Best language tooling

Question

I was listening to a podcast recently (may have been SO - can't remember) when the interviewee said that one of the reasons Java was so successful and popular was the tooling.

Having use of great FOSS editors such as Eclipse, NetBeans. Metrics tools such as Cobertura, Find Bugs, Build tools such as Maven and ANT.. I'd have to agree

I've done a fair bit of .NET and the tools are OKish. The problem seems to be that there isn't the depth in tooling that there is in Java. The FOSS stuff seems pretty limited.

My question: Are there any modern languages with a better community and tooling for getting the job done?

Answer 1

If you are looking for languages other than Java and C# with good tool and library support, I think the next most supported language is Ruby. However, I believe the tool, library, and community support for Ruby is much less than Java or C#.

Answer 2

sure, there's emacs and vi!

seriously, great as some Java tools are, many of their features are meaningless for other languages/environments.

Answer 3

maybe PHP or even python

Answer 4

Don't forget Perl's CPAN with a wealth of first-class code like e.g. profilers, ide's and modern Object Oriented Systems.

C.