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Comment by tajen | Hacker News Reader

Customizable? but is it easy? Is there a drag'n'drop for the toolbar buttons? Can the fonts for menus and panel titles be downsized easily?

Also, Eclipse tends to try to do everything in their IDE: Transition an issue, commit, execute a command-line program, browse the database, etc. It's a very different spirit from, say, SublimeText where each program is dedicated to one thing well. It has a lot of impact on the UI, hence the critics "Code is 40% of my screen". I personally prefer IDEA now because it comes with thin shims.

Btw, the HN rules say "No negativity". Just a reminder to be considerate for the Eclipse team.

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> Eclipse tends to try to do everything in their IDE

Isn't that the whole point of an IDE? I mean, an Integrated Development Environment, by definition, should have all the tools integrated, as opposed to a text editor which is only one tool in an unintegrated development environment.

I prefer Emacs myself, but if I wanted an IDE, I'd probably go for the one that can do everything I want to do.

Other comments say they prefer the axiom "IDE==awesome autocompletion" (e.g. LightTable) rather than "IDE==Embed all the tools into one window!".

I have worked in IT services companies. They wrap almost a full OS into Eclipse (or WSAD). They have people who don't have a clue about programming [1], they need to onboard them and they do little to upgrade their knowledge. I used to wonder how architects learnt about Git and Maven, until the day I decided not to use IDE buttons, tried them on the command line and discovered "--help". It's all self-documented, output is all logged, I can debug compilation errors alone!

[1] Recruitment and HR is a cost center for consultancies. At one point they just took graduates from Chemistry major with a mild interest in Excel. Needless to say those who stayed became PMs. I've seen millions of euros from government, banks and insurances thrown into multiplying employees, rather than improving employees.

I suspect there are very few programmers who want to click a Copy button on a toolbar with a mouse. Those sorts of tools should be hidden by default, at the very least.

My comment was related to having all tools built into the IDE rather than using lots of different command line (or other) tools, not to the UI buttons.

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