This week, I went looking for a Java IDE to use as I start my summer quest to learn the Java programming language. My search came up with many results, but their was one program that stood above the rest for my choice as the best, full featured Java IDE out there. This program is called Eclipse. It can be downloaded from here.

Eclipse has tons of features crammed into every inch of the GUI. It has the basic IDE support, like many other programs, but it also allows for project management, plug-ins, and many other features. Although it is nice to have immense features and tools built in, this program needs some work on the integration of these features. The features are complex, and often are not easy to navigate.

As far as being a program that does anything you need that has to do with Java, you can’t get a better program than Eclipse. It is designed from the ground up to be a comprehensive development tool and it accomplishes this goal extremely well. You can do just about anything with this program, and unlike many similar programs, the advanced features are not just in beta or experimental - they are fully developed and ready to use.



Eclipse uses a very well integrated project management system. It is complicated at first, but once you play around with it for a bit, it is easy to get the hang of. There is somewhat of a learning curve to it, but as I said, it isn’t too hard to get used to. It allows you to keep your programs organized in a visual way, something that is not always the case with other IDEs.

One big disadvantage to having a huge amount of features is the fact that the program is a resource hog. It does many cool things, but those things take up extreme amounts of memory, and often cause the program to run sluggish on older machines.



A notable advantage of Eclipse is its support for plug-ins. There is a vast amount of resources available to help developers make custom plug-ins, as well as a huge variety of freely distributable plug-ins available online.

The GUI of Eclipse is somewhat cluttered. Personally, I believe they attempted to cram too much into the UI though the use of menus and sub-menus, instead of integrating the features into easy to see, as well as customize, toolbars. This aspect can take the blame for part of the learning curve, as you have to sift through various menus to find exactly what you are looking for.



Although it has several disadvantages, for a program the size of Eclipse, this should be expected. Its many features far outweigh the disadvantages, which makes it the program of choice for Java development. I will be using this program for all my Java testing over the summer. I recommend it to more advanced users, however, entry level programmers may want to consider finding a more user friendly program.