RE: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse rant

[Scott Stanchfield <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[We should take this to the tools newsgroup...]

How much system RAM do you have? Many of these problems seem indicative of
heavy virtual memory swapping (especially wrt leaving it minimized for a
while and coming back to it -- sounds like the OS has paged eclipse out and
you're suffering page swapping....)

Also -- how much do you have loaded in your workspace? If you have all of
your code in there, it'll take more RAM to keep track of it. I'd recommend
closing any projects you don't currently need (you can close them through
the resources perspective to reduce memory usage.)


Finally, I'd like to recommend you temper your tone a bit. There were
several items in your rant that you simply didn't understand how Eclipse
performs that function. It's generally a better idea to nicely state you're
having trouble and we can give you an assist, rather than rant that Eclipse
is the problem.

I've had many folks at work come running down to my desk screaming
(literally) how Eclipse sucks, and after talking with me for 20 minutes they
end up loving it. It's often a matter of knowing where to look for
information.

Take care,
-- Scott

==============================================================
Scott Stanchfield    scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx    http://javadude.com

Lead author of "Effective VisualAge for Java, Version 3"
                                      http://javadude.com/evaj

VisualAge for Java Tips and Tricks     http://javadude.com/vaj
Visit for Java Enlightenment!             http://www.jguru.com
==============================================================

> -----Original Message-----
> From: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of dotan
> Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 11:20 PM
> To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse rant
>
>
>
> Dear eclipse-dev moderator, I hope that you will publish this rant,
> you'd be surprised, sometimes they are good for evolution too.
>
> I'm suffering from several problems in the Eclipse development
> environment, I would like to mention them as they are all consistent
> bugs and annoyances.
>
> 0. Open a file in Plugin Development view and edit it, Go into Debug
> view, start debug as Java Application then go to the Plugin Development
> view and having a blank (unrendered) window with no editor at all, I get
> consistant hangs, sometimes opening and closing the Plugin view pane a
> few times solves this.
>
> 1. Open a file in Plugin Development view and edit it, Go to debug view,
> start debug as Java Application, finish debugging, when you open the
> file again in the Plugin Development you only see the last function you
> debugged (opening and closing the file tab solves this, totally
> unacceptable and an especially annoying bug).
>
> 2. I've encountered several times where Ecplise just refuses to open the
> Plugin Development tree at all, I've noticed this after debugging
> several times, closing the entire application and reopning it (which by
> itself is a rather heavy operation) seems like the only solution
> I've found.
>
> 3. Eclipse is using 72 megabytes of memory under normal operation, even
> when idle, on average, where does all that memory go? I know where it
> *definitely* doesnt go, that is, not to the low-tec graphics, or un
> double-buffered screen refreshing, or the slow I/O...
>
> 4. Spontaneous curruption of the .metadata worksapce information, though
> this happend a relatively low number of times (exactly 5 times to this
> day), it was the disease of myriads of exotic symptoms, the most common
> one being "Refer to the log file", and getting booted from Eclipse,
> refering to the log file showed errors of ClassLoader failing, and other
> interesting, surely by-design errors, I solved this one by backing up my
> .metadata directory, just in case Eclipse decide to "roll over and play
> dead" again.
>
> 5. General unacceptable sluggish slowness, this is by far the most
> commmon problem, say if Eclipse is used as a GUI framework this is could
> be acceptable (the users themselves dont notice anything unusual from
> any other monstrous Java application) but as an IDE its just plain
> emberessing, the keyboard input and the screen output lags, when using
> eclipse exclusivly the refresh time is considerably better, but still
> not good enough for most touch-typers, ranging from 1 to 10 seconds on
> average, but when tabbing and sharing my (multi tasking) operating
> system with more than 1 application, that is, an application other than
> Eclipse, the lags get to over a minute.
>
> 6. Having Eclipse as a background process for a long time and returning
> to it leaves Eclipse in an unworkable slow state, I find it hard to work
> that way, as maybe a certified real live retarded person would be able
> to work at this speed, any person who works near a keyboard all day will
> find this amusing, if not sad, perhaps the Eclipse team should think
> about it as good tool to use in special education or in down syndrom
> therapy, not as a serious code writing IDE.
>
>
> Another one, but "not a bug but a feature", The Eclipse way of
> recompiling upon saving is maybe an interesting feature in that "boo ha
> bad idea taken too far" anthropological sort of way, but otherwise its
> not very cost-effective in large projects, there should be a way to
> disable this and get back reality.
>
> I admit, I type fast, I work fast and I want my computer there with me,
> I have other big applications like Oracle servers, Internet Explorers,
> Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft word open when I *work*, but _come on_, do
> you really expect any serious developer to use the tool seriously? in
> comparison to any other editors in UNIX (e.g., Emacs or vi) or Windows
> (e.g., Source Insight, or even Microsoft's own IDE) this is ridicules.
>
> I didn't expect it to work well, it just looked better in the ad, call
> me when you grow up, cause right now, this doesnt cut it, I'll stick
> with the command line, thanks.
>
>
> Dotan.
>
>
>
>
>
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