{"slug": "eclipse", "name": "Eclipse", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 8, "warners": 3, "score": 0.616, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-27", "latest": "2026-08-26", "why": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 3}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://eclipseide.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Eclipse"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 791217760, "item_id": 49451110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451110", "by": "inigyou", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing.", "excerpt": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing. For the uninitiated, Netbeans uses a traditional \"compile and run\" button, but Eclipse does incremental compilation as you type (and actually wrote its own Java compiler for this purpose, which almost exactly matches the Oracle compiler). You get real errors as you type, and when you press run the program instantly runs. Didn't", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "NetBeans", "story": "A curmudgeon tries a language server"}, {"id": 783636225, "item_id": 48977264, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48977264", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i made this[0] in a few hours using Java, LWJGL and Eclipse", "excerpt": "Even at the time Java had some great tools and IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse) and both computers and the JVM were fast enough for any performance issues compared to fine tuned C++ to not matter much, especially for a game like Minecraft that didn't (at the time anyway) push the CPU much. Java allowed Minecraft to run pretty much everywhere, including as an applet (very important in its early time) and it relied (and still ", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3"}, {"id": 737205216, "item_id": 46075326, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075326", "by": "mindcrime", "date": "2025-11-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Eclipse with the Github Copilot plugin. Nice and simple, but it works.", "excerpt": "> What's your AI coding setup? Eclipse with the Github Copilot plugin. Nice and simple, but it works. I've been dabbling a bit with things like Codex and OpenCode, but I haven't really adopted any of them as a major part of my routine workflow so far. But time will tell. And then sometimes I just ask coding related questions to Gemini or ChatGPT and copy & paste from the response, into my codebase, as indicated by th", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your AI coding setup?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 770046624, "item_id": 48127914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48127914", "by": "bhickey", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The days of using Eclipse were particularly bleak.", "excerpt": "Before cider there was Brightly. My recollection was that it was developed by a team in Atlanta and got cancelled before it reached general availability. People were pissed at the time (ex. \"cancelling brightly considered harmful\"). That died down when Cider delivered on what Brightly had promised. The days of using Eclipse were particularly bleak. These days I use Antigravity for the overwhelming majority of my work", "context": "former Google engineer", "use_case": "Java development at Google", "switched_from": "", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 770008016, "item_id": 48125501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125501", "by": "cletus", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Now Eclipse was a real problem at Google because of the source control system.", "excerpt": "There's more history than this. Disclaimer: Xoogler (2010-2017). When I first started the environment you used depended entirely on language. In the C++ and Python space, there was the vim and emacs divide. With Java it was more complicated. Some still used vim/emacs but a lot of people used Eclipse. Now Eclipse was a real problem at Google because of the source control system. Java IDEs are primarily built to import", "context": "Xoogler (2010-2017)", "use_case": "Java development at Google", "switched_from": "", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 738358576, "item_id": 46147411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147411", "by": "mexicocitinluez", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "how bloated and memory hungry Eclipse was. It was almost unusable.", "excerpt": "> The most popular is \u201cVS Code\u201d, which needs only a few gigabytes of RAM to render the text. > We used Eclipse, which was a bit like VS Code. This made me laugh. You can't possibly be a serious person if you think Eclipse was better in any way shape or form than VS Code. I don't have a great memory, but one thing I can absolutely still remember with 100% clarity is how bloated and memory hungry Eclipse was. It was al", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Programming peaked"}]}], "who": [{"by": "malkia", "context": "Xoogler on an Ads team", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128755", "date": "2026-05-13"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["java development", "java development at google", "ide"], "compared": [{"slug": "intellij-idea", "name": "IntelliJ IDEA", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "cider", "name": "Cider", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48073979", "title": "A History of IDEs at Google", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448150", "title": "A curmudgeon tries a language server", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967256", "title": "Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499674", "title": "I program without syntax highlighting", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145797", "title": "Programming peaked", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074594", "title": "Ask HN: What's your AI coding setup?