the corner office

Eclipse Galileo has been released. I commented on Ben Poole's site but thought I'd save most of my moaning for here.

Since about 2007, each release has seen me fall further out of love with Eclipse. Sure, each release adds useful new functionality, but the core Java IDE lacks focus and often as not adds 'features' which can only have been implemented in response to corporate sponsor diktat.

Ironically, I've very recently started using Intellij IDEA at work. I've tried it in the past, but always gave up after a few hours and went back to the comfort of Eclipse. After months of Visual Studio development, a new machine that didn't have a Java IDE, and me getting that little bit hazier with all the Eclipse Java shortcuts and tricks, I thought I may as well give it a real go. The jury's still out but it's slowly winning me over. Not as pretty as Eclipse (all praise SWT), but refreshing to use an IDE that has what you need, when you need it, and which just works, consistently and cleanly.

Anyway, I still use Eclipse at home, so I'll be trying out Galileo and I'll see whether there's anything new and exciting about it. In the meantime, I noticed, if my memory serves me correctly, that this is the first new Eclipse release where they didn't get around to updating the splash screen. Assuming I'm not wrong about my observation, I wonder if that's somehow significant.