The thing with Eve, is that it's all about the people you play with.
If you find a good group it can be the most awesome thing ever, if you happen to find a not so good one it's the greatest waste of time you could ever conceive.
You can do it casually, as with ED the active grinding part is for credits, skills advance in real time and you can easily keep your skills ticking away and building your character by only logging in once or twice a week, after a somewhat frantic first few weeks granted, frantic in EVE means a timer less than 6 hours..