I’m working on some particularly dense javascript, and it has really brought home to me the difference between a good text editor and a great text editor.
Eclipse is generally pretty good as an all-round IDE, but when you need to focus on the specifics of just one file, I find it pretty terrible when compared to the defaults found in some editors. Take, for example, this screenshot:
It’s okay … there’s some syntax highlighting, but it’s pretty minimal. It doesn’t really aid my understanding of what’s going on in the code. Compare it to this screenshot from what I consider to be a great editor:
… just a little more colour, and the code springs to life in TextMate on the Mac. It’s a shame I’m confined to a Windows box during working hours at the moment. The choice of best platform and best tools for a particular task can make a real difference to the effectiveness of any developer.