RCP, Short and Sweet

Posted by pookzilla on January 16, 2006

The other week I was attempting to describe Eclipse RCP to someone who was an experienced software developer but had no experience with Eclipse. I stammered and sputtered and couldn’t really do it without a lot of gesticulation and suggestion of imaginary box diagrams.

So I ask you, what is RCP? What is the one sentence blurb? The three sentence blurb?

Here’s my attempt:

One sentence: “Eclipse RCP is a set of reusable Java components that allow developers to easily create rich, full featured applications.”

Three sentence: “Eclipse RCP is a set of reusable Java components that allow developers to easily create rich, full featured applications. Included is a widget library (SWT), tools for common higher-level application tasks such as wizards (JFace), an plug-in extension framework (runtime), and reusable and extensible application life-cycle management (workbench). These features are presented à la carte and may be used in various combinations depending on the requirements of the target application.”

Can anyone else beat these? I’m not exactly satisfied with them but this is definitely a canned response I want to keep in my back pocket for future reference.