not working on?  Seriously.  Haven't worked on Starweb.java in 2 years, why would that breakpoint on ParseTurn line x show up at all?

5)  Hit a breakpoint.  My data is an int[256].  How is it displayed?  foo[0] = 0.  On a line.  Next line:  foo[1] = 0.  Next line:  Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.  How about showing the array in a common-sense way.  And let me right click to choose if it's ascii, hex/ascii, or something else.  Because the default way is the way I have never once in 40 years of debugging ever wanted to see.

6)  Now the biggie.  Found a problem.  Fixed it.  Trying to re-run the code I get an error message "dude, your Java has an error.  You wanna run anyway or quit?".  Um, how about I'd like to see the error and fix it?  Nope, not seeing that option.  How do I get out of debug mode?  Hellifino.  How do I find the error and fix it?  hellifino.

7)  Drop down to a shell, run "javac -Xlint *.java".  Find the problem, fix it.  Back to Eclipse.  "dude, your Java has an error.".  Really?

8)  Start looking for solutions.  Click on something, suddenly I have no source files, no debugger, nothing but the initial Eclipse windows that has 4 options, one of which is, I think, "tutorial".

9)  Can't open a project, it's greyed out.  Can't create a file, it's greyed out.  Can't open a file, it's greyed out.  Can't do anything, everything that might be useful is greyed out.

It was at this point I added more printf's to the code and started wondering if I should delete Eclipse completely.

So basically Eclipse told me there where compilation issues, would not tell me how to find/fix said issues, and when I went looking for a solution completely locked me out of my project.

Good job Eclipse.  You'll find a good job in Congress, then spend the rest of your life wondering why everybody in the country think's your a sack of, um smelly stuff.
 
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odd I find eclipse easy to use though  the preferences menu is very cumbersome  and have to navigate. Why does  a program that  helps you write programs need so many options? I think it may have more than word.
 
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I'm no fan of Eclipse, but it seems like some of your problems stem from upgrading an old version. Maybe uninstall and reinstall?

Personally, I'm a big NetBeans fan. I don't know why many people don't use it, it's a rock-solid IDE and the things that it ships out of the box work really well. I especially love how well it integrates Maven, something which I've needed to use various buggy plugins in Eclipse for in the past. The best part is that it actually uses the Maven POM as a project descriptor. No custom netbeans project files.
 
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I've been a long time Eclipse user, but five or six years ago I first switched to NetBeans, and then to IntelliJ.

My reason to switch to NetBeans at the time was the same as what Stephan mentioned: out-of-the-box support for Maven, which worked really well in NetBeans - at the time, for Eclipse you needed to install plug-ins to get support for Maven. (I don't know how it is now, I haven't used Eclipse in a while).

Many people at the client where I was working were using IntelliJ, and the company had an IntelliJ license server, so I decided to give IntelliJ a try, and I've been using IntelliJ ever since. IntelliJ has many fans, and it's really impressive how JetBrains managed to make a paid Java IDE so popular, despite the fact that Eclipse and NetBeans are both free. When I switched, the strong points of IntelliJ were mainly its automatic refactoring support which was a lot better than the other IDEs and the many ways in which it helps you to write code and get around in a project quickly, such as smart auto-completion and search tools. It's full of smart, little things that make using it a joy.
 
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Jesper de Jong wrote:It's full of smart, little things that make using it a joy.


Yup. Neither of the others can hold a candle to it.

I pay for my own license because it's just worth it to me.
 
Jim Venolia
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Thanks for the Netbeans recommendations, it's debugger is much better than Eclipse.

As for IntelliJ, as I'm retired and do this for fun I can't justify the $500/year license.
 
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Jim Venolia wrote:As for IntelliJ, as I'm retired and do this for fun I can't justify the $500/year license.


Does IntelliJ community edition help with your debugging needs? It's free.
 
Jim Venolia
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I'll give it a shot tomorrow, thanks.
 
Jesper de Jong
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Jim Venolia wrote:As for IntelliJ, as I'm retired and do this for fun I can't justify the $500/year license.


A personal (not business) subscription costs € 149 for the first year and is cheaper after that; only a business license costs € 499 per year.
 
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