We are living in the “modern” times where developing an application is no more a big deal. What matters these days is how easily one can code, compile and run the app on any device! For web developers, it is also important to have their website or web-app available on all devices with different browsers installed. There are many popular Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) in the market that can help you do all this and more. Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse are two of the most popular IDEs used by developers around the world. In this article, we will compare these two IDEs and see which one is better for developing applications.
To start with, let’s see what each of these IDEs has to offer. Microsoft Visual Studio is a comprehensive IDE that comes with features such as code completion, syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, debugging, etc. It also supports a large number of programming languages including C++, C#, VB.NET, etc. Eclipse is an open source IDE that supports many programming languages. It provides features such as debugging, syntax highlighting, code completion, etc. It also lets you to create custom plugins for your IDE.
As far as Microsoft Visual Studio is concerned it can be run on Windows only whereas Eclipse can be installed on various operating systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Since Eclipse is an open source IDE, it is free to download and use. However, Microsoft Visual Studio has a paid subscription model.
Now let’s take a look at some of the features that are specific to Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse. First, we will take a look at the features that are available in both IDEs. These include code completion, syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, debugging, etc. Both IDEs offer these features and they work pretty well. As far as code completion is concerned, Eclipse offers more options than Visual Studio. For example, in Eclipse you can get code completion for method parameters and return types. However, Visual Studio provides better IntelliSense than Eclipse. IntelliSense is an in-built utility of Visual Studio which makes coding easier. With this feature, you do not need to remember the methods that are available for a particular class or object. Visual Studio will display all these methods as you type code into your file.
Now let’s compare the debugging features of both the IDEs. When it comes to debugging, Eclipse offers a number of useful features. You can set breakpoints to stop the execution of your code at certain points during debugging. Eclipse supports inline debugging where you can place breakpoints right inside your code. Visual Studio provides better debugging experience with breakpoint icons displayed in line with your code. You can also track variables or inspect user-defined objects during debugging.
I hope you now have a fair idea of the features that are available in both IDEs. Now, let’s take a look at some of the features that are unique to Visual Studio and Eclipse individually. Microsoft Visual Studio allows you to debug your code on remote devices such as mobile phones and tablets through its “Deploy” feature. You can even debug your code with multiple devices connected to your PC simultaneously. Eclipse supports debugging of HTML5, PHP and Web applications. It also supports JavaScript debugging where you can step through user-defined objects or variables in your file.
Eclipse comes with built-in support for Git source control system where you can manage files versioning easily. Visual Studio provides support for Git, TFS and other source control systems through plugins which you can download and install from the plugin marketplace.