I'd like to caution you against deciding on Eclipse solely because of online tutorials and Google recommendation. For one, Eclipse is free, so it has a very low

I'd like to caution you against deciding on Eclipse solely because of online tutorials and Google recommendation. For one, Eclipse is free, so it has a very low barrier to entry. If you were going to start Java tomorrow, I'd tell you to use Eclipse or Netbeans as well, even though I own IntelliJ. Can't give you a comparison because I use it infrequently, and I use IntelliJ for Ruby. It's a lot more polished than Aptana Studios' Ruby integration, which is basically Eclipse.