Hey Eric and all Java Programmers using TextMate,
/me and Brian Lalor are currently working on the Java Syntax a bit.
The big evil Java might be the last to succumb, though. Are there others on this list who would like to jettison Eclipse, too? What can we do to improve Java editing in TM? What would be your minimum list of features?
Eclipse is very deticated to Java. it even comes with its own incremental compiler so that it can highlight errors before you manually compiled the file and can do much more than a regexp language grammar that way, like it know about types and variables all the time and so on. If one knows how to work with it and needs all those nice features like a builtin debugger, great autocompletion and documentation lookup (I love that and certainly depend on a lot of features of eclipse) there is no way around it.
If one is new to a language on the other hand, a nice little editor and writing all the code from hand is a good way to learn the language, so one learns what he is doing instead of eclipse doing it for him.
If I find the time, I will put some effort into it (Juggling with jobs at the moment). It would be great, if some more people would communicate here on the list or in the irc channel on how to improve the current situation. I know you are out there, Java guys! ;)
Soryu