Customer Reviews

Eclipse Distilled

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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...

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.

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.

This is an excellent book and I recommend it highly to start with Eclipse.
It saved me an incredible amount of time by providing the right level of information on virtually all important features of Eclipse.
This book is for people with a background in development, but new to Eclipse.

Source code examples from Eclipse Distilled are now available at www.EclipseDistilled.com, either in a single ZIP for from CVS on SourceForge.

The examples include a comprehensive Ant build file that generates Java from XML Schemas using Apache Axis, automates regeneration whenever the schemas are modified, runs all JUnit tests in a project, and creates an HTML report of the test results.

The examples are organized in several projects that you can add to your Eclipse workspace using the structure described in Chapters 6 and 13.

I manage multiple developers spread around the globe building product relying on the Eclipse Web Standard Tools (WST) and other parts of Eclipse. Getting each team member's IDE configured and updated was sucking up time.

Chapter 9, "Updating the Eclipse IDE," saved us time equivalent to purchasing boxes of the book. Now we have flexible, consistent, repeatable configurations that make upgrading to new versions of WST and other features easy.

We have adjusted our team's practices based on info in other chapters too.

Carlson has provided excellent information for developers who want to work more effectively in the Eclipse environment. I'm delighted with the purchase.

In his forward, David Carlson writes: "This is the book I wanted to read when I started using Eclipse three years ago." Wow! And this is the book I wanted to read too!

Like husbands and wives, wrenches and nuts, hands and gloves, some things were meant to fit together, while others repel like oil and water. When I learn a new programming language, IDE, API, software program, etc. I want the basics, the practical, the stuff I really need to get going. In any of these endeavors, there is simply too much to learn to sit reading detailed information on features that just never come up for me. Give me a good grounding in the basics, and I will pick up the details on the fly when I need them.

Carlson's book will get you up to speed fast. Furthermore, it gives you the basics on several of the latest development methods with which Eclipse is compatible. He provides excellent basic discussions of Agile Development, JUnit testing, Ant, refactoring and the Concurrent Version System. He easily fits all this information into less than 300 pages.

If this approach fits you like it fits me: Quick! Buy this book and get started.

I bought this book quite a while ago (probably around the 2005 time frame). I now have a job developing in Java using the Eclipse IDE. I just finished reading chapter 10. This chapter presents JUnit testing from the perspective of JUnit3. JUnit4 is now the latest and greatest framework, and it is substantially different. There are some aspects of IDE that carry over; but, even here, there are changes (as to be expected).

This book needs a serious update. The idea of a distilled Eclipse manual is still relevant.

topics are discussed too abstractly - can't find source code. book skips too many steps to be useful. might be good for experienced developers. not useful to me. wasted money.

I read this book end to end but didnt find even a single startling fact about eclipse that i didnt know already.It was more like feature round up ( which you can discover going through the menu items in eclipse IDE)
I would recommend this book for people who are absolutly new to eclipse .