[brandon]

I personally think the necessity of using an IDE merits complaint itself.

Yes, Eclipse and IntelliJ do some pretty amazing things. I wish I had a toolset that nice for C/Python/whatever. By contrast, without the toolset in Java, you're sunk.

Then again, I wouldn't imagine or expect some types of development to be achievable without a rich toolset (FPGA work comes to mind). I just like to think of Java as a more general purpose language.

[prodigal_erik]

This. I work on Java in Eclipse every day; it actually won me over from years of Emacs. But heavy-duty code navigation tools just manage the pain of bad abstraction, they're no substitute for a DRY language in which the work remains clear and concise enough that you can just sit down and read it.

[axod]

I think that's a misconception.

FWIW I hate IDE's, and the code produced by people using them gives Java a bad name for its verbosity and idiocy.

>> without the toolset in Java, you're sunk.

No, you're not. Try it. Use an editor, write some code. It's not rocket science.