This. Java with a great IDE is like a half-assed Smalltalk environment (with the notable exception that editing Smalltalk as text is trivially simple compared to java). Java+IDE gives you a kinda-sorta-macros (were macros are defined as code that write code - only the IDEs use some form of simplistic text-replacement code-generating stuff, not true macros), and kinda-sorta "smart" code (but you're not actually modifying objects in memory via a text view, like Smalltalk).
So the IDEs make it feasible to manage all the poor horizontal "abstractions" (complections, really) with all the different files and paths and whatnot. But they're much inferior to vi(m) for editing text.
Granted, if you don't do much text editing (writing, modifying, moving lines around) - the work you actually do do ("programming") - won't benefit much from a great text editor.
I used vim for small java projects before inner classes (massive spill of code/classes across files and folders) -- and it was pretty painful. When I changed to use Literate Programming - and could easily work on one file, letting the system generate the arbitrary structure java needed -- things went much more smoothly.
So, yes, YMMV - but if what you do is write/edit stuff that fits in a sane text format, a great editor is a great help. If what you're doing is composing objects from a large standard library of objects, you probably want an object editor like a visual, image-storage (as in vm image) based system like Smalltalk.
So the IDEs make it feasible to manage all the poor horizontal "abstractions" (complections, really) with all the different files and paths and whatnot. But they're much inferior to vi(m) for editing text.
Granted, if you don't do much text editing (writing, modifying, moving lines around) - the work you actually do do ("programming") - won't benefit much from a great text editor.
I used vim for small java projects before inner classes (massive spill of code/classes across files and folders) -- and it was pretty painful. When I changed to use Literate Programming - and could easily work on one file, letting the system generate the arbitrary structure java needed -- things went much more smoothly.
So, yes, YMMV - but if what you do is write/edit stuff that fits in a sane text format, a great editor is a great help. If what you're doing is composing objects from a large standard library of objects, you probably want an object editor like a visual, image-storage (as in vm image) based system like Smalltalk.