Finger weg from Eclipse

We have this ongoing argument about not enough Java/Oracle programmers available. I took this to brush up on my Java know-how.

A friend suggested Eclipse to use as an IDE. So I listened and tried it.

Let me put it this way: I have not used such a bad piece of software in a while.

OK, it's free of charge but that's about all that speaks for it.

• It's slow. Dead slow. A simple "Hello world" took 5 minutes to set up, 2 minutes to debug and more than a minute to launch from the IDE
• It's complicated: To set up a project you need to go from Window to Window to set up projects, packages, classes, hierarchies and outlines
• It's slow (did I mention that already?): The code completion takes for ages and even blocks text entry (System - hang - .out. - hang - println - hang ...)
• It's confusing: Try to debug, does nothing. You have to select which type of project it should be (Can a Java class be debugged as C/C++?)
• It's broken: I tried to update the IDE (I used 3.2). There were some updated modules. The update mechanism asked over and over which Download center I wanted to use (the automatic selection ended in a disaster). And after another 15 minutes of downloading, the IDE told me, I had not enough rights to install the update. Thanks for telling me so soon
• It's cumbersome: Creating a SWT app is not straight forward. I gave up working on this one
• It's slow (deja vu): You can add plug-ins easily (if you have root privilege, that is). With each plug-in, the IDE becomes slower and more unusable
  

Conclusion: If I have to write programs in Java, I use Netbeans (free of charge) or IntelliJ ($ 599,- incl. TeamCity).