"...add a new parameter, set a default and it does it across the entire codebase." OK but why exactly does a new parameter with a default need to be repeated a

"...add a new parameter, set a default and it does it across the entire codebase." OK but why exactly does a new parameter with a default need to be repeated at different places across the codebase? Because you're using Java and Java is incredibly verbose and requires you to do crazy stuff and you end up with a super-complected codebase where instead of passing messages around you're actually telling objects "do this", "do that" and then when you have one parameter to a method you're in a world of hurt (because that method is used from different parts of your spaghetti codebase). In Clojure, for example, you'd simply pass the parameters in an associative array (a map) and, even better, when you're constantly passing through the same set of parameter you'd simply wrap the method + its common parameters in a higher-order function and then you pass that higher-order function order. This makes for incredibly shorter codebases and incredibly easier refactoring. Don't get me wrong: at 75% off during doomsday I did buy my IntelliJ IDEA licence but you're foolish if you think that the "text editor" part of IntelliJ is anywhere near close what vim or Emacs do offer you. Also what's really great about Emacs is that you can add functionalities yourself to the "editor". Wanna run unit tests automatically and see the result in another frame/window/buffer? That's trivial to write. No later than yesterday I missed IntelliJ's "goto declaration..." feature. I wrote a quick defun in elisp that had... Seven lines of code and did 90% of the job. Sure people are going to hard that it's for those 10% cases where my script doesn't work that IntelliJ really shines but that's not the point. The point is that you can program Emacs to suit your way of working. You adapt vim / Emacs to yourself. With Eclipse / IntelliJ you have to adapt yourself to the IDE.