I haven't really used any of the Java IDEs out there, but I thought I'd mention that you probably mean VS2008 ;) As for Visual Studio, its extensibility model

I haven't really used any of the Java IDEs out there, but I thought I'd mention that you probably mean VS2008 ;) As for Visual Studio, its extensibility model might not be "awesome", but that is definitely changed for the better in VS2010, and for the "rest of us", jetbrains has some pretty decent products.