Did it get horrible, or was it always horrible and the sharp edges finally knawed on you until you looked eleswhere?
I know when I first picked up Eclipse I was blown away by the power(coding in mostly Kate at the time...), some level of rose tinted goggles as first introduction to a proper IDE.
In my experience, Eclipse used to be good and it suddenly became horrible, and it was pretty clear when this happened: around the "Juno" major redesign (which, like I mentioned elsewhere, was both a huge redesign and lacked any kind of serious testing because of budget problems).
It wasn't a gradual, this-is-slightly-becoming-worse affair. It was abrupt. Eclipse really did jump the shark, and you could see the shark flying in mid-air :)
I know when I first picked up Eclipse I was blown away by the power(coding in mostly Kate at the time...), some level of rose tinted goggles as first introduction to a proper IDE.