Eclipse vs Emacs

Overview

Emacs

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes322

Eclipse

Stacks2.7K

Followers2.3K

Votes392

Eclipse vs Emacs: What are the differences?

Introduction: When it comes to code editing software, Eclipse and Emacs are two popular choices among developers. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses, making them suitable for different types of programming tasks.

1. User Interface: Eclipse offers a more modern and graphical user interface, making it easy for beginners to navigate and use. On the other hand, Emacs has a more minimalist design and relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, making it more suitable for advanced users who prefer a hands-on approach to editing code.

2. Customization Options: Emacs is known for its high level of customization, allowing users to tailor the software to their specific preferences and needs. Eclipse also offers some customization options, but they are not as extensive as Emacs, making it less flexible in terms of tweaking the software to suit individual workflows.

3. Programming Language Support: Eclipse is particularly well-suited for Java development, offering a wide range of features and tools to enhance the coding experience. Emacs, on the other hand, supports a wide variety of programming languages, making it more versatile for developers working with multiple languages.

4. Learning Curve: Eclipse has a steeper learning curve due to its vast array of features and complex user interface, which can be overwhelming for beginners. In contrast, Emacs has a simpler interface but requires users to learn a multitude of keyboard shortcuts and commands, making it challenging for those who are not familiar with this approach to code editing.

5. Performance: In terms of performance, Emacs is known for its speed and efficiency in handling large codebases, while Eclipse can be slower and resource-intensive, especially when dealing with complex projects. This makes Emacs a preferred choice for developers who prioritize speed and responsiveness in their coding environment.

6. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Features: Eclipse is a full-fledged IDE with features like debugging, version control integration, and project management tools built-in, providing a comprehensive environment for software development. Emacs, on the other hand, is more focused on text editing and lacks some of the advanced IDE features found in Eclipse, making it better suited for users who prefer a lightweight and customizable editing experience.

In Summary, Eclipse and Emacs differ in user interface, customization options, programming language support, learning curve, performance, and integrated development environment (IDE) features, making them suitable for different types of developers based on their preferences and requirements.

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Advice on Emacs, Eclipse

christy

Program Manager

Jul 1, 2020

Needs adviceon

Python

Eclipse

IntelliJ IDEA

UPDATE: Thanks for the great response. I am going to start with VSCode based on the open source and free version that will allow me to grow into other languages, but not cost me a license ..yet.

I have been working with software development for 12 years, but I am just beginning my journey to learn to code. I am starting with Python following the suggestion of some of my coworkers. They are split between Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA for IDEs that they use and PyCharm is new to me. Which IDE would you suggest for a beginner that will allow expansion to Java, JavaScript, and eventually AngularJS and possibly mobile applications?

2.03M views2.03M

Comments

Manabu

CEO, Co-Founder at WinguMD

Jun 13, 2020

Decided

I originally chose IntelliJ over Eclipse, as it was close enough to the look and feel of Visual Studio and we do go back and forth between the two. We really begin to love IntelliJ and their suite of IDEs so we are now using AppCode for the IOS development because the workflow is identical with the IntelliJ. IntelliJ is super complex and intimidating at first but it does afford a lot of nice utilities to get us produce clean code.

551k views551k

Comments

Simon

Software Engineer at Picnic Technologies

Aug 21, 2020

Review

Notepad++ is insanely simplistic. It doesn't help much with the coding, as it doesn't have stuff like auto-completion. Atom is a great editor for pretty much any language. It has a plugin ide-java to support Java programming. When starting with Java, I would recommend it. But, when becoming even a bit better in the language, I would suggest a more mature IDE like IntelliJ or Eclipse. The refactoring and code manipulation tools make it a lot quicker to program. Only when getting started it might be a bit too much to both learn a language AND learn an IDE. So Atom might be better to get started.

343 views343

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Emacs	Eclipse
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.	Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.
Content-sensitive editing modes, including syntax coloring, for a variety of file types including plain text, source code, and HTML.;Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.;Full Unicode support for nearly all human languages and their scripts.;Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface.;A large number of extensions that add other functionality, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, and more. Many of these extensions are distributed with GNU Emacs others are available separately.	-
Statistics
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 2.7K
Followers 1.2K	Followers 2.3K
Votes 322	Votes 392
Pros & Cons
Pros 65 Vast array of extensions 44 Have all you can imagine 40 Everything i need in one place 39 Portability 32 Customer config Cons 4 So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked 4 Hard to learn for beginners 1 Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux	Pros 131 Does it all 76 Integrates with most of tools 64 Easy to use 63 Java IDE 32 Best Java IDE Cons 14 2000 Design 9 Bad performance 4 Hard to use
Integrations
No integrations available	Java

What are some alternatives to Emacs, Eclipse?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

IntelliJ IDEA

Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.

WebStorm

WebStorm is a lightweight and intelligent IDE for front-end development and server-side JavaScript.

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.

PyCharm

PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!

Related Comparisons

Eclipse vs Emacs: What are the differences?

Eclipse vs Emacs

Overview