A friendly face for Eclipse

Eclipse is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) for Java1 targeted at professional software developers. However, Eclipse is poorly suited for use in introductory computing education because the complexity of its interface and the associated computing environment can overwhelm beginners. In contrast, DrJava is a friendly, highly interactive IDE targeted at teaching Java to beginners. DrJava has a simple interface consisting of a Definitions pane for entering and editing program text and an Interactions pane for evaluating arbitrary Java statements and expressions given the program in the Definitions pane. This interface frees students from the complication of defining main methods for their programs and encourages them to explore the Java language by conducting simple experiments.We have developed a plug-in for Eclipse, based largely on the existing DrJava code base, that provides an Interactions pane to Eclipse with precisely the same capabilities as the Interactions pane in DrJava, along with a simplified user interface. With this plug-in, Eclipse becomes a suitable vehicle for teaching introductory programming, enabling instructional programs to use the same IDE for all levels of the programming curriculum. In addition, it provides professional developers with a convenient mechanism for interactively evaluating arbitrary program text during program development --- a common feature of programming interfaces for functional languages like Scheme and ML.