This is an amazing jump. Im not bragging about it, but Visual Studio is by far the best IDE out there and to actually have android linked into is is certainly big news on my front. Love it!
I would guess you aren't a Java programmer because if you were you'd know this not to be true. As much as Java hating is popular, the static typing lends itself incredibly well to automating refactoring, code checking and so on.
Java programmers are dpoiled for choice with IDEs between IntelliJ, Eclipse and Netbans.
My personal favorite IntelliJ does Android (Eclipse is the de facto standard) and is simply an awesome IDE, well worth the cost in an otherwise commoditized market. This is so much the case that many Visual Studio programmers consider Resharper to be a "must have" for VS development. Resharper is a pluton produced by Jetbrains that brings a lot of what IntelliJ IDEA does for Java to C# programmers.
Personally I find VS o be adequate. A lot of things are awkward like integrating and running unit test frameworks and source control integration. This probably springs from VS's single vendor pedigree versus the Java "mixin" ecosystem and philosophy.
That being said the Java IDEs don't do MonoTouch (afaik) so this is definitely a good thing and (IMHO) a noteworthy achievement.
Strong statement there. How many IDE's have you tried? You should qualify your statement a bit. Maybe it's the best one _you've_ tried, or you could even argue it's the best IDE for C# / .NET (which I'm not sure is true either, but I haven't tried the alternatives).
