Eclipse

[King_of_Men]

So I looked into their homepage, but I'm not quite sure what this package does. Will it compile to machine code, or just bytecode? Has anyone had any particularly good or bad experiences with it? Would you recommend it? They seem completely unable to write good documentation or FAQs, which is a point against.

For comparison, at the moment I write code in emacs and compile with the javac that comes with the Java SDK.

[erikd]

It won't compile to machine code, but what you will get is an extremely competent IDE for java (it's actually more than that, but most use it just as a java IDE), probably the best free IDE for java although that of course depends on personal taste as well.
It's very easy to understand and use, and packed with useful features like refactoring, source formatting etc. The only thing lacking is a GUI designer, but I don't need that anyway.
I used to develop with just TextPad, but was immediately sold after trying Eclipse. I also tried Borland JBuilder, SunONE Studio, NetBeans and Visual Paradigm, but I liked Eclipse best.

I recommend to give it a try!

[princec]

It's got a GUI designer now (separate download).

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[blahblahblahh]

They seem completely unable to write good documentation or FAQs, which is a point against.

Yes. Their level of organization and explanation is somewhere down there with mould and other fungus.

Which is probably because they have one of the world's best IDE's, and they know it - so they know they can get away with shockingly bad website and docs and STILL be one of the top 3 most widely used IDE's .

But...you should probably post in the Tools Discussion thread forum if you want to know more (and there are several discussions there on eclipse, and eclipse vs netbeans etc, if you look back through the posts)