Do you use an IDE?

[Carol Enderlin]

I now use Eclipse integrated with cvs for source control, and we use ant for builds. Prior to that I used vi on unix, TextPad on pc. For real work development we use ant for builds whether we use IDE or not. For playing around doing examples, compiling for a question from JavaRanch, or studying for scjp TextPad & javac are perfect. Developing with or without IDE both have their pros and cons. If you're going to get moved over to a .NET project on Visual Studio it's good to be comfortable with an IDE.

[Todd Chambery]

Originally posted by Frank Carver:
I'd like to add my tuppence.
<snip>
A few months ago I finally found two "killer" features that has got me using an IDE.
The first feature is refactoring.
<snip>
The second feature is CVS support.
<snip>

I second this. While I don't share your aversion to IDEs (I'm all in favor of computers relieving me of the drudgery of coding... I did enough emacs/command line in college), Eclipse's refactoring and cvs support are just winning. I used to find cvs a pain, but the integration within the IDE is so seamless, I want to buy the guys who coded it a beer. The merge/compare facility is as intuitive as I've seen, and make commercial products (*cough* Clearcase *cough*) look like a stone axe in comparison.
The refactoring, too, is a marvel, and something I had not seen in another IDE (I've never used IDEA...). And it continues to improve with each milestone release.
It's even politically correct being Open Source, which incidentally makes plugin development infinitely simpler, since if you see something you like in the IDE, just step into the Runtime-Workspace (the plugin development test environment) and see exactly what the Eclipse folks did.
Todd

[Todd Chambery]

Originally posted by Jonathan MBaker:
I recently had to evaluate Eclipse(www.eclipse.org) and Intellij Idea(www.intellij.com/jetbrains) for my team.(we develop only in Java) I came to prefer Idea...
<snip>
I would really reccomend either of them, but it is best to just download them both and see which one you like.

I haven't seen it mentioned on this thread, and I'm wondering how you evaluated Eclipse against IDEA, so...
It's important to understand that Eclipse out of the box is not (for me) the complete IDE. Eclipse's strength is in its extensibility as a plugin platform, so here's my list of core plugins:
Metrics: http://metrics.sourceforge.net/
Eclipse profiler plugin: http://eclipsecolorer.sourceforge.net/
Call hierarchy and implementors view: http://eclipse-tools.sourceforge.net/
XML Buddy (xml editor): http://www.xmlbuddy.com/
Checkstye (code audit): http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipse-cs
Omondo (UML): http://www.omondo.com/index.jsp
DbEdit (Database plugin): http://www.geocities.com/uwe_ewald/dbedit.html
Color Editor (JEdit text highlighting for eclipse): http://gstaff.org/colorEditor/

[Todd Chambery]

I'm going post-crazy here, but I forgot to plug my own plugins:
http://zclipse.org
# CompleteClipse - auto-complete any string
# ExclusionBuilder - exclude particular files/types from compilation
# Insectivore - team task tracking through the eclipse Tasks view
# JScheme Eclipse Plug-in - JScheme highlighting/compilation support for eclipse
# TabNavigator - tab navigation through the code (very cool--have to use it to understand)
# zMail - simple mail client for eclipse
# Zero Effort Feedback - plugin feedback plugin

[John Holme]

I mostly use Homesite 4.5, because there was a disk at work. I like the text highlighting; especially because I work a lot with JSPs where the highlighting makes it much easier to distinguish html from javascript from java (well, we try to minimize the scriplets in the JSP, but it still helps!). I also like Textpad.
My main reason for being interested in an IDE is something I haven't seen mentioned in this post: debugging. I was impressed with a colleague's ability to step through the code using the NetBeans debugger; jumping seamlessly between JSPs and java source files. Much easier than writing out messages to the log.
However, nobody at my current job uses an IDE, and there's just too much going on in the NetBeans UI for me to justify the time required to learn how it all works without a mentor readily available. Until further notice, I'll probably stick with Homesite and the command line!