- Its modular architecture, plugin based.
- Its flexibility, as it can be used for different programming language, and to implement different type of tasks.
- Its ease of use.
- Its OpenSource nature, with all the benefits that this convey.
However, it is difficult to find market share statistics around Eclipse usage, as, due to its flexibility, it is present on different development tools market, being also hard to compare on a per programming language basis.
An interesting issue to explore are the profiles having to do with developers that download Eclipse. Next very interesting graphics, provided by eclipse howl, show the different flavors downloaded from Eclipse Kepler version after one million downloads:
From this graphic, it is obvious that Eclipse is mostly used for Java programming language. Considering that Standard version is, above all, suitable for Java developers, the total per-share percentage of usage for Java programming language above 84 %.
Another interesting graphic from eclipse howl, shows the statistics associated to the previous version of Eclipse, Juno. In this graphic it can also be appreciated that Java was also the predominant programming language:
Based on this graphic, some assertions can be made on the programming languages used inside Eclipse:
- Java is the most used programming language for Eclipse.
- C/C++ programming appears always as the second programming language being used.
- No third programming language appears associated to the Eclipse version. The rest of flavors are, indeed, more functional oriented, in terms for flavors for Mobile, flavors for Modelling tools, Flavors for Parallel application development, and so on, and so forth.
However, some differences can also be observed from previous graphics [1]:
- Mobile flavor has disappeared.
- C/C++ flavor continue to decrease its position
- Java continues to increase its position respect to the rest of programming languages (72% -> 84%)
Some doubts can appear around the usage of Eclipse for other programming languages. How do we know that Python, in example, with its PyDev plugin, is not being widely used, even more than Java?
With the lack of statistics around this issue, another good thermometer for this per programming language usage of Eclipse is the Eclipse OpenSource developer report. This report shows some statistics around Open Source issues and development usage, such as:
- Operating System.
- Application server.
- Server Framework.
- Source code control version system.
And, of course:
- Programming language.
Java programming language predominance can also be observed on this report, with a share of 67%. Very far is C++, with 11% share, PHP, with 5%, Python, with 4%, C, with 3% and JavaScript, with also 3%:
So, to summarize, Eclipse is a nice set tool for programming but, indeed, there is no doubt that it is an indispensable development tool for Java.
References:
[1] eclipse howl: http://eclipsehowl.wordpress.com/
[2] Eclipse OpenSource developer report: http://www.slideshare.net/IanSkerrett/eclipse-survey-2013-report-final
