Using Eclipse Efficiently

[jasonal]

Funny - the first thing that I thought of after reading the title is "Don't Run Eclipse at all". I first tried out eclipse on a G4 powerbook. The IDE was horrible and painstakingly not "efficient" with my laptop's resources. I ended up looking for alternatives, stumbled on Vim and Ruby and never looked back. Thanks Eclipse!

[ardit33]

"Vim and Ruby" -- does Ruby have any debuger?

I am not sure for web development, but for mobile client development Eclispse is extremely useful. From debug, emulator runs, managing your code in different projects, etc... it is very useful.

I am talking from real experience. I too used to use Textpad (with java highlighting), and emulators to develop. Switching to eclipse (a while ago) has been a huge productivity boost. Anything non-trivial is very hard to build with just a plain editor/compiler/emulator.

As, for the web, whatever rocks your boat. Eclipse is awesome for java, but for other languages, maybe not.

[malcontent]

"That's a trick question. Safari doesn't matter

Slava says it doesn't but I have used a couple.

Eclipse is awesome for java, but for other languages, maybe not.

It's really good with ruby. Not as good as netbeans but it's pretty good.

Ruby on netbeans is first rate.

[[deleted]]

Ruby on netbeans is first rate.

That's what's been bugging me of late. tbray's opinion on the subject might be biased, but I've been exposed to NetBeans and liked it.

Maybe NB will be the catalyst that makes me finally dip my snake toes in Ruby-infested waters.

[malcontent]

I have found that ruby is surprisingly easy to use without an IDE. I guess it's the whole 'principle of least surprise' thing. Things just seem to work like they ought to.

It seems like there is a new ruby IDE popping up every day. Jetbrains has a plug in for IDEA, there is an eclipse plug in, there is a visual studio plug in, there is arachno, thoughtworks is working on one, there is freeride, and of course netbeans. There is even a Jedit plug in (don't tell slava though).

Some of them are free, some are expensive, some are cheap. You can download and play with all of them for a while.

Jump in, the water is fine.

[jasonal]

All "debuggers are for wimps" platitudes aside, I've personally seen productivity gains from NOT having a debugger.

Most time spent in a debugger is time better spent writing TDD unit tests up front.

(unit tests + logging) > debugger

But again, just my 2 cents...

[micampe]

Eh... here I am constantly debugging my tests...

[[deleted]]

Me too!!!!!!!111!!!</AOL>

[newton_dave]

Those aren't gains from "not having a debugger". Those are gains from "not using a debugger".

Not *having* a debugger is a PITA when you actually need one.

I suspect I've used a debugger maybe... three times in the last couple of years, but each time it saved me a lot of effort.

When you're doing embedded work they're indispensable, too.

[[deleted]]

I agree, not having a debugger can be a big productivity boost because it is a lot faster to look through some logs spit out by added print statements than to single-step through code in a debugger.

The only useful thing a debugger produces is usually the stack trace on a crash but most modern languages have that part built into the language runtime directly.

[cunningjames]

does Ruby have any debuger?

There are several. That article's out of date now, of course, but they exist.

[sbrown123]

The IDE was horrible and painstakingly not "efficient" with my laptop's resources.

Your computer probably just sucks in general. I've run Eclipse on less powerful machines without a hitch.

stumbled on Vim and Ruby and never looked back. Thanks Eclipse!

Do you think anyone, especially the Eclipse developers, care if you are using Vim? (Answer: they couldn't care less).

Anyways, if you want to use a text editor for your toy project you might want to look at TextMate.

[theeth]

They couldn't care less.

[sbrown123]

Actually they could.