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Eclipse vs Vim: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Eclipse and Vim are both popular text editors used for coding and programming. While they serve the same purpose, they have distinct differences in terms of features, usability, and customization options. This article will outline the key differences between Eclipse and Vim in a concise manner.

  1. Ease of Use: Eclipse is known for its user-friendly interface and intuitive features. It provides a wide range of built-in tools, such as a debugger, compiler, and task runner, making it easier for developers to navigate and work on projects. On the other hand, Vim has a steeper learning curve due to its modal editing system and reliance on keyboard shortcuts. However, once mastered, Vim users often find it faster and more efficient for editing and navigating code.

  2. Customization: Eclipse offers extensive customization options, allowing users to personalize their workspace, themes, and preferences. It supports a variety of plugins and extensions, making it adaptable to different programming languages and development needs. Vim, on the other hand, is highly customizable through the use of configuration files called ".vimrc" and numerous community-developed plugins. Users can tailor Vim to their specific workflow and coding preferences, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

  3. Community Support: Eclipse has a large and active community with regular updates and support from the Eclipse Foundation. It offers extensive documentation, forums, and resources that help users troubleshoot issues and stay up to date with the latest developments. Vim also has a dedicated user community that provides support, plugins, and extensive documentation. However, Vim's community size may be relatively smaller compared to Eclipse.

  4. Resource Consumption: Eclipse is a feature-rich IDE that requires a significant amount of system resources to run smoothly. It is known to be memory-intensive and can slow down older machines or those with limited resources. Vim, on the other hand, is a lightweight text editor that runs efficiently even on older hardware. It consumes minimal system resources, making it a preferred choice for resource-constrained environments or remote development scenarios.

  5. Real-Time Collaboration: Eclipse supports real-time collaboration features in some of its versions, allowing multiple developers to work on the same project simultaneously. This functionality enables seamless collaboration and helps in reducing conflicts between team members. Vim, being a standalone text editor, lacks built-in real-time collaboration features. However, it can still be used in conjunction with external tools or plugins for achieving similar collaborative workflows.

  6. Availability and Compatibility: Eclipse is available across different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. It supports a wide range of programming languages and framework integrations, making it versatile for various development environments. On the other hand, Vim is a command-line editor that is available on almost all platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is compatible with most programming languages.

In Summary, Eclipse is a user-friendly and feature-rich IDE with extensive customization options and strong community support, while Vim is a lightweight and highly customizable text editor with a steep learning curve, efficient resource consumption, and availability on multiple platforms.

Advice on Eclipse and Vim
christy craemer
Needs advice
on
EclipseEclipseIntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA
and
PyCharmPyCharm

UPDATE: Thanks for the great response. I am going to start with VSCode based on the open source and free version that will allow me to grow into other languages, but not cost me a license ..yet.

I have been working with software development for 12 years, but I am just beginning my journey to learn to code. I am starting with Python following the suggestion of some of my coworkers. They are split between Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA for IDEs that they use and PyCharm is new to me. Which IDE would you suggest for a beginner that will allow expansion to Java, JavaScript, and eventually AngularJS and possibly mobile applications?

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Replies (12)
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Pycharm is great for python development, but can feel sometimes slow and community version has Somme very annoying restrictions (like they disabled jupyter notebooks plugin and made it premium feature). I personally started looking into VS Code as an alternative, and it has some very good potential. I suggest you take it into account.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

The Community version of PyCharm is free and should give you what you need to get started with Python. Both PyCharm and IntelliJ are made by JetBrains. IntelliJ is initially focused on Java but you can get plugins for lots of other things. I subscribe to JetBrains' Toolbox: https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/ and have access to all of their great tools.

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Charles Nelson
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

I couldn't imagine using a development tool other than the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate All Products Pack. A single license allows me to work directly on my server running Ubuntu and/or my workstation running Windows 10 Pro simultaneously. My current project uses HTML, W3CSS, JavaScript, Java, Groovy, Grails, C, GO, Python, Flask, and Rust. For me it's worth every penny of the $150 license fee. And you can try it for free.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Hi, I will give my opinion based on my experience. I have used PyCharm, both community and Professional version. The community has limited functions, like you can't use a Jupyter notebook whereas it's available in the Professional version. PyCharm is slower compared to Visual Studio Code. Also Visual Studio Code is an editor which supports various languages. I myself have used both Visual Studio Code and PyCharm. I feel Visual Studio Code would be better choice. You may as well decide based upon your requirements.

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Ivan Martinez Morales
Software Engineer Intern · | 4 upvotes · 704.3K views
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I'd personally recommend Visual Studio Code as it gives you the flexibility of working in any language, so long as there are extensions to support it. It gives you the flexibility to learn Python, venture into Java, Javascript, and eventually AngularJS, and potentially mobile applications. It's also free and you can install it on your personal computer. I think Visual Studio Code would serve your intended use case best.

