Eclipse Editor's Review

Customizable, Powerful and Efficient Development

Eclipse or 'Indigo' as it is also known wears many hats, serving as a platform for software development and an open source community.

While the basic Eclipse SDK is intended for development in Java, various plug-ins allow for other programming languages to be supported including C++, PHP and Clojure. If you don't see what you need, you can write a plug-in of your own and contribute it to the community. Third party plug-ins are also supported. This use of plug-ins makes Eclipse incredibly customizable and lightweight.

Server development with remote debugging is also supported, as is Web Tools development and other options. The features and options are too numerous to mention, but the Java 7 and cross-platform WebKit support are particularly welcome.

The interface is clean and highly usable, and international users will be happy to know that multiple languages are supported. The Marketplace Client makes it easy to browse plug-ins. The drag and drop functionality generally makes for easy installation of your preferred solutions although some selections may not install smoothly. If you are updating a previous version of Eclipse, the "import" feature allows for automatic installation of your previously used plug-ins - very handy!

Eclipse might seem a bit daunting if you are new to development, but even in that situation there is a wealth of supporting documentation and tutorials available.

App Pros: Open-source community, customizable via plug-ins, multiple human languages supported, multiple programming languages supported.
App Cons: None

Conclusion: Eclipse is a powerful, customizable and effective development platform offering support for multiple programming languages as well as a very nice open source community. It's hard to believe that it is free!