User Spotlight - Maximilian Koegel
What do you do?
I lead the EclipseSource office in Munich. Our mission is to make Eclipse Open Source software consumable for our customers - through training, developer support, implementation, sponsored open source development and consulting. Therefore we spent a great part of our daily work in Munich on Eclipse Open Source projects, and once a year we spend a full week only working on open source. Apart from other Eclipse projects, we are involved in (e.g. e4) we have a strong focus on the Modeling Project and its subprojects. This includes EMF Core, EMFForms, EMF Client Platform, EMFStore, Edapt, and EMFCompare, where we have a leading role and/or are committers contributing on a regular basis.
In addition to customer work, we invest at least 20% of each developer's time to open source. We consider this as an investment to the foundation of our business, an important source of innovation, and a constant education and training for us as developers. And last, but not least, it is very rewarding to contribute to the Eclipse Open Source community.
How long have you been using Eclipse?
I have already been using Eclipse as a student, more than 10 years ago. Towards the end of my studies I started developing the first plugins for Eclipse. During my Ph.D. I developed the software underlying my thesis based on EMF, which was the basis for the EMFStore Eclipse project. So like probably many of us at Eclipse, I grew from an IDE user over a framework user, to a framework developer in the Eclipse ecosystem.
Name five plugins you use and recommend:
This is difficult since there are so many, but if I had to limit myself to 6 plugins ;):
- ECLEmma: It is a Java code coverage tool integrated into JDT and facilitates a fast develop/test cycle of your JUnit Tests.
- Automated Error Reporting: Not really a plugin you would install as an end-user, but it currently ships with the Mars milestones and allows you to report errors very easily. It even features a back-end where the reported errors are aggregated and can be viewed by the projects committers.
- EMF Forms Tooling: Allows you to declaratively define form-based UIs including validation, data binding, and many other features in the Eclipse IDE with a visual editor and preview. You will never have to code a form manually any more.
- Oomph: Allows you to define the setup of your IDE including workspace setup and many settings and make it available to other developers at the click of a button.
- RCPTT: Recording UI test cases for SWT or RAP applications in addition to JUnit tests is a great way to reduce manual testing.
- Postfix Code Completion: Offers many additional postfix code completions to improve your programming workflow.
What's your favorite thing to do when you're not working?
I like to ski preferably during an open-source week in the Alps and record speaker pitches ;):
Apart from sports, I currently like to experiment with home automation; this also includes the brand new Eclipse Smart Home project. So when I leave my office now, I will press a button which will turn off the lights and power everywhere, check if any of the windows are open or if the latest EMFForms Build has failed (and provide a sound signal in case), turn off the heating and, upon closing the door, lock it twice.