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Why not use Xdevelop. I actually use(prefer) this for my windows .net development, and it works on Mac & Linux too. Not to mention it use the same project files as Visual Studio .net.

Netbeans does an approximation of this that catches some compilation issues, but not others. The nice thing is that it's more lazy approach can make it feel a little faster at times, though.

Also, the first Java IDEs to really do what you are talking about were Codeguide from Omnicore. Other IDEs have since eclipsed them on features, but their current product is still quite good!

Our boss says we *have* to have generics, so Macs and their 1.4.x JVM are right out for development.

I'd just like to point out that you can still target pre-1.5 JVMs (i.e. 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4) while still developing using the new 1.5 Java language.

You can use my free, open-source, tool, Retroweaver (which has "blessings" from Sun's compiler team), or you can pay money for CodeGuide.

My primary editor for quick changes or extensive text manipulation when working with the filetypes mentioned is gVim. That has already been well discussed, I wanted to mention a few other things that I end up using a lot. :)

1. VS.NET -- Really darn expensive if your shop doesn't have an MSDN Universal subscription, but it handles everything minus JSP with ease. Very sophisticated syntax highlighting and autocompletion, a very good JavaScript debugger, graphical HTML layout, decent CSS editing. It can handle Java syntax through it's JSharp roots, but it ignores JSP. There might be a way to kludge that, but I don't know.

2. CodeGuide is fantastic at Java and JSP. It can syntax highlight HTML as well, but it doesn't do much for JavaScript/CSS. It is the best debugger for Java I've ever seen. Priced at $500, it was well worth it for me.

3. TopStyle Pro is the best CSS editor I've seen out there. So many features. $80.00

For the impatient:

The preliminary spec for generic types in Java is here.
The Sun prototype compiler can be downloaded here.
And a forum for discussion of Java generics is also available.

You might also want to check out CodeGuide. This is AFAIK the only IDE which already supports Java generics as described in the spec (and is an awesome IDE for traditional Java as well).

Enjoy!

-- kryps

Look at CodeGuide from OmniCore. Nice IDE, nice MacOS X integration. We've been using it for six months now.

The only IDE that I know of that does this is CodeGuide, by Omnicore, and they've only applied it to Java. (free 30 day trial!) I've been using it professionally and at home for years, and it's an absolute joy.

The sooner you can detect a problem, the better. Cyclone pushes some run-time defect detection into compile-time. CodeGuide pushes compile-time defect detection to typing-time. Maybe someday soon our development environments will be able to automatically detect many run-time defects as we type our code.

Codeguide from Omnicore is absolutely outstanding. Its automatic code help feature is incredible. You can see the errors in your code before trying a compile.

I use Forte, and find it painfully slow, but its Swing forms designer tool is superb (it's a piece of cake to do GridBag layouts!)

CodeGuide is the best I've used in terms of quick, easy code development.

rOD.

Codeguide from Omnicore is absolutely outstanding. Its automatic code help feature is incredible. You can see the errors in your code before trying a compile.

I use Forte, and find it painfully slow, but its Swing forms designer tool is superb (it's a piece of cake to do GridBag layouts!)

CodeGuide is the best I've used in terms of quick, easy code development.

rOD.

If you want to learn Java you're better of with a non drag-and-drop IDE like Forte. I always thought of CodeGuide to be a good IDE. It has syntax-checking, autocomplete, auto-indent, an integrated debugger and it shows errors on the fly (much better than VB does this).