Five Reasons to Love Mylar

For my money, there just hasn’t been enough talk about Mylar lately. And I think I understand why. At least for me, Mylar has become such an integrated part of my workday, that I don’t really think all that much about it. It’s the same for the Java Development Tools (JDT): I really don’t think about them much, I just use ’em. They just work for me, and do a great job. It’s only when I take a step back and force myself to think about what Mylar or the JDT are doing that I start to get that overwhelming sense of amazement.

It’s time to think a little more about Mylar. A while back, I wrote an article titled “Five Reasons to Love Mylar” based loosely on a series of blog entries ([1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]) I wrote a while futher back. The article is available on Eclipse Developer’s Journal.

Early in article, I try to make the point that Mylar takes the notion of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to the next level by actually integrating the developer into the equation. My intent was to suggest that before Mylar, IDEs were concerned exclusively with integrating tools and making them available to the developer; and that now, with Mylar, the integration extends to include the developer. I’m not sure if I managed to get the point across, or if I just left people scratching their heads. Judging from the rather large number of reads and lack of any feedback, I have to assume that either (a) you get it, or (b) you’ve been stunned into silence.

Anyway, if you’ve seen the article, I hope that you enjoyed it. If you haven’t seen it, you really should go read it. I’ll be testing your knowledge of the content at EclipseCon…