I am more with the VIM/Emacs crowd though I guess.
I didn't know though that you could create an "evaluation window" in Eclipse. I really liked the refactoring features in Eclipse though and miss them sometimes.
http://www.cavdar.net/2008/09/13/5-tips-for-debugging-java-c...
- You can set breakpoint only for "Exception"
- You can set "Step Filtering" to avoid JDK standard classes (or libraries that you know won't cause the bugs)
- The Expression Evaluation also supports code-assist/code-completion
It's really tough to beat IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ these days with plenty contributors and strong companies behind them churning new features everyday.