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 791217760, "item_id": 49451110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451110", "by": "inigyou", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing.", "excerpt": "I remember when I moved from netbeans to eclipse and the speed of compilation was amazing. For the uninitiated, Netbeans uses a traditional \"compile and run\" button, but Eclipse does incremental compilation as you type (and actually wrote its own Java compiler for this purpose, which almost exactly matches the Oracle compiler). You get real errors as you type, and when you press run the program instantly runs. Didn't", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "NetBeans", "story": "A curmudgeon tries a language server"}, {"id": 783636225, "item_id": 48977264, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48977264", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i made this[0] in a few hours using Java, LWJGL and Eclipse", "excerpt": "Even at the time Java had some great tools and IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse) and both computers and the JVM were fast enough for any performance issues compared to fine tuned C++ to not matter much, especially for a game like Minecraft that didn't (at the time anyway) push the CPU much. Java allowed Minecraft to run pretty much everywhere, including as an applet (very important in its early time) and it relied (and still ", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3"}, {"id": 770060081, "item_id": 48128755, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128755", "by": "malkia", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we used the Eclipse, then we started switching the IntelliJ.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (2014-2017). My team (part of Ads) used primarily Java, and we used the Eclipse, then we started switching the IntelliJ. Cider was used also a lot, but I've heard even back then some folks were free to use whatever they like - vi, emacs, you name it.", "context": "Xoogler on an Ads team", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 770046624, "item_id": 48127914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48127914", "by": "bhickey", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The days of using Eclipse were particularly bleak.", "excerpt": "Before cider there was Brightly. My recollection was that it was developed by a team in Atlanta and got cancelled before it reached general availability. People were pissed at the time (ex. \"cancelling brightly considered harmful\"). That died down when Cider delivered on what Brightly had promised. The days of using Eclipse were particularly bleak. These days I use Antigravity for the overwhelming majority of my work", "context": "former Google engineer", "use_case": "Java development at Google", "switched_from": "", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 770008016, "item_id": 48125501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125501", "by": "cletus", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Now Eclipse was a real problem at Google because of the source control system.", "excerpt": "There's more history than this. Disclaimer: Xoogler (2010-2017). When I first started the environment you used depended entirely on language. In the C++ and Python space, there was the vim and emacs divide. With Java it was more complicated. Some still used vim/emacs but a lot of people used Eclipse. Now Eclipse was a real problem at Google because of the source control system. Java IDEs are primarily built to import", "context": "Xoogler (2010-2017)", "use_case": "Java development at Google", "switched_from": "", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 744653698, "item_id": 46540856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46540856", "by": "pmontra", "date": "2026-01-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I went through some IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans) because Java would have been nearly impossible otherwise", "excerpt": "> Supporting all languages equally future-proves the editor, because who knows which language we will use in ten years? I remember which editors I used in 1990: emacs for most of my code and vi (vim now) for light editing mostly on remote machines. They are the same editors I'm using today. I went through some IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans) because Java would have been nearly impossible otherwise but I never left those two", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "I program without syntax highlighting"}, {"id": 738358576, "item_id": 46147411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147411", "by": "mexicocitinluez", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "how bloated and memory hungry Eclipse was. It was almost unusable.", "excerpt": "> The most popular is \u201cVS Code\u201d, which needs only a few gigabytes of RAM to render the text. > We used Eclipse, which was a bit like VS Code. This made me laugh. You can't possibly be a serious person if you think Eclipse was better in any way shape or form than VS Code. I don't have a great memory, but one thing I can absolutely still remember with 100% clarity is how bloated and memory hungry Eclipse was. It was al", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Programming peaked"}, {"id": 737205216, "item_id": 46075326, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075326", "by": "mindcrime", "date": "2025-11-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Eclipse with the Github Copilot plugin. Nice and simple, but it works.", "excerpt": "> What's your AI coding setup? Eclipse with the Github Copilot plugin. Nice and simple, but it works. I've been dabbling a bit with things like Codex and OpenCode, but I haven't really adopted any of them as a major part of my routine workflow so far. But time will tell. And then sometimes I just ask coding related questions to Gemini or ChatGPT and copy & paste from the response, into my codebase, as indicated by th", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your AI coding setup?"}]}