Few better ways exist to enjoy coding than hanging out outside, enjoying some fresh air, and firing up
Netbeans. Although it does make me crave one of those
newer laptops with brighter screens.
I started using Netbean's Matisse for production applications, and have been astounded at how quickly I've been able to develop an application. Between all I have learned about Java recently and the power this tool gives me to rapidly develop a Swing application, it is going to be tough for me to do web development until I find a similar tool. I might have to give
Sun's Creator tool a try, although now I am so used to Netbeans 5 I feel inclined to hold out for their updated version.
On another note, I have been reading
Wicked Cool Java via my Safari subscription recently. I highly recommend it. It has been useful; for example newer versions of Java have some really nice for loop constructs to simplify coding. I think it actually has enough examples and usages of generics to get me started on those as well.