Eclipse startup time (Was: questions on PhanTango 'merger' (was Merging Tangobos into Tango)

[Mike Parker]

Chad J wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>> Don Clugston Wrote:
>>>
>>>> Any idea what's wrong with Eclipse? Why is the startup so 
>>>> unbelievably slow?
>>>> Seems to be about 25,000 million clock cycles!
>>>> (Is this typical of Java apps? It's the almost the only Java app 
>>>> I've ever used).
>>>> What on earth is it doing? (Genuine question, not a flame).
>>>
>>
>> What Eclipse version and bundle are you using? Have you installed any 
>> extra plugins? What is your starting perspective? What is your PC 
>> specs, and Java VM version?
>> And what do you mean by "unbelievably slow" ? (Give me a measure in 
>> seconds :) )
>>
>>
> 
> Fresh eclipse install.
> Windows XP on an AMD Turion 4000, with 1 gig ram.  160 gig notebook 
> harddrive, nothing special.
> It takes ~23 seconds to start up first time.
> It takes ~5 seconds to start up subsequent times.
> Unfortunately, I can measure the time it took to start up by using only 
> my wristwatch.  This is on a reasonably fast computer, though it is 
> dated by a couple years (it WAS very fast).
> 
> For comparison: Context, my ATE of choice, takes something less than 1 
> second to start, first run.  I didn't bother spending time to measure it 
> in more detail.
> 
> Computer technology advances, but these days it does take quite some 
> time to get the order of magnitude leap.  Without such leaps occurring 
> regularly, we still don't quite have the cycles to waste.
> 
> For something as mundane as text editing, I'd expect the response time 
> to be about instantaneous.  And by instantaneous, I mean insignificantly 
> longer than it takes the harddrive to seek, and maybe read a few megs. 
> There are editors that deliver, just not eclipse.


Wow! Startup time is an odd criterion to use to write off an editor as 
not delivering. The features of Eclipse far outweigh the 23 seconds of 
start up time. When I'm working with Java, Eclipse is my hero. There are 
very few IDEs out there that deliver as much.