BlueJ vs Eclipse Che
When comparing BlueJ vs Eclipse Che, the Slant community recommends Eclipse Che for most people. In the question“What are the best Java IDEs or editors?” Eclipse Che is ranked 4th while BlueJ is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Eclipse Che is:
Built-in terminal with root access so you can make changes to your running machines. Being able to SSH into the workspace so you can use a desktop IDE is handy.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Many features
All the features you would expect: syntax highlighting, code-completion, templates, extension-manager, git integration, unit-testing, etc..
Pro UML start view
Shows UML chart of your project, making it easy to find classes. Helps beginners get familiar with the structure of Java programs.
Pro Great IDE for beginners
BlueJ was created for educational purposes and is designed to be simple for those who are just learning.
Pro Easy to learn
Because BlueJ was created for teaching purposes, it is designed to be easy to use. It has a user-friendly and intuitive interface.
Pro SSH + terminal
Built-in terminal with root access so you can make changes to your running machines. Being able to SSH into the workspace so you can use a desktop IDE is handy.
Pro Custom commands
You can package up custom commands with your workspace and then use them (or share them) with everyone else.
Pro Docker runtimes
You can choose from pre-configured environments for Java, Javascript, C++, PHP, C#, etc., or you can define your own by dropping in a Dockerfile - makes it easy for simple and complex projects.
Pro GIT and SVN VCS support
Projects can be easily imported from any Git or Svn repository hosting service.
Pro Reproducible environment
Pro Portable workspaces
The workspace in Che includes project sources, IDE and the runtime. So if you hand your Che workspace definition to another user and they execute it they will get everything they need to build, run and debug the project.
Also the runtime is in a Docker container so it will work even if the second user is on a different OS than the original user who shared their workspace with them.
Pro Previews
Che does a nice job to automatically map the service:port running in the Docker container (e.g. tomcat on 8080) to the Docker port it actually uses (something in the ephemeral range). You never need to figure that out - it's just made available when you run your server.
Pro Merge tool for VCS
Pro Open-source
Cons
Con Not good for big projects
BlueJ is much better suited for small projects. It is designed to be simple and quite basic, rather than to handle large applications.
Con Lack of features
There are very few features available in BlueJ that would would expect from an IDE. For example, syntax highlighting is minimal and there is no code completion.
Con Good just for beginners
Not comfortable for expert programmers.
Con Uses its own "Java"-dialect
Con Slow runtime
Online IDE is much slower than desktop one.