Somehow Carlos' post about Eclipse is making the rounds again, even though it's a year and a half old. I think that tools are important, but they are not the dealbreaker for me. If you have a good language, you can build good tools. Would I like to have better tool support for Python? Absolutely. But the expressive power of the language is important to me, and if I had to choose expressiveness over tool support, I'd pick expressiveness.

Hans asks what the big deal is with Eclipse. For me, its that it's an extensible environment that understands programs at a fairly deep semantic level, which is what's necessary in order to build high-leverage development tools. I think that we're only beginning to see some of the functionality that such an environment enables.

Those of us fortunate enough to use a Symbolics or a Dorado know that an expressive language and good tools are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps someday there will be another system that combines both. But for now, I'm still looking for a home.