Alex posts a inquiry regarding Eclipse (a Java IDE).  I used Eclipse at my previous company where I did Java work, not because it was the best (although it might be) but because it was free.  Although there is limited support for C# in eclipse, I do not (and probably never will) use it for any .NET development.  The primary reason is that it is slow.  Now, it is faster than other IDE's written in Java but that is like saying that one turtle is faster than another.  They are both turtles and they will always be slow.  If I want to do some quick and dirty work in Java now, I use JCreator Lite (the free version)  Although the Pro version is very nice and only $69, I just don't do enough Java any more to justify it.  They are NOT written in Java (i.e. not slow).

Now having said all that, I do really miss a lot of the features that I used to have in Eclipse.  The top one being Refactoring support.  I don't understand why this functionality hasn't made it into VS.NET yet.  See my search for a solution here.  The other thing I miss is code formatting.  Now there is some basic code formatting built into VS.NET ( i.e ctrl-k ctrl-f  ) but it is severely lacking.  What I used in Eclipse was the Jalopy plug-in.  I could set all my code preferences in an xml file and use it from any application (Including Eclipse as a plug-in.)  I sure wish someone would port that over to .NET (I will help if anyone is interested...).

[Alex Lowe's .NET Blog]

If you have used Eclipse then I'd love for you to post some comments to tell us all what you like so much. What features exist in Eclipse that aren't in VS.NET or WebMatrix that you'd like to see included? I'd love to hear your opinions on the subject.