Today Zend Studio for Eclipse was released. I don’t know if they offer a plugin version right now, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Since Aptana Studio (still built on Eclipse 2.2!) became commercial and slower with more and more features they added, i switched to Eclipse PDT. But gawwwdamnnit it’s not the only 200 to 500MB Eclipse installation on my computer here?

Don’t get me wrong: i like Eclipse although even if it eats up my resources. I tried and gave up on Komodo, ZendStudio and stuff. They just are not enough for me. Nowadays i’m just more powerful with a good all-integrated IDE that all looks the same. I learned much since the day i only used a simple texteditor, and now can play out the powerful features of a good IDE.

But powerful isn’t just quite as powerful as thought when it comes to bugs and slow programs/plugins:

• Most Eclipse-editions always scan my files in background slowing down the main program
• or locking down other important processes like „compile? (Adobe Flex Builder3 and most Eclipse)
• or locking down the „save? function (Eclipse PDT)
• and some even fuck up the backspace-key and then the whole IDE (Aptana crashes)
• or fuck up the configuration and hang when typing a a key or clicking a file (Eclispe PDT, mainly Aptana)

Well, these are mainly Eclipse und plugin problems you might think. But i can tell you i hate switching between Aptana (mostly good for extensive JavaScript), Eclipse PDT (PHP) and Adobe Flex Builder 3 (AS3) only because one program has not the feature i need for the moment (like SVN or debugging, or the java-stuff). And then if i plug in these features, the program becomes slow or the feature plugin just isn’t compatible.

And these programs are all just bloated versions of one and the same Eclipse platform that just take up space and memory on my computer!

I don’t demand much, just an IDE that just works without crashing or hanging and giving me features like code completion/coverage for AS3, XML, XSLT, Java, JavaScript; SVN-Support; a good XML editor that can also load 1MB files without hanging (see Altova XMLSpy!), and much more features?
Well, in the end i don’t really know what to suggest:

• Should i again use smaller IDEs?
• Do commercial all-in Eclipse builts just have to stop?
• Should they better sell plugins, or give some feature plugins for free?
• Does Eclipse has to get a lot more faster and stable?! Yeah sure!
• When does Java get faster? Oh yes, it is fast right now?