# Eclipse IDE 46 Hacker News commenters recommended Eclipse IDE and 62 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Free, plugin-driven IDE praised for Java tooling, refactoring and a business-friendly license. Critics mostly call it slow, heavy and dependent on plugin setup. ## Why people recommend it - Customizable, plugin-rich platform (4 comments): "Eclipse has been thriving since 2002 mostly by virtue of being able to coordinate developers via plugin's and a business-friendly license." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291490)) "Managing views in eclipse like this is one of the things that keeps me using eclipse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46762300)) "it was easier to customize it to something close to perfect for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563612)) - Strong Java tooling (4 comments): "Eclipse was great for java specifically, but a lot of its useful/reliable features came from java being easy to standardize around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239650)) "the tooling (IntelliJ and Eclipse) do not have competitors in other languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376544)) "its also the only view that makes writing java tolerable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47264998)) - Solid refactoring and code search (3 comments): "Eclipse's C++ support and refactoring actually worked reasonably well on Blobstore" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130215)) "get the same IDE capabilities for code searching in Java, C#, C++" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47611645)) "At least semantic search and refactoring worked reliably." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238885)) - Light on memory and stable (3 comments): "I remember being extremely happy with Eclipse on an 8GB machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715062)) "The 2009 version of Eclipse was more stable than modern XCode." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46880006)) "eclipse IDE is more memory friendly than Chrome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49557844)) ## What people warn about - Slow and heavyweight (4 comments): "the only good case that Red-Hat sponsored was to compile Eclipse, which was usually slower than using the JIT anyway" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45992907)) "Eclipse is... Fine for Java in the sense Visual Studio is for dotnet. But man can they both be slow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716985)) "Eclipse was the single most unintuitive, user hostile, clunky, slow, and painful system to use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46717086)) - Needs plugins to set up (2 comments): "Eclipse puts more emphasis on being a platform which means you have to download and configure plugins just to get started." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715874)) "how much of a mess Eclipse was where so much was just loosely fitting together plugins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906964)) - Unintuitive defaults and UI (2 comments): "I've use eclipse many times in the past, and hated every second of it. Stupid defaults, very stupid defaults." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46318267)) "Eclipse was the single most unintuitive, user hostile, clunky, slow, and painful system to use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46717086)) - Seen as dated (4 comments): "Contrast that to Eclipse and Visual Studio (not vsCode) and it's clear why the larger IDE's are falling out of favour." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46719147)) "Eclipse, at least for me, quickly became relegated to increasingly rare moments of Linux development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715349)) "VS, Intellij, Eclipse, and vscode had plugins for it and all of them are from the 2015-2018 time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280503)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend - [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea.md): 206 recommend - [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend - [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi.md): 126 recommend - [Xcode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode.md): 100 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Eclipse IDE", https://hackerapproved.com/p/eclipse-ide/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).