Although Eclipse can be used as IDE for a number of different languages, it is more popular within the Java community. We wrote this book with a Java programmer interested in getting the most out of Eclipse in mind. Therefore, the main focus is going to be Java development using Eclipse, and the primary audience for this book is the Java programmer.

The book was written in a way that it is accessible both to beginners and intermediate level Java programmers. This book will also be beneficial to a graduate student who is familiar with Java. Practicing software developers might use this book as their first foray into the Eclipse world. If you are a seasoned Java developer that has been using another IDE and wondering what Eclipse brings to the table, this book will provide you with a hands-on walkthrough of the main IDE features. Seasoned Eclipse users might not benefit from this book, since it is tailored to be an introduction on how to get started with Eclipse. Let's put it another way, this book can be seen as a first step towards mastering Eclipse; it is a fast-paced tutorial for those who want to hit the ground running and begin being productive with Eclipse right away.

If you are not familiar with Java, then this is not the book for you. If you have just been introduced to Java, you will be able to follow most of the content in this book after a crash course in Java syntax (just make sure you have a Java textbook close at hand.). For the most part, the chunks of Java code presented here are accessible to Java beginners. We tried to keep the code in the examples as simple as possible so that beginners will not be bogged down by technical details related to Java syntax. Whenever something a little bit more complex is shown, we provide an overview of it or we direct the reader to a more in-depth discussion of the to pic at hand.