Eclipse RCP … really cool platform

The Eclipse RCP does really look like the “Really cool Platform” that it’s been touted to be. I have been looking it into it on and off (read: every time somebody blogs about it or there is a eclipse release). I really wish that they had something like this for the average Swing Joe (like me).

Just thought of building a Outlook Express like application for reading the bloglines just as a quick hack project. But boy does it take a while to get off the ground. At work we already have a kind of framework that takes care of all the menu, status bar etc. well kind of. But if I start off from scratch (using all of JDNC and jgoodies) it would take me a couple of days just to get a decent skeleton in and then finally to the nitty-gritty. As opposed the RCP seems to provide all this out of the box and with all the run in background coolness (think it’s the Job API). All this and plus some more.This really should have been done swing already, considering that it’s been around like forever, maybe everybody has developed something proprietary in-house.

I hear that Java is making a come back in the desktop market (well we’ve been in here for quite some time), but without such a framework I am not sure it will sustain the interest. The whole point is to be quick off the ground, lots of apps => lots of source code etc. ! I think where eclipse did right was come out with quick results to sustain the interest that it had generated and has kept it going. I don’t say there are no efforts here JDNC is doing quite a lot of work and they have a Action framework that seems to have the workings that can be used in a contributable framework like in eclipse/RCP but leaving the actual work for somebody else or as a TBD might not workout.

Now being a Swing’er for life I am actually considering looking into the whole deal. Not sure how long and how much effort will be needed and more than that how much of a mind-set change will this need (I have my share of FUD being from the other “side”), but about a year ago I had persuaded my organization to switch to Eclipse as the standard IDE (after using it for 2 years myself) as the standard IDE from textpad’s, notepad’s and some other IDE’s in the market and it was such a huge success.

Now I am out looking for material, I see a lot of tutorials(plug-ins/RCP/SWT/JFace), videos but a lot of it is scattered around, now wishing for some more would be plain evil now would it ?