Eclipse Distilled [Paperback]

David Carlson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0321288157 | ISBN-13: 978-0321288158 | Edition: 1

Eclipse is an incredibly powerful platform for software development, but thispower and flexibility is often overwhelming for novice programmers andsometimes daunting for experienced professionals. The goal of this book is todistill significant features of the Eclipse platform and its Java developmentcapabilities in a way that is approachable for newbies and beneficial for seniordevelopers who are new to Eclipse. But this book is not just a catalog offeatures and screenshots. It is structured around a theme of agile developmentand describes Eclipse as an enabler for agile methodology within project teams.A consistent project example is used throughout the book to illustrate theprogress of a new project from its inception through several iterations ofdevelopment, enhancement, and refactoring.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Eclipse Distilled

David Carlson

Foreword by Grady Booch

Series Editors

Erich Gamma Lee Nackman John Wiegand

A Concise Introduction to Eclipse for the Productive Programmer

Organized for rapid access, focused on productivity, Eclipse Distilled brings together all the answers you need to make the most of today's most powerful Java development environment. David Carlson introduces proven best practices for working with Eclipse, and shows exactly how to integrate Eclipse into any Agile development process.

Part I shows how to customize workspaces, projects, perspectives, and views for optimal efficiency—and how to leverage Eclipse's rapid development, navigation, and debugging features to maximize both productivity and code quality. Part II focuses entirely on Agile development, demonstrating how Eclipse can simplify team ownership, refactoring, continuous testing, continuousintegration, and other Agile practices. Coverage includes

• Managing Eclipse projects from start to finish: handling both content and complexity

• Using perspectives, views, and editors to work more efficiently

• Setting preferences to fit your own unique needs—or your team's

• Leveraging Eclipse's powerful local and remote debugging tools

• Understanding how Eclipse fits into contemporary iterative development processes

• Performing continuous testing with JUnit in the Eclipse environment

• Using Eclipse's wizard-assisted refactoring tools

• Implementing continuous integration with Ant-based automated project builders

• Employing best practices for code sharing with CVS and other repositories

By focusing on need-to-know information and providing best practices and methodologies, this book is designed to get you working with Eclipse quickly. Whether you're building enterprise systems, Eclipse plug-ins, or anything else, this concise book will help you write better code—and do it faster.

About the Author

David Carlson is a developer, researcher, author, instructor, and consultant who thrives on innovative technology. He started using Java in 1995 and Eclipse in 2001. David has a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Arizona and is a frequent speaker at conferences and a contributor to technical journals. He is creator of the hyperModel plug-in for Eclipse, and author of Modeling XML Applications with UML (Addison-Wesley, 2001).

Cover photo: © archivberlin Fotoagentur GmbH / Alamy

Addison-Wesley

www.awprofessional.com/series/eclipse

ISBN 0-321-28815-7

$34.99 US $48.99 CANADA

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Eclipse DistilledAbout the Author

David Carlson has a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Arizona (1991), specializing in knowledge-based systems and object-oriented technology. He has more than 20 years of experience in systems design, programming, and business analysis and was an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the University of Colorado in Boulder prior to returning to the consulting profession in 1994. Dave is currently a self-employed consultant working in Boulder, Colorado.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321288157
• ISBN-13: 978-0321288158
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice book if your expectations match up with the style..., July 4, 2005

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eclipse Distilled (Paperback)

With Eclipse becoming extremely popular as an integrated development environment, there have been a number of books published to help you learn the tool. I recently received a copy of Eclipse Distilled by David Carlson, and it's a pretty good addition to the collection...

Contents:

Part 1 - Getting Started: A Java IDE and So Much More!; Hello Eclipse; Managing Your Projects; Customizing Your Workbench; Rapid Development; Java Project Configuration; Debugging Your Code

Part 2 - Getting Agile: Characteristics of Agile Development; Updating the Eclipse IDE; Continuous Testing with JUnit; Refactoring Your Code; Continuous Integration with Ant; Team Ownership with CVS; Coding Standards; Index

If you're looking for a book that covers a large number of the features of the Eclipse IDE, this book will be a good choice. In addition to covering all the technical details for installation, options, and "how to" things like refactoring, the author also covers how Eclipse works with various other common programming tools like JUnit and CVS. It's not a definitive guide on these other software packages, but you'll get a good grounding on how they integrate.

What this book *isn't* is a tutorial guide to learning Eclipse. There are a number of Eclipse books that will walk you through a number of examples of how the package works and how to write code with it. This book really doesn't do that. You'll find out a lot about all the different options, but it's not like a "step 1, step 2, step 3" presentation. I really don't consider this a detriment to the book. If I wanted a tutorial, I could find one. But if I want a book that shows me all the mechanics and let's me figure out how to apply them to my needs, the "Distilled" approach works great.

I like the book, but I can see how some people might not be enamored with the lack of sample code. If you're going in with your eyes open, you should be fine...

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Increase your proficiency with Eclipse today, February 24, 2005

By 

S. Archer (Cary, North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eclipse Distilled (Paperback)

While there are many books available for developers wishing to build Eclipse plug-ins, there are few that provide pragmatic coverage of how best to use Eclipse for building regular Java applications.

In Eclipse Distilled, David Carlson does a superb job of introducing how to best use Eclipse 3.0. David takes the time to share many of the tips and techniques that will allow the reader to embrace an agile software development process.

One of the qualities of this book is that it is only 290 pages. The discussion is "to the point" and always relevant. Most readers should expect to be able to read this book and increase their proficiency with Eclipse in just a few weeks.

Having read the book in its entirety I highly recommend Eclipse Distilled. While it will mostly be of interest to developers new to Eclipse, there are plenty of gems here that even seasoned Eclipse developers might have missed.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, an Eclipse book for developers, April 28, 2005

By 

F. Campbell (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eclipse Distilled (Paperback)

Solid book. Very pragmatic with useful info--I've been using Eclipse for a couple of years and I learned a couple of tricks in the first few chapters.

It's not for people who want to develop plugins for Eclipse; if that's your goal, "Contributing to Eclipse" is a better choice.

It's for people who want to become more productive users of Eclipse. The focus is primarily on using it as a Java IDE, both in general and in the context of Agile development.

Weighing it at 300 pages--instead of 1300 pages, it's a book that you can actually read cover to cover and use as a reference.

I've already recommended to people that I work with and they've been very pleased.