My New Favorite IDE – Eclipse
Posted by Jon Lee in Efficiency, Ruby on Rails, Web Development, tags: aptana, eclipse, IDE, RadRails, Ruby on Rails, web development
I’ve mentioned Aptana before as a very nice (free) alternative to Dreamweaver if you are primarily a coder like myself. I have been switching back and forth between the two for a while now, undecided on which one is better. On one hand, Dreamweaver has great FTP and site organization with an interface I’m very used to. On the other hand, Aptana is free, cross-platform and is designed more for the web coder than designer. This past week sealed the deal.
I’ve recently started playing with and using Ruby on Rails (it’s great by the way) and I am using Radrails as my editor. Now Radrails isn’t a standalone editor, it is actually a plug-in for Aptana. So with the great extensive Rails support, I can now comfortably leave Dreamweaver behind. But wait, it gets better.
Aside from web development coding, I also do a lot of Java development as well. Wouldn’t it be great to have a single development environment for all 3 languages? Enter Eclipse.
Eclipse
Perhaps this isn’t the first time you’ve heard about Eclipse but what I don’t think a lot of people realize is that Aptana is built upon the Eclipse platform. In fact, Aptana is available as a plug-in for Eclipse! So after installing Eclipse with base Java support, the Aptana plug-in and the Radrails plug-in, you suddenly have a free all-in-one cross platform program for all your coding needs. Additional plug-ins will extend support to pretty much any other language out there.
One criticism of Aptana is its lack of PHP support and that’s where PHPEclipse comes in. It’s not as good as Dreamweaver’s PHP support but for most uses, it’s fine. So with Eclipse’s extensibility, Aptana and its integrated FTP, Radrails and its integrated everything-related-to-rails, you have one powerful web development tool.
Since it is cross-platform, this makes Linux look a little bit sweeter. Oh did I mention you can run it completely off a USB stick? (Instructions to follow soon!)
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I have been using Aptana since the last time you mentioned it and I love it. It was a bit unstable at first but I haven’t had any problems with the new version. I have been playing with Rails as well, and using the RadRails plugin. It is nice to have the editor, server, and unit tests all in one place.
hmm, good post, I need to take a better look to that program, currently i use dreamweaver + editplus !
Im surprised you thing DW has good FTP, I find it quite problematic and am often forced to use different FTP programs… its an odd problem… that was using MX 2004
I have used Eclipse but find it a bit to heavy, I prefer lightweight apps myself, but Eclipse is definitely the daddy, especially if, like yourself you are using multiple languages.
I have been using Aptana quite a bit since you put me onto it… its still not a patch on screem, but in Windows its what I use… I have to day I think Aptana is pretty poor… there are a lot of features still waiting completion… like indentation of higlighted text (not present last time i looked)… debugging is not good, nor is configuring with localhost…. but its better than notepad haha.
I see you have the language plugin installed, the number of pages i have in google has shot up since installing that and I get hits in other languages now… so it does the job!
I have not applied it to other sites as they are very tightly targeted, I was worried that it may harm my SERP’s… I have no idea whether it would or not… but for rambling sites like SL and this site it can only be a good thing IMO.
What have you been doing with Java BTW, I used to use that a lot for WebApps… I hope your not being forced to write desktop GUI’s with it… its horrible for that… but good for networked apps… I like Java, there is an API for just about everything…. lots of goodies to be found…
If you are using it for Webapps and are interested in frameworks have a look at Jakarta Struts….
i currently just use dreamweaver.
yea I really like how it’s all integrated too.. makes development so much easier!
I’ve used Dreamweaver 8 and I really like the check-in check-out feature. I guess it isn’t a concern if you’re a lone developer but in teams, that feature is invaluable.
There is indentation of highlighted text although it isn’t as robust as Dreamweaver’s but I think it is because Aptana treats a tab character as a sequence of spaces instead of a tab.
I write really really basic stuff. No full out applications, it’s used mainly as a teaching tool so I create assignments with it and such.
Yep thanks for the suggestion on the plugin! I also had trouble with Babelfish – it destroyed my layout so I’m sticking with Google but unfortunately it doesn’t do traditional Chinese.
If you’re just doing HTML/CSS/PHP then Dreamweaver is pretty much perfect
[...] week I mentioned that Eclipse is now my favourite IDE for web development in PHP, HTML, Ruby on Rails and Java. I also mentioned that you can run Eclipse off an USB drive [...]
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[...] RadRails is a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. It streamlines many of Rail’s features so you don’t even have to touch the command [...]
I have been using eclipse since last three years, its a great IDE
Dreamweaver is for different purpose, its not a complete development environment
I’ve been using Aptana Studio, but I will switch to Eclipse as it sounds like a very great IDE, plus I could still have Aptana as a plug-in, that’s just great.
Eclipse is indeed a great IDE. I love it because its so expandable to support other programminglanguages.
I’m currently using aptana as my editor for php, css and javascript.