Judging by its initial popularity with developers and its ongoing focus on extensibility, Eclipse may indeed be the last IDE. But where does that leave the tools vendors? Will innovation or decimation follow from the triumph of Eclipse?
by Glen Kunene, Senior Editor
March 8, 2005
urlingame, Calif.—The support that Eclipse has gained from tools vendors such as BEA and Borland indicates how established the integrated development environment (IDE) has become since IBM developed and then spun-off the project more than a year ago. During the EclipseCon 2005 conference here last week, all were ready to sing the praises of Eclipse and anoint it as an application development phenomenon. What's been the secret sauce for Eclipse's success? The formula includes an open source foundation, Agile development-based release cycles, and vendor and language neutrality. All together, the result is an open-source development environment, application framework, and integration platform in one.
The Right Tool at the Right Time
During his presentation, How Eclipse Changes the Game, Forrester Research Vice President Carl Zetie, discussed the climate in which Eclipse has emerged and the impact it has made on the application development market. The ever-widening adoption of the open source technologies Linux, Apache, and MySQL laid the groundwork for commoditized software platforms. Meanwhile, software organizations are striving for simpler application development. What used to be a clear-cut choice between adopting a single vendor's entire integrated product suite or implementing best-of-breed custom integration has become an opportunity to have both with Eclipse's focus on infrastructure instead of features and its ability to fit any scale of organization.
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urlingame, Calif.—The support that Eclipse has gained from tools vendors such as BEA and Borland indicates how established the integrated development environment (IDE) has become since IBM developed and then spun-off the project more than a year ago. During the EclipseCon 2005 conference here last week, all were ready to sing the praises of Eclipse and anoint it as an application development phenomenon. What's been the secret sauce for Eclipse's success? The formula includes an open source foundation, Agile development-based release cycles, and vendor and language neutrality. All together, the result is an open-source development environment, application framework, and integration platform in one.
Glen Kunene is a Senior Editor for DevX.
