Eclipse vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Eclipse
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Eclipse is a free and open source integrated development environment (IDE).N/A
Visual Studio
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
EclipseVisual Studio
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Best Alternatives
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Small Businesses
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.1 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.1 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 9.1 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.8
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
EclipseMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Eclipse is recommended for enabling the user community to be self-reliant in scenarios where the mode of operation demands agile, on the fly accurate reporting, such as during month ends for reconciliation purposes. The urgency and sensitivity of such situations result in a lot of stress with quick turnaround times but with the ability of Eclipse and Hana views, the reliance on IT could be minimized. Also, IT could leverage the power of Eclipse to develop Hana views without having to do the traditional route of ABAP developments. It might be less appropriate for situations where the agile and dynamic nature of the operations is not a necessity.
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It's useful for app development, debugging, and testing. I've been using it for two years and have seen it grow into a fantastic tool. All of the features, NuGet packages, and settings that enable different types of projects are fantastic. It also has a connection to Azure DevOps and Git. It's a fantastic product that's simple to use.
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Pros
  • It is very good at managing many files under edit. I like the ability to manage multiple projects and multiple files. It supports a wide variety of file formats with type-specific syntax formatting.
  • I like the integrated debugging facility. In particular, we used a remote file system debugger with Python in external VMs to great effect.
  • I like the ability to access multiple types of databases in the integrated development environment. It provides connectors for a wide variety of databases and supports most basic DB access methods.
  • GIT integration is very effective. You can easily manage repositories and connect them to projects, and the project integration into GIT is virtually seamless.
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  • Rock solid intellisense. For C# and VB.Net code, the intellisense provided by Visual Studio is hands down the best. If you find that you have a hard time remembering parameters of functions, or what object names were, the intellisense will rescue you and help me be an efficient developer.
  • Super fast and simple to use debugger for C# and VB. Everything in the debugger is handed to you on a silver platter. When you stop on a break point, it immediately shows you the local variables, the call stack, and even your current memory usage. Setting up watch variables is super simple and you can even make breakpoints conditional so it will only stop on certain conditions.
  • Hides the tedious tasks. There are quite a few things like publishing, creating click once deployments, and adding/removing settings in the project files that can be really time consuming when trying to do it by hand (such as if you don't have access to Visual Studio and you need to make changes). Visual Studio hides all the tedium from you by making nice point and click interfaces to get things done quickly.
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Cons
  • Sometimes Maven projects are not able to connect to third-party libraries, this issue is very intermediate
  • Adding some external plugins will make Eclipse very slow and consume a lot of memory
  • Compatibility with other IDE e.g. Also observes if we import some other IDE project to Eclipse it gives some weird problems.
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  • Certain settings and features can sometimes be challenging to locate. The interface isn't always intuitive.
  • Sometimes there are too many ways to do the same thing. For example, users can quickly add a new workspace in Source Control Explorer when a local path shows as "Not Mapped," but it doesn't indicate that the user might want to check the dropdown list of workspaces. The shortcut of creating a new workspace by clicking on the "Not Mapped" link can lead to developers creating too many workspaces and causing workspace management to become unwieldy. If the shortcut link were removed, the user would be forced to use the Workspace dropdown. While it can add an extra step to the process, workspaces would be managed more easily, and this would enforce consistency. At the very least, there should be a high-level administrative setting to hide the shortcut link.
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Likelihood to Renew
I love this product, what makes it one of the best tool out in the market is its ability to function with a wide range of languages. The online community support is superb, so you are never stuck on an issue. The customization is endless, you can keep adding plugins or jars for more functionalities as per your requirements. It's Free !!!
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VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
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Usability
It has everything that the developer needs to do the job. Few things that I have used in my day-to-day development 1. Console output. 2. Software flash functionality supporting multiple JTAG vendors like J-LINK. 3. Debugging capabilities like having a breakpoint, looking at the assembly, looking at the memory etc. this also applies to Embedded boards. 4. Plug-in like CMake, Doxygen and PlantUML are available.
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The thing I like the most is Visual Studio doesn't suffer from Microsoft's over eager marketing department who feel they need to redesign the UI (think Office and windows) which forces users to loose large amounts of productivity having to learn software that they had previously known.
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Support Rating
I gave this rating because Eclipse is an open-source free IDE therefore no support system is available as far as I know. I have to go through other sources to solve my problem which is very tough and annoying. So if you are using Eclipse then you are on your own, as a student, it is not a big issue for me but for developers it is a need.
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Between online forums like StackOverflow, online documentation, MSDN forums, and the customer support options, I find it very easy to get support for Visual Studio IDE when I need it. If desired, one can also download the MSDN documentation about the IDE and have it readily available for any support needs.
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Alternatives Considered
As previously said, Eclipse is one of the most complete and useful tools for Java development. And as a plus, it's open-source and free, so you won't beat that price-quality relation. When starting with Java projects, you won't fail with Eclipse. But, if you are getting into other programming languages, or your projects are getting bigger and bigger, you might consider switching to another solution.
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I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
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Return on Investment
  • Eclipse handles numerous languages and a multitude of features, so many features that it requires a deep learning curve for users. The setup is complex and requires someone with expertise or background with software implementation.
  • Eclipse is free and offers user community support which is a huge benefit.
  • Eclipse has solid Subversion integration which saves costs for a firm that is already using Subversion as their configuration management tool.
  • Eclipse lacks the ability to support mobile application development which is a negative impact for the need to deliver mobile apps.
  • Eclipse is open source which means it is constantly updating features and functions extending the learning curve for users.
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  • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
  • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
  • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
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ScreenShots