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Comment by paperwork | Hacker News Reader

I think this is the main difference between an IDE and an editor. Eclipse adds value by having some sense of your overall project. When you go through the process of setting up a project (for new or existing source), it parses all the files, gets info about all jars in classpath, etc. It can use this information to do things like:

- Change class name and every other java file which uses that class will also update correctly.

- Show errors when a dependency is missing.

-Change type of a method in one class and every error caused by that change, in every file is immediately highlighted.

-Right click on a method and ask eclipse to show you every method which calls that method...recursively.

-...and so on

You CAN just open a java file without creating a project, but then you don't get much more than syntax highlighting or formatting help.

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Hell yes

Not to mention you write "obj." and can instantly see all the methods available with arguments.

Also if you add say an interface or inherit a new object it will immediately throw an error if required methods are not implemented. You then just hit ctrl+1 and enter and it will automatically add all the boilerplate functions you need to comply with the new interface.

It's a must for statically compiled, boilerplate filled languages like Java and C#. That said, if intellij is more polished for a niche and has a better UI I'll switch away from Eclipse in a heartbeat.

If you're not working with a dynamically typed language or markup language though then an IDE can really add a significant boost to productivity by eliminating all the repetition and actually making the strict static typing work for you.

>Not to mention you write "obj." and can instantly see all the methods available with arguments.

Eclipse could learn a lot from Xcode on how to do autocomplete well. I haven't spent enough time thinking about each to articulate a list of differences, but overall Xcode's implementation feels much faster, more responsive, and more intelligent - in terms of both when and what to show. It's the same "feature" in both IDEs, but in Eclipse it feels like I'm fighting against it much more often than in Xcode.

In PHPStorm (IntelliJ spin-off) I can just do "Open Directory", and it will parse all the source files inside that directory into a new project automatically (if none exists yet for that folder). All those intelligent features you describe work right away.

Why can't eclipse do that?

You can. For java if you have a source directory, you New Project -> Java -> Create from existing source code. If there isn't an option for that in php, its because no body has written it, not because its not possible.

I personally would prefer to have a "project" file, like Visual Studio or even Sublime Text. I can still get all the information I need about the dependency/class names used in the project, while at the same time I don't need to deal with the workspace stuffs.

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