Re: [ide-dev] Ctrl-1 driven development

[Michael Scharf <eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mickael,

I am a happy user of 300$/year IDE. But at the moment, Java is not my main
language and therefore my experience might be different. I use it for
coffeescript, python, javascript, html, make (unfortunately, like eclipse
you need to install C/C++ support to get makefile support), json, yaml,
markdown, and a few other languages/file formats.

For me, the killing features of the JetBrains products are
- support for lots of languages
- support for lots of libraries
- no installation hell  - they have a very simple way to install plugins
- no choice between 3 different 'full-screen' plugins on the marketplace
  that may or may not work
- when a new filetype appears in my workspace, it gently asks me
  if I want to install the plugin to support that
- regular updates with support for new libraries or language features
- I put all the code in one project and I have different git repos
  which just works fine (when I commit changes it will commit them
  to the different repos with the same message)
- no need to artificially create projects just to open XYX files in
  the XYZ perspective with the XYZ project browser that cannot deal
  with my ABC files.


And yes, I will happily pay the $300/year. If I assume I get $30/h, just
10h/year messing with installation and hunting for eclipse plugins,
the money is spend really well. Because in reality it is more like 50-100h/year
messing with eclipse installation and finding the right plugin and other
issues with eclipse.

If just 1% of the eclipse users (let's assume each of the 5,000,000
downloads is a user) would pay $300/year , the eclipse foundation
would get $15 million to support critical development..... With 0.1%
it still would be $1.5 million....

Another IDE:
Next week, will give a design patterns training in C++ based on Qt. I thought
about using CDT, but it turns out, that the Qt Creator, shipped with Qt is
good enough for me. Especially because it is really well tuned to work with
Qt. F1 gives you help about any type, the build works out of the box etc.
It took me one hour to learn what I need to know and I could fully concentrate
on what I actually wanted to do.

Yes, CDT is in many ways better, and I miss a lot of eclipse features using
Qt Creator. But when I have to get things done, I prefer solutions that work
out of the box over superior solutions that need a lot of configuration, and
setup.


I think that may be the key feature of the $300/year IDE as well:

   It just works.

Or at least, that is what I personally pay for. I just works.


I think one key difference is that JetBrains is driven by making
their customers so happy that they pay for it. Eclipse is driven
by lots of people with different interests, but making users happy
seems not to drive what actually is done. How can it? There is no
central force that can say: now we have to spend a lot of effort
on this, else we loose customers. Each project has it's own agenda
which is driven by the stakeholders (committers, companies that pay
the committers).

So, let's join forces and make eclipse the number one IDE not only for
java but for developers in general. Eclipse has soooo much potential and
so may great feature, all it needs is to unleash it.....

Michael

On 2015-10-14 18:21, Mickael Istria wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've spent some times asking former Eclipse RCP developers now converted to the 300$/year IDE on what they thing are the best things that are missing in Eclipse IDE.
> 
> What they tell first is the quality of the "quick-fixes" in IntelliJ. But when you get into details, what makes the difference isn't really that IJ has editing/refactoring operations that Eclipse IDE doesn't have, but more that IJ shows the
> useful ones (and only the useful ones) on their Alt+Enter.
> In Eclipse, a lot of operations are available under Source and Refactor context menu, but it's a lot of menus to browse, it takes a lot of time, mostly requires to use mouse, requires to read a lot of entries that are contextual to the
> editor but not to the active selection... It's complicated.
> Eclipse has the very good Ctrl+1 menu, which is basically meant to host such small operations that are in the context of the selection in an editor. Eclipse IDE (precisely JDT UI) already shows a few relevant ones, but some other good ones
> are missing.
> 
> So an easy way to improve Eclipse IDE would be to add to the Ctrl+1 the operations that users likes in this very narrow context. If you get such an idea, please report it to JDT/UI and share it. I believe fixing that isn't a too difficult
> task, with no risk at all, and that it would provide much user satisfaction. It could even be a great topic for a hackathon.
> I plan to make a more direct comparison of these quick-fixes one day (cannot be more precise, so don't wait for me if you're faster) and to come up with a list of the ones that are missing in Eclipse IDE to make this Ctrl+1 so efficent that
> user won't have to dig in the context-menu and will always get their favorite operation in a few keystrokes.
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Mickael Istria
> Eclipse developer at JBoss, by Red Hat <http://www.jboss.org/tools>
> My blog <http://mickaelistria.wordpress.com> - My Tweets <http://twitter.com/mickaelistria>
> 
> 
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