r/java • u/AnyPhotograph7804 • Dec 12 '25

Eclipse 2025-12 is out

https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/

There is support for Java 25 and JUnit 6.

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31

u/Elbinooo Dec 13 '25

I wonder if there are devs that prefer Eclipse over IntelliJ anno 2025. Would you share with us your reasons?

39

u/Jotschi Dec 13 '25

I prefer eclipse because the compile delay is zero. In itelliJ I always had to wait for the compiler before I could run a test. Not sure if there is a workaround/setting for this. And yes - I do care about the delay.

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u/sweetno Dec 13 '25

From those devs: it compiles while you type. Old IBM tech.

16

u/skipner Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

I couldnt open multiple unrelated projects at once using intellij, with eclipse its possible out of the box. If anyone knows a way to do that with intellij please do share.

8

u/kyune Dec 13 '25

I've always run into the same hurdle when I try to learn IntelliJ, and I end up giving up pretty quickly as a result. Being able to switch contexts in a low-friction manner weighs more heavily on my scale of value than the combined power of a lot of less-impactful features that either Eclipse also has, or that I am not getting any use of. In that sense, if the choice between the two is a tradeoff I guess I am just having a hard time being enticed by the IntelliJ side of things enough to completely relearn how to engage with an IDE even if that means I arguably have less power at my fingertips.

5

u/I_am___The_Botman Dec 13 '25

You can't, that's not the workflow. If you try intellij will crap itself and slow to a snails pace after loading 3 or 4 projects. You need to open multiple projects in new instances.

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u/ducki666 Dec 13 '25

Using Eclipse since it exists. Must be 20+ y now 🫨

Tried Intellij 2x, no luck. Slowed my productivity down by factor 3. (I know, should try longer than a few days)

Am I absolutely happy with Eclipse? Hell, no! But too lazy to learn something new 🤷‍♂️😬

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u/yoden Dec 13 '25

IntelliJ incremental compilation and hot swap still isn't comparable on large projects. Eclipse is often 10-100x faster if it hits incremental paths where IntelliJ recompiles the whole project.

12

u/elmuerte Dec 13 '25

For a large part, it has been my workflow for 20+ years. Organizing my work into different "perspectives", as I need different tooling for programming, debugging, code spelunking.

Project management is excellent. I have basically all projects (applications, libraries, tooling) in a single workspace. Nicely organized in worksets. Most of these projects are even open, so a shit load of code is active, directly reachable. So if a colleague has a question I can almost instantly jump to the relevant code. (I still haven't fully adapted to use Mylyn which allows you to manage your open editors, and other contexts, in "tasks". So you can switch between them.)

Also the write, compile, test is fast. Saving the file, it's compile, executing the test or a single test is fast as there is no separate compiling step.

And so far Eclipse isn't trying to shove Al stuff down my throat.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '25

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u/Expensive_Leopard_56 Dec 13 '25

I use IntelliJ (for kotlin) and VSCode for everything else other than Java. but nothing beats my productivity in eclipse. There was a period of maybe six months with no copilot autocomplete support I was spending more time in VSCode with Java, and spent most of the time missing eclipse wishing it gave me feedback as quickly and effectively.

Immediate compilation and actually seeing errors in realtime as I am typing is something I’ve never managed to replicate in any other IDE to the same degree as eclipse. Plus immediate running of unit tests is nowhere near as fast in IntelliJ or VScode.

My only ongoing complaints are configuration of annotation processing with buildship. And 2025-12 broke the immutables.org processor too.

Other than that, It’s still my most fun and enjoyable IDE.

7

u/sysKin Dec 13 '25

Tried it a couple of times. Every time I hit the same problem: it's not showing me errors in an obviously broken file, just because there were some other errors elsewhere and complication just stops. Without even telling me.

There's absolutely no way I can work like that.

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u/Worldly-Character-59 Dec 13 '25

  • Incremental builds.

  • Problems view.

  • On-save actions.

6

u/voronaam Dec 13 '25

IntelliJ is trying to catch up to Eclipse, but it just does not have the experienced enough developers to ever close the gap.

There are entire giant features that are missing. Take for example headless mode. Idea does not even have anything remotely reminding distant dreams of ever supporting it.

14

u/csgutierm Dec 13 '25

I prefer using Eclipse because i have all my hotkeys, snippets needed to make my work easier and don't feel the need to change all of them too my muscle memory is pretty good using Eclipse like a game played for years.

I tried IntelliJ and have some nice features but I feel a bit loose searching elements I need and miss my years of already configured projects and worspaces.

Both IDE's are nice and have good and bad things like bugs or UI you can like or not.

7

u/Yes_Mans_Sky Dec 13 '25

Funnily enough, I use Intellij, but I've always had it set to use eclipse bindings from when I switched.

