I think this is the main difference between an IDE and an editor. Eclipse adds value by having some sense of your overall project. When you go through the process of setting up a project (for new or existing source), it parses all the files, gets info about all jars in classpath, etc. It can use this information to do things like:

- Change class name and every other java file which uses that class will also update correctly.

- Show errors when a dependency is missing.

-Change type of a method in one class and every error caused by that change, in every file is immediately highlighted.

-Right click on a method and ask eclipse to show you every method which calls that method...recursively.

-...and so on

You CAN just open a java file without creating a project, but then you don't get much more than syntax highlighting or formatting help.

Hell yes

Not to mention you write "obj." and can instantly see all the methods available with arguments.

Also if you add say an interface or inherit a new object it will immediately throw an error if required methods are not implemented. You then just hit ctrl+1 and enter and it will automatically add all the boilerplate functions you need to comply with the new interface.

It's a must for statically compiled, boilerplate filled languages like Java and C#. That said, if intellij is more polished for a niche and has a better UI I'll switch away from Eclipse in a heartbeat.

If you're not working with a dynamically typed language or markup language though then an IDE can really add a significant boost to productivity by eliminating all the repetition and actually making the strict static typing work for you.

>Not to mention you write "obj." and can instantly see all the methods available with arguments.

Eclipse could learn a lot from Xcode on how to do autocomplete well. I haven't spent enough time thinking about each to articulate a list of differences, but overall Xcode's implementation feels much faster, more responsive, and more intelligent - in terms of both when and what to show. It's the same "feature" in both IDEs, but in Eclipse it feels like I'm fighting against it much more often than in Xcode.

In PHPStorm (IntelliJ spin-off) I can just do "Open Directory", and it will parse all the source files inside that directory into a new project automatically (if none exists yet for that folder). All those intelligent features you describe work right away.

Why can't eclipse do that?

You can. For java if you have a source directory, you New Project -> Java -> Create from existing source code. If there isn't an option for that in php, its because no body has written it, not because its not possible.

I personally would prefer to have a "project" file, like Visual Studio or even Sublime Text. I can still get all the information I need about the dependency/class names used in the project, while at the same time I don't need to deal with the workspace stuffs.

I gave up on eclipse the first day I tried it while working on a PHP project. I tried to open a plain text file in the project and from the project explorer(or whatever it's called) and it opened in notepad instead of an editor window in eclipse. I knew at that point it wasn't for me.

Maybe things have changed since then, but I haven't bothered to try it.

Eclipse feels like an OS in some respects due to the amount of configuration options there are. Eclipse has file extension to editor mapping. You can map .php files to an Eclipse editor, but it may not be the default. If you installed the PHP Plugin[1] for eclipse, I'd bet that your .php files would then open in it's editor instead of the system default.

[1] http://projects.eclipse.org/projects/tools.pdt

I had the PHP extension installed, but this was a plain text file I was using for something (probably a template file or config file or something).

It's a pain to have to worry about configurations like this instead of just being able to get work done.

Losing your preferences when creating a new workspace is a problem I've never quite figured out.

These days I set up a clean workspace and configure it and just make copies instead of creating the new workspaces from Eclipse.

I've heard some advocate a best practice of just using a single workspace and using views and Mylyn to manage context. But there is a point where Eclipse goes over a performance cliff with the number of files and projects and the system is just not usable. That and the ever present possibility of workspace corruption make separate workspaces the way to go for me.

Also: Key bindings suck. I used to be able to get "Home" and "End" work in a sane way on Macs, but not anymore.

> Say I have some code in some directory. I want to edit that code. How do I do that?

Eclipse organizes code by using "projects", which is really just saying "all files and folders in a specific directory". It's much like projects in SublimeText. In Eclipse you can open and close projects within a workspace. So I have like 15 projects within a workspace, but only have a few of them open at any given time.

The only time I use workspaces is for work when I have projects that are required to be a specific name (and I open different branches of that same project), but this is fairly rare for me.

> Say I have some code in some directory. I want to edit that code. How do I do that?

What is the problem with File->Open?

You choose Import to open/create your project. It can be either copied to your workspace or edited in place.

For the repeat search you can edit your key-binds.

Is IDEA much different in this regard?

yes IDEA is file based and much clearer. You can open a directory as a project. Done. (no import in workspace, weird syncs ....) Eclipse has inherited this behavior from visualage for smalltalk where in smalltalk it kinda make sense but for java ?

Honestly: yes. I find IDEA much easier to use. It has hundreds of shortcuts, but the basic ones match other editors.

That's hard to take, considering how long it took me to stop pressing ctrl-y for redo when I switched to intellij.

It's not just that it doesn't do what you expect, it's that what it does do is disasterous for someone who was expecting redo (because it destroys your forwards edit action tree).

IJ's mac settings are absurd. But you can change the settings to whatever you like. I've synched up my keystrokes from IntelliJ/RubyMine/AppCode and Sublime Text 2.

IDEA is a better laid out in my opinion. Eclipse was just a mess for my tastes.