he Eclipse Workbench, at the most fundamental level, is merely a platform for software development tools and provides little functionality on its own. With the appropriate plug-in components, however, it's capable of supporting any type of software development. It is most commonly used for developing using the Java programming language, in large part because the SDK version of Eclipse, (which you can download from the Eclipse site), includes the Java Development Toolkit (JDT) which, together with the basic Eclipse platform, provide a full-featured Java IDE.

Eclipse is easy to use, but the key to using it effectively is to understand the way it is organized. This excerpt from Chapter 2 of Eclipse in Action: A guide for Java developers (Manning Publications) is designed to get you up to speed quickly by introducing you to the basic elements of Eclipse user interface—perspectives, views, and editors—and showing you how to create a Java project.