Since I can't comment over there..
> http://blog.z3bra.org/2013/09/java-without-eclipse.html

Quote:YOU. DON'T. NEED. ECLIPSE. AT ALL.

Meh. I agree to some amount, but... have you ever worked on a big Java [Enterprise] project?
No sane mind would want to do that without an IDE. Have you done some major refactoring before? Like modifying an interface with 50 or even 500+ references in the project or implementing/extending classes?

The workspace of the project at work contains over 25k *.java files. Admittedly, that contains the source of our internal framework (~5k files) and some currently not deployed/unused components.

I've written some Java without Eclipse, but if you are used to it and know many of the shortcuts then you are way faster. And although I know a good part of the Java standard library by heart, using auto-complete saves me a lot of time. Especially when you already know what's coming and you hit the corresponding shortcut before the list even pops up :P

/mini-rant