After starting a third review in a row of a software development environment based on the Eclipse platform (PyDev, Adobe Flex 3, and Nexaweb Enterprise Suite), something a friend said to me a year or two ago rang true: “There will be two major players in development software: Microsoft and its tools and Eclipse and its tools.” A cynic might say, “Good for Eclipse, not bad at all for a camel built by a committee,” but to make a point, cynics are often unfair and inaccurate.
The list of software vendors involved with Eclipse, and in many cases basing whole products on the Eclipse platform, reads like a who’s who: IBM, BEA, Adobe, Borland, Oracle, Nokia, SAP, Sybase, Zend, Iona, AMD, Intel, Novell, Nexaweb, QNX, Red Hat… and sixty more. Missing name(s)? Need one ask?
For vendors, Eclipse is a nice step ladder; it may not get all the way to the top, but it’s a good start. It’s free, it’s solid and it’s familiar. So why re-invent the wheel?
