In pursuit of perfection
As the year draws to a close, we can look back on a year's worth of improvements and changes since 3.2M4 was released. Of course, we had EclipseCon 2006 in March, and then Eclipse 3.2 released in June 2006.
For the first time, we had a complete release of projects together under the Callisto name; although the foundation was keen to point out that Callisto was a simultaneous release of projects, rather than synchronising on a version number like 3.2. Next year, it will be Europa.
Eclipse has come a long way since then, and it's getting better all the time. There's a lot of hard work that gets put into the Eclipse community to make it better; the full-time committers are obviously a key driving force (sponsored by the foundation members), but it's also important to remember the part-time committers and other community members who contribute fixes to the platform. But it's not just about committers; everyone who uses or blogs about Eclipse, even just raising bugs when Eclipse doesn't do quite what you want or expect, helps the community as a whole. Eclipse may not be me or you, but together as a community everyone can play a part. After all, without a community, where would EclipseZone be? There's a number of nominations on the Eclipse Community Awards to recognise the input of key individuals; nominations are due by 22nd January 2007 and voting begins/ends on the 29th January and 16th February respectively. The winners will be announced at EclipseCon on the 5th March 2007.
Of course, Eclipse can never reach perfection; for one, perfection is subjective, and not everyone necessarily agrees on the best way of doing something; for another, innovation will always continue and newer features are going to be added in the future that make it better than before. For that reason, some people will always use the milestone releases (such as the recently-released Eclipse 3.3M4) in order to take advantage of the recently added features (or fixed bugs). Others will use the current stable Eclipse 3.2 release; and others unknowingly use even older versions, such as the Rational Application Developer whose 6.1 version is based on Eclipse 3.1 (and older still, WSAD 5.1 is based on Eclipse 2.1). Plug-in developers wishing to target those customers often need to be aware that not everyone is using the latest and greatest.
There is, however, a close line between evangelism and fanaticism. Wayne does a good job in the former, going to conferences and giving demonstrations about what Eclipse is capable of (and more often than not, just spreading the word that Eclipse is more than just Eclipse JDT). On the other hand, fanatical comments like "if you don't use langauge x/y/z or ide a/b/c or library 1/2/3 then you're a fool/idiot/communist" really don't help anyone; after all, a good workman should be fluent with multiple tools rather than just treating everything like a hammer (or, if that doesn't work, a bigger hammer). You should also be wary of fanaticism's related sibling hero-worship; just because Uber-Coder "d00d" (or whatever he calls himself) happens to use a particular language/ide/library, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best for all situations. Eclipse is great, but it's not perfect; if you want to help make it a little bit more perfect, then add your suggestions to the pile at bugs.eclipse.org or even learn how to contribute fixes yourself.
It's also important to note that Eclipse has competition; commercially, from IntelliJ IDEA in the Java IDE space, and NetBeans in the open-source arena. In fact, IntelliJ IDEA was first released in January 2001 and NetBeans was open-sourced by Sun in June 2000, so Eclipse's 1.0 release in November 2001 definitely makes it the late entry to the pack. But competition is good; ideas that have been created in one IDE have often found themselves in other IDEs at some point later (start your photocopiers ...). I'm also glad that NetBeans now provides the NetBeans platform, which (much like Eclipse RCP) allows you to build applications on top of a framework rather than assembling it by individual widgets. Of course, I'm biased as to which one I'd use, but either of those are a better choice than assembling widgets manually. Given the length of time that both have been around for, it's unlikely that there's many people who have become experts in both platforms, but it would be interesting to hear about the different styles; and indeed, there's a presentation proposal for EclipseCon regarding Eclipse RCP compared with NetBeans Platform which should be interesting.
So, with this newsletter bringing closure to 2006, what of the future? Well, if the the Eclipse way (note: 2005 presentation; the 2006 presentation wasn't uploaded. How come all the little guys submitting talks get harassed about uploading presentations to the server whilst the big guys get away with not submitting them before or after the conference?) is anything to go by, then Eclipse 3.3 will be released in June 2007. (It will be interesting to see if there's a 3.3M5a in February, much like 3.1M5a and 3.2M5a have been released almost immediately after their M5 counterparts :-)
Of course, there's also EclipseCon 2007 coming up in March as well, which some of the EclipseZone team will be going to (including myself). The contents of the conference hasn't been fully decided; whilst the tutorials already have been chosen, the deadline for the long talks to be chosen is on the 30th December 2006, and the short talks by the 30th January 2007. Whilst the programme committee have the final say in which presentations are chosen, your input is used to sway which ones are important to you; so please read and comment on the long and short presentations to help decide what EclipseCon will cover.
I hope that 2006 has been a great year for you, and that 2007 will continue to be so too. Happy Holidays!
Until Next Time,
Alex Blewitt
alex@eclipsezone.com
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