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Add to SafariWhen comparing Geany vs Eclipse, the Slant community recommends Eclipse for most people. In the question“What are the best Java IDEs or editors?” Eclipse is ranked 6th while Geany is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Eclipse is:
Eclipse is an open source project and free to use.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Light and fast
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
Pro Built-in plugin manager
Geany has a built-in plugin manager which can be used to install plugins and add new powerful features to the editor.
Pro Quick search on large files
In Geany you technically search once for a whole search query, unlike Gedit, where once you start typing, the file is searched for in accordance with each substring of what you're typing, all the while leading to terribly annoying lag.
Pro Cross platform
Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows.
Pro Build in terminal
Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows.
Pro Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software
This software respects your freedom.
Pro Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)
Hence it is capable of showing the methods and inner classes of, e.g., a Java source file.
Pro Simple project management
Pro Native
It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. This means it runs great and doesn't extraordinary amounts of RAM.
Pro Options in the menu are easy to find
For example, there is an easy way to change the font and theme in the View menu. No need to search through several syntax styles like in Notepad++ just to be able to change the used font.
Pro Free and open source
Eclipse is an open source project and free to use.
Pro Multiple languages - one IDE
Pro Large selection of plugins
Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.
Pro Fast compiler
Eclipse uses a custom compiler (which can also be used outside of Eclipse), which is often faster than the normal Java Compiler, especially for incremental compilation.
Pro Easy to use and get started with
It's interface is super easy to use, after adding required package for your task everything just works.
Pro Gives good perspectives on your project
The concept of perspectives is outstanding. It puts right tools at your fingertips, keeping the tools you currently don't need out from the workbench. For example, in VCS perspective it's all about versions and branches. In debug perspective it's all about state.
In java ee project it can show http endpoints in a very accessible manner.
Pro Highly customizable
Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable.
Pro Great debugger
Shows threads, concurrency locks, and conditional breakpoints.
Pro Good font rendering
Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal.
Pro Good refactoring tools
Pro Faster than any other Java IDE
Fast, suitable for big projects, customizable, supports UML, many programming languages, plugins, and widgets vs NetBeans and JDeveloper. Support for Workspaces and Perspectives. Long term tested, free of charge, vs IntelliJ IDEA.
Pro Great in-UI documentation
Pro Dark theme improved!
Cons
Con Not very advanced
Although it has some IDE features, it is not as advanced as some other text editors that can be extended to contain IDE functionality.
Con Windows installer not digitally signed
Con Not many third-party plugins
Geany is not as popular as some other text editors with plugin support. As such it's understandable that it's missing lots of powerful plugins available in other editors.
Con Branding & online website is super cluttered
There are lots of official home pages for this IDE, the packages, and the repos - hard to find correct one. Also, the main name in IDE: "Eclipse", is same as "Eclipse Foundation" which makes things more confusing.
Con UI can be confusing
There's an overly abundant presence of menus, this forces you to constantly click around the different menu structures; foreign ideas, like Views and Perspectives; strange menu choices, like configure settings located in Windows menu->Preferences.
Con Lack of plugins with good user interfaces
Many Eclipse plugins are extremely confusing, with UIs that are even less consistent than Eclipse itself.
Con Plugins can be unstable
Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.
Con Tends to be slow and lags a lot
Con Poor language support via plugins
Eclipse supports other languages with a huge amount of plugins. Many languages have their own distribution, but multi-language is hard to exist in one project. Like Scala, there is no official support from Eclipse for this language. If Eclipse gets an update, languages such as these will not.
Con Newer versions are getting less stable
Eclipse 4 Neon randomly hangs. For example, during installing new software.
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=513218
Con Some old bugs don't get fixed
E.g. change a parameter name to the same as a field - the field will not be prefixed with "this." like in IDEA.
