Productivity and Quality of IDE

[James]

It depends on a number of factors including yourself. I am a very
visual person. I consider visual design as the native language of
expression and representation (at least from a human stand point) for
objects that have visual end presentation. I know I am productive this
way. Your mileage may wary on how you prefer to think.

It also depends on how good the tool chain is designed. Delphi, Visual
Studio.NET, Dreamweaver for example are a sheer pleasure for me to
design interfaces with. In my Delphi days, I used to feel that thhe IDE
was critical to my productivity. But the old VB6 and FrontPage and even
recent Java IDEs get in my way often. I tend to think most people find
seamless integration more productive. If you are an outlier, good for
you.

As for simple language IDEs, some languages benefit more than others.
Even though I like more integrated solutions like PyDev, SPE etc and
have a long history of IDE usage, I keep coming back to SciTE when it
comes to Python. But I would not dream using Java/C# without an IDE.