total Eclipse
If you are a Java developer (which doesn’t include myself), you have almost certainly heard about Eclipse. For the rest of us, “Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular.” Eclipse runs on many platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, or if you have too much free time you can download the source.
My first exposure to Eclipse was somewhere around version 2. I had to do Java programming for my computer science classes a while back, and I came across the Eclipse project. I don’t remember much about it, other than the fact that I couldn’t get it to work with whatever version of Linux I was using at the time. So I abandoned Eclipse.
Anyway, I had an idea recently for an Internet based game, so I was back in the market for an IDE. I was Googleing and noticed some sites discussing Eclipse and PHP. Huh? I thought Eclipse was a Java IDE. I found out that Eclipse is capable of being extended much like Firefox. I was amazed to learn that in addition to Java, languages like Python, C++, C#, XML, Cobol, PHP, CSS, Perl, Actionscript, even shell scripting can be done in Eclipse. Adding a new language is as simple as installing a plugin.
But wait there’s more…
Just like a bad infomercial Eclipse isn’t finished telling you about its great features. Eclipse has plugins which allow database interaction with popular DBMSs (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Adabas, DB2, Oracle, and more). Do you use a version control system like CVS or SVN? Well you should be. And Eclipse has plugins to interact with both of these popular softwares. Do you like to write code with a friend who lives in another city? Just install another plugin and you have real time collaborative software development over the Internet.
There are too many interesting plugins to list in this entry so you will just have to check out Eclipse for yourself. With so many great features and a price tag of $0, Eclipse is worth a look.
Tags: eclipse