There, I've said it.
Really, Java has great developer tools.
Long ago I liked to experiment with a lot of different programming languages (I own lisp.ro). Many languages got things right from the beginning while Java with the C++ inheritance is really, really verbose. Nowadays I mostly play with Python, Javascript (and studying Erlang).
But what Java lacks in succinctness compensates in tools. Big, juicy, gooey tools.
First, a bow to the JVM. It's such a nice feeling to develop on OSX and only test rarely on Windows and have everything work !
Second, I really like my NetBeans IDE with my debugger and trusty profiler. Problem with the EJB: bam! add --debug to Glassfish and connect from the IDE. Possible performance problems? kpow! attach the profiler to the application and see what's the problem.
Wanna see the health of your code: put a whole bunch of reports in maven and build your site (findbugs, pmd, taglist, checkstyle, all good stuff).
And if you feel in a coding mood, why don't you add a MBean to get quick info from jconsole, even remotely? Or even better, make a custom JMX client using JFreeChart to get a nice display of the health of the application.
It just feels like software engineering. And it's nice.
