Java > Scala

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Somedude" <lovelydear at mailmetrash.com> wrote in message 
news:jbeva3$2785$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Le 04/12/2011 03:40, Don a écrit :
>> If you work in an environment where practically all apps are fast,
>> Eclipse stands out as being slow. The startup time is particularly
>> striking.
>> I don't see any reason for this. Mostly when you open an IDE you want to
>> first open a few files, look at them, maybe do some editing.
>> It ought to be possible to do that within 2 secs of starting the IDE,
>> while everything else continues to load.
>> It's unusual to perform a major refactoring of your code base within 10
>> secs of opening your IDE, but it seems you can't do anything at all,
>> until everything has been loaded.
>>
>
> I stopped bothering to respond to Nick Sabalausky, as obviously, he is
> not trying to discuss, he just throws his opinions around without any
> substance.
>

Sounds like some dude I know...

> As for startup time, who cares really, as you open it only once and
> leave it open afterwards ? As Jonathan and I have said now at least 3
> times, you don't close it as it's your primary tool.

And then every time I work on something else and don't want Eclipse 
continuing to suck up half my resources? I'm expected to just leave it 
running anyway?

> And the reason it's
> slow is, at startup time, it loads:
> - the GUI toolkit SWT and the interface manager

If SWT is slow to load, that's another strike against it, not a defense.

> - the customized interface (called "perspective" in eclipse)

Although SWT uses native widgets, Eclipse does seem to do a lot of 
non-standard stuff, too, like the oversized clearly-non-native tabs. So I 
don't know how much this affects performance. But even if it does, that's 
just another strike against Eclipse. I don't want non-native, *especially* 
if it slows things down.

> - hundreds of plugins

If it needs that many plug-ins then something is very, very wrong. For 
example, maybe some of those should be built-in. And if you meant "hundreds" 
literally (but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just 
exaggerating since it definitely sounds like an exaggeration), then..."Wow, 
that's just insane. What, does it need a separate plugin for each letter of 
the alphabet it supports?".

> - the compiler

That should only be needed if you're using the compile-as-you-type feature 
(which I'd rather not since it slows down basic typing and UI interaction to 
an unacceptable degree), and on a language for which Eclipse supports it.

> - your open projects
> - all the files that were open last time

See, I don't even want that anyway. I don't like how Eclipse insists on 
keeping every project I've ever touched open all the time. And automatically 
resuming the last session, while a nice feature for those who want it, is 
not something I've ever personally felt a need for. So 1. I'm supposed to 
pay the price for that? and 2. Seriously, how long does it take to open a 
few text files?

>
> On my C2D, a
> fresh install of eclipse Indigo starts in about 12 seconds,

I assume you're on some sort of 10GB multi-core machine as most Java users 
have to be on, in which case: 12 sec startup is ridiculously slow. Even on 
2GB x64 dual-core, that's still very, very slow.

> with 340
> plugins totaling 138 Mb in the plugins directory, most of them being
> actually loaded at startup time.

Oh my god, you were actually serious about "hundreds"...?!? Most of them 
being needed all the time? (Then why the hell are they plug-ins in the first 
place?)

I knew there was something wrong about how Eclipse was designed, and this 
just proves it.

> Apart from that, eclipse happily handles projects with 2 million lines
> without a sweat on an average PC, so no, I don't think it's sluggish.
>

It's certainly sluggish compared to Scintilla-based programs. Even with all 
the fancy stuff turned off (which I have tried - it does make a difference, 
but not enough).

> If it *was* the sluggish chore Nick Sabalausky pretends it to be,
> eclipse wouldn't be chosen as the main platform by Zend, Adobe Flex,
> QNX, Altera, Aptana, etc for their own product, there wouldn't be more
> than 5 million downloads for each release of the Java platform only (i.e
> not counting all the said customisations for other languages), and Java
> users would instead flock to Netbeans or Idea, which both have their
> strengths and are free IDEs as well.

Argumentum ad populous, huh? That's one of the worst fallacies I've ever 
heard. "If Nazis weren't right there wouldn't have been so many of them", 
huh?

There's so many things wrong with that argument it's not even worth 
validating it by going into them.

>
> Conclusion on this pretty boring subject: Eclipse being slow is about as
> old a rant as saying Java is slow.

Saying they're slow may be old, but it's still true no matter how stubbornly 
you refuse to acknowledge it.