Reviews for Eclipse "X" for Dummies

1. Review from a SAP ABAPer

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, November 12rd, 2009

   This book is for those who get the eclipse shock once they download and open it. My background is SAP and I wanted to get a visibility on this tool, as SAP is one of the contributors to Eclipse foundation.
   
   This book takes you step by step from downloading and installing Java and eclipse to configuring eclipse to your tastes. The parts and chapters are logically arranged for simpler reading. The author's language is also simple and he gives you an interesting reading without much technical jargons.
   
   When I went through the first part, I got a bit bored as this was Eclipse in general and various terms used in Eclipse. I started gaining interest from the second part onwards as this is more into coding and dealt with how eclipse can ease and assist your (java) coding effort.
   
   The author has used eclipse version 3.0, whereas the version I downloaded was 3.4.1, where some of the Menu items have changed. I had to do a bit of investigation to get what the author meant and mostly got what I wanted (repeat mostly, not everything).
   
   The author has disappointed on the debugging session as this is very brief. I expected this to be in detail as debugging is one of the most important areas for trouble shooting. The author has just given a few standard tips.
   
   The sample programs can be downloaded from the authors website, however I found that the zip file is not very well organized. Also some of the example programs were missing and I had to type the code myself. The author has also included both the source and class files, this has increased the size of the zip file. The author could have just zipped only the source files, as eclipse generates the class files automatically.
   
   Be aware that you need a bit of Java background before you dive into eclipse. The author clearly mentions this in his assumptions. You need not be an expert in Java, but you should have atleast gone through some beginners java course to understand the examples in this book.
   
   The author himself has indicated in many places that eclipse is not the state of the art tool, but the best open source you can get for free. Hopefully eclipse is listening and is in the process of fixing the bugs. As of version 3.4.1, the eclipse bugs indicated by the author has not been fixed.
   
   Some of the favorite plugin links mentioned by the author doesn't exist. Possibly these plugins existed when the author wrote the book.
   
   I recommend this book with a rating of 4 stars, for anyone who have just downloaded eclipse and trying to read the eclipse online documentation. This book is a quick start and intermediatary between eclipse and the online help documentation, as the eclipse online doc is too detailed for a novice to follow.