Note: This was a special Object of the Week to celebrate the 2024 total eclipse. As such, we do not have a copy of the original 2001 version of Eclipse in our catalogue.
Photo from an archived version of Wikipedia’s Eclipse article December 2005.
Originally first released in 2001, Eclipse as an IDE has survived and remained relevant for an impressive 2 decades. It was created by IBM, and then transferred over to the Eclipse Foundation, an independent non-profit. Many other IDEs, such as Visual Studio or NetBeans, have names that are more obviously related to programming, but Eclipse’s name is rather vague for what it is. Why did IBM decide to name it Eclipse?
The main story (and the one that Wikipedia cites) comes from this 2005 eWeek article, where supposedly Lee Nackman explained during EclipseCon 2005 that it was named this way because IBM wanted to “eclipse” Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE. I wasn’t able to find any footage of the speech, but I did find what looks like a transcript of that keynote on this blog. The only other article I could find on this was from techtarget, which says this story has “been said, though not confirmed.”
If you’re familiar with software development companies at the time, it should also be noted that one of Eclipse’s major competitors at the time, NetBeans, was being developed by Sun Microsystems. The fact that an eclipse blocks out the sun is something that was likely not overlooked by the designers when choosing the name, and maybe even intentional.
The history behind the IDE is interesting, and I recommend looking at any linked sources here. Going onto the Wayback Machine and looking at what Eclipse looked like in 2005 is also a very interesting experience. 😉
