That is a religious war waiting to happen.

If you mean IDE, then I think there are two types ... Free and "not free"

Free: Ecplise
Not Free: IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ is in my opinion awesome, every time I have to program in
pretty much any other language it always feels horrible compared to Java
in IntelliJ.

I suggest  www.eclipse.org...................

there are some very impresive free IDs out there.

http://www.netbeans.org

http://www.eclipse.org

www.borland.com/jbuilder/foundation/index.html

I'd say textpad with the Java compiler is best. It is what I use. I have
tried others but always stick with Textpad. It can be download  at
www.textpad.com

Better yet, you should be using vi with the jdk. But if you really
wanna be a man, write the java  byte code yourself without a
compiler. All the java pros can type byte code with no assistance.
Who needs an IDE?

who needs byte code, lets just write everything in 1s and 0s.

Who needs 1's and 0's lets all build our logic circuits...

Why, you have 0s? I'd use an 'o'.

What's so horrible about that? That's how I do almost all of my programming
(occasionally I will load netbeans so I can use the form builder). I have a
couple of IDE's installed on my development machine (netbeans, eclipse and an
old version of forte), but I hate all of them. I am much more productive
with vim, a bash shell, and ant than I am with any of the IDE's that I have
used - especially the ones that are written in Java.

Actually vi is pretty cool when your brain warps around it.

Also have you tried intellij?

I use Forte/Netbeans and I think they are pretty decent, especially
for building quick GUIs, despite the fact that they lack the extreme
flexibility of doing everything manually. Where such flexibility is
needed, I revert to good ol' vi or jEdit.

I love the "Well *I'm* much more productive with this extremely antiquated piece
of software" argument. The "I *hate* those IDE-thingies that try to make
everything easy for you, and no, I'm not biased" attitude. And to that, the
response is always the same: "That's fine. If you have worked on any seriously
large software product and still feel that using a text editor  is right for you,
then by all means. The rest of us, however, will enjoy our ability to debug, to
create class stubs from inherited classes and interfaces automatically, to drag
and drop gui components, construct ant scripts with a click, create and run
junit tests with minimal effort, manage our source repository through a gui,
roll web applications out to the server with a click, etc. etc. etc."

> I'd say textpad with the java  compiler is best. It is what I use. I have
> tried others but always stick with Textpad. It can be download  at
> www.textpad.com
>
> neowhere

A simple text editor  does have good learning elements though. You will
need to learn how to do all of the basic stuff that is required to be a
java programmer which are often done automatically by the IDE (like
class paths).

However I find that for intermediate java programmers intelligent IDES
(like IntelliJ) actually help them learn Java faster (those red
underlines are annoying) than just reading from pure text.

Advanced programmers probably really don't care what they are
programming in, in fact from personal experience I use whatever is the
easiest to use. Such that if I am writing a simple example class I use
what ever medium is the easiest (such as a email client :))and as the
project extends out in time the level of editor to IDE changes depending
on my need.

At the end, it is a tool, and those tools should be used at specific
times, big heavy tools can just be too much for small jobs, while light
weight tools are going to make it in-efficient to do huge jobs.

Im normall using JCreator, its a free available for download  and a
pay version. The free is a little limited, but still great for big
programs and its easy and fast, im usint the light version for
programming for companys.
Sometimes i use together, but only for real "heavy" stuff.
GUI im making in JBuilder, its easy making gui there, but the rest im
not so happy for in jbuilder.

u can download  a free version from textpad.www.textpad.com