Eclipse for Visual Studio Dummies
I would suggest that you start with the tutorials on the Welcome screen (automatically displayed on first launch or in the Help menu).
After that, many things can be discovered by poking around. The built-in help is pretty good too, and otherwise, just google for it.
Set yourself a goal and do some research; I've found most things pretty easy this way.
As for snippets: I'm not very familiar with VS, but I understand that these are mostly code templates that you can insert and fill.
In Eclipse, this will be autocomplete (or "Content Assist") triggered with Ctrl-Space. Just try it, he's pretty smart. It will suggest completion for variable names, functions, etc., but it will also suggest common snippets like constructor creation, public methods, etc. For example. of type "public ctrl-spc" and it should suggest a template for a public method (try ctrl-space a few times to loop through the sentences).
You can also create your own code snippet completion. These are called templates in Eclipse, which can be found in the prefixes under Java / Editor / Templatest. Templates can be run in auto-complete by typing (start) the template name, then auto-complete.
Good luck!
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I was a VS user for a long time too and found Eclipse confusing, requires a lot more tweaking to get it up and running the first time.
Found this very helpful post on google search http://benpryor.com/blog/2006/03/03/top-10-tips-for-new-eclipse-users/ .
I don't use it often, but here are a few things that got me thrown at first.
The workspaces confused me, there is no exact equivalent in VS, I would say they are a bit like solutions. I made the mistake of keeping all my projects in one workspace, and after a year of running Eclipse was barely able to open the workspace.
You don't need to remove "Build" to compile the code, it keeps the compilation in the background, so there is always a list of errors called problems in Eclipse.
When you run your code in debug, all windows jump and some disappear and a lot of strange new ones open. These different layouts are called perspectives. Next to the main toolbar, there is a tab bar that lets you navigate or close open perspectives using the Window menu.
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Apart from the very good Eclipse tutorials and documentation mentioned here, there are some other good tutorials and an introduction:
- IBM Tutorial for Visual Studio Users - You need to register to read this tutorial, but registration is free and you can download a bunch of really good Eclipse stuff
- Effective Eclipse - Custom Templates - This article will detail the functionality of Eclipse "snippets"
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