Eclipse optimizations

There are:

• system optimizations: eclipse.ini
• shortcuts optimizations:
  • Quick Access (Ctrl+3) (the mother of all shortcuts! With it, you can access almost everything in Eclipse)
  • Quick Fix (you should make sure it has a convenient shortcut attached to it)
    
    (that includes Run or Debug configurations available in your workspace since 4.12)
• launchers optimizations : save them with your projects and do not forget to uncheck the option "Delete configurations when associated resource is deleted" in the "Run/Launching/Launch Configuration" preference panel:

And then there are the configuration of:

• project preferences
• perspectives (which you can configure across multiple screens)
• provisioning mechanism p2 (with bundle pools to share plugins across multiple eclipse installations)

The cheapest and fastest optimization I ever did for Eclipse is to buy extra 2G of RAM for my dev machine.

I think the best way to learn about eclipse shortcuts is to use MouseFeed. MouseFeed is a plugin which shows the corresponding shortcut keys whenever the user uses the mouse to perform some actions. Common tasks and the shortcuts for them can be acquired within a few days. Mousefeed can be found at http://www.mousefeed.com/. Hope this helps.