Andrey Platov

JetBrains just announced an open source edition of their popular IntelliJ IDE, under the Apache 2.0 license. Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing at the Eclipse Foundation welcomes this move, while Eugene Kuleshov asking if that is beginning of the end.

I'd agree with Eugene, this is definitely beginning of the end... With some difference: now eclipse is more close to the end than it was 2 years ago.

To understand this let's guess JetBrains' motivation:

Before E4 Summit I'd like to summarize my wishes for E4

• Modern UI layer like WPF or JavaFX (I blogged a lot on this already)
• Embedded EMF database and EMF everywhere
• Transactional Workspace
• JavaSpaces-alike programming model for event handling, concurrency, and distributed computing support
• Extensive (or full) use of modern programming language (hint: not Java)

I'm feeling like heretic when posting to E4 mailing list, so my last posts did not went there (this one regarding OSGi/SWT/EMF Trinity looks to be a straight road to anathema). But I'm already on this road, so I'd like spell my key wishes for E4. Below are my "two things" or what I'd like to see in E4...

Nowadays there are tens of Eclipse project under Eclipse Foundation and hundreds of eclipse-based products in all over the world. Everyone can clearly recognize eclipse-project and separate it from non-eclipse projects. But what is criteria of calling project eclipse-based or not? Linkage with any of Eclipse Foundation projects do not look sufficient...

OK, I was kicked out of discussion with a simple question: I would be very much interested in the innovative concepts that are in JavaFX / WPF that you think can not be well addressed with e4...

Jochen Krause from RAP disagreed: "In essence that is the Swing vs. SWT discussion again, and this has been discussed for ages. There is more to this discussion than performance. I agree that SWT needs more *sexy* animations, but this can be (and is being) adressed without moving away from native widgets. New platforms like WPF and AIR offer new capabilities that we can take advantage of."

Actually identical look does not matter. Fact that only matter is "SWT is a redundant technology".

Question: "Well so you suggest that SWT is going away from native widgets drawing everything on the GC? I agree with you that there are amazing things one can do. Seeing controls like [1] are amazing but the problem I see is how to make them cross-platform (e.g. draw them in browser)?"

RAP is a great technology definitely, but take care from mind being RAPed... Please forget RAP for a minute, and think on simpe fact: each competetive technology (JavaFX, WPF, Flex) can draw on canvas in browser without a problem... Why it should not possible for SWT (to draw on canvas either in desktop or web modes)?

As a part of "too late" discussion Ed Merks pointed to Intentional UI Modeling approach from Jim van Dam's EclipseCon 2008 talk. Ed named it compelling, and I'd like to add: it is not only compelling, it's natural aproach to UI development and similar to JavaFX/UI. The devil of course in details...

I follow E4 discussion on E4 incubator mailing list since EclipseCon 2008, where E4 was announced. For those who hear about E4 for the first time - E4 is an effort to prototype next generation of Eclipse Platform. I'm excited with some E4 directions like ones related to "modelled" Eclipse Workbench, but in general it looks like E4 for now overfocusing on declarative UIs and scripting support. 

I strongly believe in importance and benefits which we can get from both declarative UIs and scripting and our company have some experience in this field (yep, we lead Eclipse DLTK:), which I would like to expose briefly before to continue.

Few weeks passed after EclipseCon 2008 but I'm still thinking on E4. I saw excited people around applauding demos of scripts, which changes caption color. I saw full room of people excited with demo of the editor on the web, and I believe many of them left EclipseCon feeling bright Eclipse future. I have heard from E4 gang "we do not know details but it will be cool". There was questions about 3.5, diversity, and technical problems (like event handing), but to the best of my knowledge no one asked E4 gang: "guys, why do you so happy? do not you think E4 is very late?.. probably too late".