Rather than looking at it as a language that needs an IDE to be bearable, it might be more helpful to look at it as a language that is most pleasant to use in c

Rather than looking at it as a language that needs an IDE to be bearable, it might be more helpful to look at it as a language that is most pleasant to use in concert with well build tools. I look at it similarly to the way I look at Smalltalk. It's possible to use it as just a series of text files (with GNU Smalltalk), but using it with tools that understand the language (such as Visualworks or Squeak/Pharo) turns it into a very different experience. I know that a Smalltalk dev environment feels alive in a way that Java doesn't, but using Java with a tool like IntelliJ is a nice experience. Using something like JRebel or HotSwapAgent to swap code changes into a running application also improves the dev experience significantly.