IDE/Criticism

This page aims at listing criticism that is often heard from end-users about Eclipse when comparing IDEs. This can become a list of top priority issues from an end-user POV. When possible, the concrete items should be linked to a Bugzilla entry.

For a better use, this page should contain no judgment from Eclipse contributors. People can discuss on related Bugzilla entries.

• http://www.ihateeclipse.com/
  • Eclipse says that you need to refresh (with F5) whereas it could refresh automatically.
    • This is fixed since Juno SR1.
  • Default preference settings are not very adapted.
  • ...Follow link for exhaustive list...
• http://developer4life.blogspot.de/2012/01/intellij-vs-eclipse.html
  • "The default code completion and assistance in Intellij is faster and better."
  • "If you are a rookie developer, Intellij can improve your code. Solution? Stricter checkstyle? Integrate FindBugs by default?
  • "Intellij user experience is much easier to grasp."
  • "No doubt Intellij’s plugin [for SVN & Git] is more reliable, has better GUI and easier to use."
• [French] http://www.developpez.net/forums/d1363765-2/general-developpement/debats-developpement-best-of/quel-est-votre-environnement-developpement-edi-prefere-en-2013/#post7408401
  • Eclipse doesn't support Maven Out-of-the-box Solution? Make m2eclipse available by default in Java IDE package, seems to be the case since Kepler...
  • JPA support is better in IntelliJ
• [French] http://www.developpez.net/forums/d1363765-2/general-developpement/debats-developpement-best-of/quel-est-votre-environnement-developpement-edi-prefere-en-2013/#post7408095
  • Eclipse too slow Solution? Profiling and fixing perf bottlenecks
  • Eclipse freezes too often Solution Avoid delivering bugs ;)
  • Eclipse is not ergonomic
  • Not beautiful Solution? A nicer theme out-of-the-box
• [French] http://www.developpez.net/forums/d1363765-2/general-developpement/debats-developpement-best-of/quel-est-votre-environnement-developpement-edi-prefere-en-2013/#post7408401
  • Eclipse editor doesn't link to external resources compared to IntelliJ. Example: IntelliJ can automatically open an XML file from a Java field...)
  • Eclipse doesn't have inner language completion (completion for an XPath expression inside Java code) compared to IntelliJ
  • Java completion in IntelliJ matches context.
  • Java completion in IntelliJ understands camel-case obj.mM matches obj.myMethod) works in JDT editor
• Why we dropped Eclipse for IntelliJ? http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/09/why-we-dropped-eclipse-in-favour-of-intellij.html
• NetBeans evangelism http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/nothing_compares_8230_to_netbeans
• [French] http://www.developpez.net/forums/d1456816/environnements-developpement/eclipse/etes-satisfait-l-environnement-eclipse/
• [French] http://www.developpez.net/forums/d1451852/environnements-developpement/eclipse/nouvelle-version-l-environnement-eclipse-disponible-eclipse-luna-apporte-support-natif-java-8-a/
  • Projects can work with Maven or Eclipse m2e, but not in the other one. m2e doesn't integrate all Maven plugins.
• http://java.dzone.com/articles/netbeans-ide-and-intellij-idea