What is Eclipse?

On the surface it's an IDE, but it's capable of much, much more. I have looked at it several versions and plugins, but frankly I still don't get it. If you like IDE's and/or java maybe it's a nice environment. I like vim and scripts myself. The problem is that it while it's purported to be a powerful framework it feels much like walking into a house with all the framing done and no walls up. One really great feature is that it's free and folks who want to spend their money on something other than nifty but expensive tools can make this a real working solution.