Eclipse day

So, finally we were able to organize the Eclipse Day as a part of our Software Developers Networking group we are organizing in Split.

First of, all I can say is that it was great… for me personally much better then a standard user group meeting, simply because of the interactivity which we’ve all had.

There were approximately 10 people, 3 of them were presenters - but the whole idea was in interactivity. The presenters would start talking about a subject from Eclipse (Antonio talked about Eclipse in general and later on on CDT - a C++ dev. addition to Eclipse, Srečko talked about the Java integration with the tool, and finally Goran talked about the extensibility) and we would chime in with our questions and thoughts.

From my side, I was the main Visual Studio propagator - every good thing the guys mentioned from Eclipse, I’ve challenged with my opinion on how you would (or wouldn’t) do the same thing with the Studio.

Some of my conclusions were:

1. Both are great tools, with still my preference being on Visual Studio (not because I live in it, it just suits me a little bit better - at least on the first look)
2. With functionality they both follow each other - Visual Studio *took* some great things from Eclipse, in turns Eclipse did the same from Visual Studio, the same follows with Java and C#, both are good - although as you might have guessed, C# to me seems better and more forward thinking - but still they follow each other
3. Resharper + Refactor Pro still brings the experience topped over the one the presenters had with Eclipse

Some things I see VERY lacking to Visual Studio (or better said, some things Eclipse has fundamentally better):

1. MicroKernel idea + distributions - Visual Studio is overloaded with stuff I don’t need, nor use - while this is great to have generally, it would be great to be able to have a really good and stable *Kernel* or base of the IDE, and then build it up with everything I need (and only I need) - because of the MicroKernel architecture and it’s plugin architecture (OSGi), you can (or some other vendor) can make specialized distribution of Eclipse for different purposes (e.g. have a Wizard based one for some developers, and a completely wizard-less, designer-less one for me :)) - that said with only manipulating the plugins you can narrow down that implementation as well by turning off some plugins, and their initialization (by the mentioned plugin standard) is Lazy, so they are loaded once you need them - and not a minute earlier. This gives me a pretty great idea how a *hog* of a IDE can quickly become all you need, and only what you need.
2. OSGi plugin architecture - It’s great to see that the whole extensibility story of an IDE is centralized over a standard. While Visual Studio currently does have a great Plugin architecture, it would for sure be better if they would have something a little bit more as according to some standard (first to my mind pops up easier adoption, shared learning resources, etc…)

Some things I think are better with Visual Studio (or better said… I don’t know that they are better with Eclipse, by what I saw they are not):

1. Visual Studio + ReSharper + Refactor Pro - nuff said, check out the tools (the guys asked if I could do a presentation on that, maybe I could in the future?)
2. Visual Studio is going forward with giant steps - I don’t see that with Eclipse (on the other hand, probably I didn’t see enough plugins - which are everything with Eclipse)
3. Software Factories initiative - while this is platform independent idea, the ideas which are behind it in the MS world (DSL’s and GAT) are really nice

Final thought… I still wouldn’t give my Visual Studio for even 2 Eclipses, but Eclipse is really made on some GREAT foundations… and is all you want it to be, meaning - if you don’t like something or think something could be better - you just need to change it.

Final thought 2… I need to get to know a little bit more of Eclipse to be able to really judge it… all the thoughts here are just me thinking out loud (you can think of it as Brain Draft’s :))

Cheers!