[joeevans]

If you're a polyglot/polyplatform developer then eclipse based IDE's are awesome. You can drop an eclipse into a directory, untar it, and run it... and toss it away later if you want. Titanium Studio, SpringSource Tool Suite, and, of course, basic Eclipse are all versions of Eclipse. I don't pay a cent, and can make my way through several projects with the same IDE skill set as they all use variations of the same commands. I don't have to deal with annoying and expensive licensing issues. The IDE is free, and the plugins I choose are also usually free. By free, I mean free in all senses. If I want to get someone going on my project, they can download an Eclipse based IDE and get rolling without paying a cent. As a final bonus, most tutorials reference Eclipsed based IDE's... not a paid IDE.