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awesomebanana2018
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Visual Studio code is easy to use, has a good UI, and a large community. Python works great with it, but unlike some other editors, it works with most languages either by default or by downloading a plugin. VS Code has built in linting, syntax coloring, autocompletes (IntelliSense), and an api for plugins to do there own tooling.

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Isaac Povey
Casual Software Engineer at Skedulo · | 3 upvotes · 704.5K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ really is the best for Java, I switched from eclipse years ago and never looked back. As for javascript, python and angular either using the standalone products from jetbrains (pycharm for python, webstorm for js) or installing the relevant plugins for InteliJ will be your best bet. Pycharm etc. are really just InteliJ with some additional plugins installed.

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Pranshu Verma
Engineer at Cisco Systems · | 3 upvotes · 704.4K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

If you starting with Python then PyCharm is better. For Java I would suggest to go with IntelliJ IDEA but people also prefer eclipse so I would say try both and then decide. For JS/Angular/React I would suggest go with VSCode. I personally use it and prefer as its light weight and have good integration with chrome for frontend development.

PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA are both products of JetBrains. They have a free (limited feature) and paid edition. Eclipse is free. VSCode is also free.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

Pycharm is all you need to get start coding in python or any of its framework. Its an awesome tool you should give it a try :)

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Brian Turner
System Architect at Mary's Watch, Inc. · | 1 upvotes · 704.3K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

Easy to learn and everything you need

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

All three are great, however, I believe that IntelliJ IDEA's multiple IDE's are slightly more straight-forward and more up-to date than Eclipse. If I had to choose one specifically for Python projects I would go with PyCharm.

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Pritam Nandy
Engineering Manager at Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited · | 1 upvotes · 651.8K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

This is a very easy to use tool and gives you the opportunity to start coding right after the installation with almost everything setup automatically by the tool.

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Decisions about Eclipse and Vim
Manabu Tokunaga
CEO, Co-Founder at WinguMD · | 10 upvotes · 532.4K views

I originally chose IntelliJ over Eclipse, as it was close enough to the look and feel of Visual Studio and we do go back and forth between the two. We really begin to love IntelliJ and their suite of IDEs so we are now using AppCode for the IOS development because the workflow is identical with the IntelliJ. IntelliJ is super complex and intimidating at first but it does afford a lot of nice utilities to get us produce clean code.

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Pros of Eclipse
Pros of Vim
  • 131
    Does it all
  • 76
    Integrates with most of tools
  • 64
    Easy to use
  • 63
    Java IDE
  • 32
    Best Java IDE
  • 9
    Open source
  • 3
    Hard for newbews
  • 2
    Great gdb integration
  • 2
    Professional
  • 2
    Good Git client allowing direct stage area edit
  • 2
    True open source with huge contribution
  • 2
    Great code suggestions
  • 2
    Extensible
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 0
    Works with php
  • 347
    Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing)
  • 328
    Fast
  • 312
    Highly configurable
  • 297
    Less mouse dependence
  • 247
    Lightweight
  • 145
    Speed
  • 100
    Plugins
  • 97
    Hardcore
  • 82
    It's for pros
  • 65
    Vertically split windows
  • 30
    Open-source
  • 25
    Modal editing
  • 22
    No remembering shortcuts, instead "talks" to the editor
  • 21
    It stood the Test of Time
  • 16
    Unicode
  • 13
    VimPlugins
  • 13
    Everything is on the keyboard
  • 13
    Stick with terminal
  • 12
    Dotfiles
  • 11
    Flexible Indenting
  • 10
    Hands stay on the keyboard
  • 10
    Efficient and powerful
  • 10
    Programmable
  • 9
    Everywhere
  • 9
    Large number of Shortcuts
  • 8
    A chainsaw for text editing
  • 8
    Unmatched productivity
  • 7
    Developer speed
  • 7
    Super fast
  • 7
    Makes you a true bearded developer
  • 7
    Because its not Emacs
  • 7
    Modal editing changes everything
  • 6
    You cannot exit
  • 6
    Themes
  • 5
    EasyMotion
  • 5
    Most and most powerful plugins of any editor
  • 5
    Shell escapes and shell imports :!<command> and !!cmd
  • 5
    Intergrated into most editors
  • 5
    Shortcuts
  • 5
    Great on large text files
  • 5
    Habit
  • 5
    Plugin manager options. Vim-plug, Pathogen, etc
  • 4
    Intuitive, once mastered
  • 4
    Perfect command line editor
  • 1
    Not MicroSoft

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Cons of Eclipse
Cons of Vim
  • 14
    2000 Design
  • 9
    Bad performance
  • 4
    Hard to use
  • 8
    Ugly UI
  • 5
    Hard to learn

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What is Eclipse?

Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.

What is Vim?

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

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What are some alternatives to Eclipse and Vim?
Android Studio
Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. It provides new features and improvements over Eclipse ADT and will be the official Android IDE once it's ready.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
IntelliJ IDEA
Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.
NetBeans IDE
NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.
PyCharm
PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!
See all alternatives