Become an Eclipse hotkey showoff

Source: ComputerWorld

Summary:
The great thing about Eclipse is that it's so feature-rich. If you can't find a feature, then either you just haven't looked hard enough or there's a plug-in that adds it. The worst thing about Eclipse is also that it's so feature-rich. The tool bars are crowded, the menus are congested, and the configuration dialogs remind me of the Minotaur's labyrinth (although configuration is much better in Version 3.1). Even experienced Eclipse programmers are slow and clumsy users. I've looked over countless colleagues' shoulders and blurted out "Control-Shift-T" (open type) when seeing them struggling to find a class in the Eclipse navigation pane. And with a small conscious time investment, you too can stop fumbling around in Eclipse and become a hotkey showoff.

Proficiency in Eclipse is not only good for your own productivity (I know, contractors paid by the hour tend to favor text editors), but also for your curriculum vitae (CV). Since Eclipse is surfacing on many Java job descriptions these days, it has become a good buzzword to have on your CV. I put it on mine between POJO (plain-old Java object) and POJI (plain-old Java interface). More and more companies are moving to Eclipse since it's free and generally accepted by programmers, except for the few diehard IntelliJ and Emacs enthusiasts.

So that your CV isn't all lies and/or to help increase your programming productivity, in this article, I give you a few Eclipse productivity tips.


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