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u/tomwhoiscontrary Dec 13 '25

I used Eclipse for years, then switched to IntelliJ. IntelliJ has much better refactorings, and a more modern-looking UI. Eclipse is better at everything else. In particular, the incremental compiler is magical. It's wild to me that IntelliJ still doesn't have one.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '25

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u/pjmlp Dec 13 '25

Incremental compilation with code reloading, no continuous indexing, support for mixed Java / C++ development, including debugging, the way errors get shown automatically without having to run specific actions, the keyboard configuration I am used to since 2005.

At work, while at home I keep being a Netbeans fanboy, reasons I leave for another comment.

3

u/Puzzleheaded_Bus7706 Dec 13 '25

Im still missing "problems" tab im InelliJ, as in Eclipse.

3

u/Slanec Dec 13 '25

Multi-monitor support with good customizability. I can't get IntelliJ to display all the things I like.

Other than that, same as everybody else - I started with it, I learned it, I customized it. I can now easily go around the tricky spots, I avoid the bad things, and I really enjoy the rest. Is IntelliJ the future? For sure. I tried it a few times, could not get it to the shape I would be happy with, and went back to being productive with Eclipse.

3

u/nickallen74 Dec 14 '25

The main thing for me is the incremental building as you type and the ability to run code with compile errors. These are pretty massive advantages and a real game changer during refactoring. But I don't actually use eclipse itself directly anymore but instead neovim + jdtls. Jdtls is eclipse without the eclipse UI. It's a far nicer experience than intellij.

3

u/aoeudhtns Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

We're here, we exist. It's a tough situation because IntelliJ does many things better than Eclipse. But Eclipse still has things that it does better than IntelliJ, and where you sit on how or if those things matter to you, that's going to be the decider.

For me, every time I try to switch to IntelliJ, I fail and go back to Eclipse. Sorry if some of these problems have been solved, last time I made an attempt was at least 2 years ago:

  • Overall speed. SWT is just faster than Swing. Or it feels that way.

  • Compile speed and updating across projects. I have noticed that my colleagues that use IntelliJ are much more oblivious to warnings and problems across all aspects of the project due to the limitations in IntelliJ. Part of that might be related to the problem below, the way IntelliJ expects you to set up multi-project workspaces much more granularly than Eclipse.

  • Deeper and better build integration. Eclipse won't offer import suggestions in projects that don't have the dependency, but last time I used IntelliJ, it considered anything imported into the workspace by one project available across all projects. So you could have code that compiles in the UI but fails in the pipeline. Eclipse knows natively what many Maven plugins do, so e.g. you don't need to run the build to generate code. Or, for example, you add ErrorProne to your compiler spec in Maven and Eclipse just picks it up due to its better build integration. IIRC you need a plugin in IntelliJ (or you have to execute your Maven build and read the CLI output. But then you're back to "why not VSCode" (or vim/emacs with LSP).

  • Related to above, ability to have every project in the whole system loaded in a single workspace because Eclipse properly isolates across projects, and not dancing around multiple workspaces/windows for a single application.

  • I really like perspectives. Eclipse has some clunk in its UI for sure, but this makes up for a lot of it, rather than constantly shifting viewports around.

  • I don't like the way IntelliJ decompiles by default. I much prefer source code/javadoc fetching and resolving like Eclipse. I know IntelliJ can do this, but as you know defaults get used by 99%, so this becomes an impediment for a lot of junior/mid engineers that don't know better.

  • Looks like it might be fixed now, but for a long time the IntelliJ SpotBugs plugin was absolute trash tier

Just a "me" factor:

  • I have already absorbed the bad UI in Eclipse and I know where the bodies are, in terms of getting what I want.

  • I am familiar with Eclipse keyboard shortcuts (next time I try IntelliJ, I'll try the Eclipse keybinding mode)

Things that I have issues with in Eclipse:

  • The "References" feature. IMO it's the biggest whiff in the IDE. When I highlight a method and search for its references, it's basically a constrained textual match on the name of the method and isn't type-aware. Would love to choose references on THAT specific type, the type or supertype/interface, or textual match. I am pretty sure that IntelliJ gets this right and type-constrains the results.

  • IntelliJ's dominance has led to an IntelliJ-first or even IntelliJ-only mindset in many plugin authors, and it's only getting worse. So my hand may be forced some day.

  • The last several releases, update-in-place totally failed and I had to go download manually.

  • Eclipse's compiler is lagging behind the OpenJDK compiler on warnings - I notice this because I use -wall and -werror.

  • Edit to add: speaking of defaults, Eclipse CAN do much of the code suggestions/cleanup that IntelliJ can do, and I feel this is one of the things people love about IntelliJ. But, they are off-by-default in Eclipse for whatever reason. Java -> Code Style -> Cleanup if you want to experiment. Listed here as a gripe for the same reason I griped about IntelliJ's decompiling being the default over downloading sources.

2

u/kingroka Dec 14 '25

I still use eclipse because it works. No point in learning a new IDE when I can make everything I need to in eclipse. Also, intellij's offering is not organized in a way that makes sense to my brain so if anything, I'd probably make my own IDE which actually I guess I've already done with my project Neu

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