[kenjackson]

An IDE is about making it easier to deal with your own code, not the language per se.

Any nontrivial program... say 50,000+ lines, would benefit from an IDE. Helps even simple tasks like finding all uses of a given function or pretty printing.

[silentbicycle]

Oh. My objection isn't to having to learn an IDE, it's having to learn a new IDE, specific to that language. If you already know an editor which is excellent for editing, indexing, searching, navigating, slicing and dicing text, why should you have to learn a new editor that only even works for that one language (that you may not even use, in the long run)? Being that tightly coupled to the IDE should raise a red flag about the language's longevity / flexibility.

If my editor/IDE has to call out to utilities included with the language to run build tools, generate some kind of navigation tags, etc., that's fine. Needing a completely different editor just for that language seems crazy, though. If it's going to insist on that, it should at least be Smalltalk. ;)

By all means, put your time into an IDE which will remain useful for the next years (if not decades).

[kenjackson]

Ok, I largely agree... you really should be able to get away with knowing any of vi, emacs, vs, or eclipse ... getting language specific features via addins.