The annual EclipseCon conference takes place in Santa Clara in less than 2 weeks. In just a few years, Eclipse has gone from a niche technology to absolute domination in tools. Not only is Eclipse a hugely popular platform for C++ and Java IDEs, it has become the basis for tools across a wide range of languages and technologies. Whether it's web development, data tools, or SOA, there's an Eclipse-based tool. At this point, the only holdout is Sun, who has their own NetBeans tool, but it's never had the same kind of traction as Eclipse and I think they are just bitter about that.
Having spent a number of years at Borland in the 90s, where I helped launch Delphi and other products, I have always had a soft spot for Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). In my view, Eclipse completely reshaped the tools industry. It was a brilliant strategy on the part of IBM to go from nearly last place with their Visual Age product line to the number one position with Eclipse. Eclipse helped commoditize the tools space so that companies could focus on adding value, not on re-inventing the wheel.
More importantly, IBM didn't just "dump" a bunch of code into open source and walk away. IBM consciously consolidated their internal tools strategy around an extensible platform. They re-directed a team from their OTI acquisition in Ottawa to develop the base platform. And they achieved a native-level of performance that no one thought was possible using Java. In fact, Eclipse's SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) beat the crap out of Sun's own Swing library and AWT (Abstract Windows Toolkit). More than anything else, that single decision, focusing on a native look and feel instead of some funky pseudo-standard, demonstrated that IBM understood the user experience better than anyone else. And even better, IBM had the technical chops to make Java look cool!
Recently, Zend and IBM have proposed a new Eclipse-based PHP development environment. I was talking to Andi Guttmans, co-founder of Zend about their decision to work with Eclipse a couple of days ago. He said that the decision was not an easy one inside the company. They had written a lot of great code for their own Zend IDE, but the argument for going to Eclipse was just too compelling. By using Eclipse, they could tap into a huge ecosystem. Not only is Eclipse a rich platform, it has hundreds of plug-ins and it's become the standard platform for tools from SAP, Red Hat, Novell, JBoss, BusinessObjects, Actuate, BEA, Sybase, CompuWare, Iona, Nokia, Wind River, and many others.
Hey, this open source stuff, it seems to be catching on!
- EclipseCon: Overview
- Eclipse: Projects, downloads
- Andi Gutmans: Blog
- IBM: Comparison of SWT, Swing, AWT
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