I totally agree on java logging. Lambdas would be nice. Checked exceptions? I love them.
Lastly Eclipse is THE best thing since sliced bread. I LOL'ed when you mentioned vim/emacs in the same sentence. Have you actually used Eclipse on a big code base? It's introspection is such a productivity booster. I've not used jetbrains in a decade, but nothing else out there beats it, hands down. Both in terms of speed and quality.
Did you read what I said? "vim/emacs are [for Java] no better". This was in part to head off the predictable chimes from some of "all IDEs are stupid, (vim|emacs) is the best thing since sliced bread".
My tool of choice for Java is however IntelliJ, which is simply light years ahead of Eclipse (IMHO).
> My tool of choice for Java is however IntelliJ, which is simply light years ahead of Eclipse (IMHO).
I agree.
Eclipse seems to always become unstable once enough plugins are installed. After a few updates and removals it ends up tipping over regularly. I suspect the underlying OSGi plugin system is a tricky thing to get right.
Intellij IDEA seems to "just work".
That said, I prefer coding in Clojure with Aquamacs but I've yet to get Clojure into a production system.
If you haven't used IntelliJ in a decade, how can you be so convinced that Eclipse beats it "hands down"? While they offer many of the same capabilities, most people I know who have used both extensively tend to prefer IntelliJ for Java development.
Lastly Eclipse is THE best thing since sliced bread. I LOL'ed when you mentioned vim/emacs in the same sentence. Have you actually used Eclipse on a big code base? It's introspection is such a productivity booster. I've not used jetbrains in a decade, but nothing else out there beats it, hands down. Both in terms of speed and quality.