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Why "Eclipse Developer's Journal" and Why Now?

EDJ's Editor-in-Chief Introduces World's First Independent Magazine Devoted to the Eclipse Ecosystem
By Bill Dudney
Article Rating:
July 27, 2005 04:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 21,667
When I was first asked to take on the role of Editor in Chief for Eclipse Developer's Journal (EDJ) I naturally asked myself this same question. Why do we need a journal dedicated to Eclipse right now?

I believe there are two main answers: 1. the community is large and growing, and 2. the community would benefit from a magazine focused exclusively on the Eclipse ecosystem.

While I searched the Net I found several existing outlets to talk about Eclipse and its related technologies, but none of them are focused exclusively on Eclipse and the community around it. So I said yes and here I am introducing the magazine, which we aim to make the best online resource for Eclipse anywhere on the Web.

To get an idea of how big the community is, I did a bit of poking around and found the following tidbits. Eclipse 3.0 was released on 25 June, 2005 and has been downloaded roughly 1.64 million times. The 3.1 download challenge has hit the 825,00 mark in just over 30 days. That is more than 2 million downloads in 13 months. The 2005 EclipseCon conference was sold out and several new Strategic Developers joined the project. There are currently 28 subprojects with several more in the proposal phase. The bottom line is that the Eclipse ecosystem is huge and growing. The ecosystem will benefit from having an independent magazine devoted to the various aspects of Eclipse and I’m looking forward to EDJ becoming that source.

With that being said I would like to spend the remainder of this introductory editorial on sharing my vision with you on how this thing known as EDJ will start, as well as some of the interesting directions I’d like to take it in the future. And as always I welcome your feedback on what we cover.

The main purpose for EDJ is to educate users of Eclipse and developers building plug-ins or Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications. With the help of great columnists and articles we will build out a great information source that you will be able to use to educate yourself on just about anything Eclipse related. In addition to the stuff everyone thinks of as Eclipse (Java Developer Tools, RCP, etc.) I’d also like to spend some significant space getting into the various subprojects going on now. For example on of my personal favorites is the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). I guess I’m just a meta-data geek at heart but the idea of having a whole meta-modeling framework at my disposal is groovy. There are lots of other great projects that I’d like to see covered as well. And finally I’d like to see EDJ become a source of news and information on what is happening in the Eclipse ecosystem.

Thanks for your time and I’m very much looking forward to what we can make EDJ together.

Published July 27, 2005 – Reads 21,667
Copyright © 2005 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Bill Dudney

Bill Dudney is Editor-in-Chief of Eclipse Developer's Journal and serves too as JDJ's Eclipse editor. He is a Practice Leader with Virtuas Solutions and has been doing Java development since late 1996 after he downloaded his first copy of the JDK. Prior to Virtuas, Bill worked for InLine Software on the UML bridge that tied UML Models in Rational Rose and later XMI to the InLine suite of tools. Prior to getting hooked on Java he built software on NeXTStep (precursor to Apple's OSX). He has roughly 15 years of distributed software development experience starting at NASA building software to manage the mass properties of the Space Shuttle.

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Most Recent Comments
OnARoll 07/27/05 06:22:18 AM EDT

Eclipse now has a GUI editor: get the Visual Editor plugin. It's not 100% complete yet, but it's close. It also has tools for web development, modelling, testing, profiling, and all kinds of other stuff that aren't included by default, and tons of third-party addons. Go, Eclipse!!
Watch65 07/27/05 05:58:05 AM EDT

Here's an interesting Eclipse project: the Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework. According to the proposal at eclipse.org this is the motivation of the new project: "To effectively manage the application change across the lifecycle, these various product silos and tools need to be integrated. This introduces a complex technical challenge for both vendors and customers alike as the point-to-point integration becomes cost prohibitive to develop and maintain. Vendors know that the creation of any interoperability framework is an enormous undertaking for any one vendor. In addition, this complex and difficult work does not provide a competitive advantage for the vendor's commercial solutions. Furthermore, if developed as a proprietary component, this framework will not guarantee the necessary level of interoperability and will push the customers into a single vendor suite of solutions which is neither technologically practical nor financially feasible in most cases."