As I learned some basic programming languages I came across tens of IDEs, and tens of compilers. Most people you ask will tell you "Go with that IDE or go with the best" etc, however they do not provide a proper statement as to why this is important. I understand a good IDE will provide you with functionalities to save time and money, such as debugging or quick-word-fill, but I doubt that's the whole reason a programmer picks a good IDE.
At school we work on old compilers (Money probably isn't the reason) because the theory "As long as you learn it's good" works.
The bottom-line question is: How important is it to pick the best IDE for your programming language? YOu have Eclipse for Java, C++, Python and more, but can't you simply use a different one? What difference does a good IDE to your programming skills or your programming time?
Best Answer
Potentially a lot. If you get to know the features and capabilities very well, you can greatly improve your productivity. But if you ignore the advanced features and treat it like a pretty text editor, then it will be a little better than using Notepad and a CLI compiler.
Of course, you should be able to learn to use ANY IDE efficiently. For me that mostly that involves becoming familiar with the most commonly used commands and learning their key-shortcuts (or making my own bindings if they don't exist). If the IDE has tools for refactoring and generating code, that can also improve your productivity if you can get the IDE to do repetitive tasks quicker than you could ever do on your own.
Not all IDEs are made equal though, and so you might find that no matter how good you get with one, it might never be as productive as another (for the same kind of work) because there are some features it simply doesn't have.