I use an IDE, and I write clean, tight code. I don't see your point -- part of it is that I have far more important things to do with my life than learn the API, so code completion is a great resource for me when I'm working with 3rd party libraries or Java libraries that I don't use regularly.
Debuggers are another benefit to using an IDE.
Running my app within NetBeans also makes it easier to deploy and launch a web application, so that's another bit of tedium that the IDE alleviates.
For me it's a win-win. It takes care of grunt work, I take care of code.
I also hate debuggers. Tried them, don't like them. They're great for when you don't have the source code and need to reverse engineer something, but for finding bugs, I think they're terrible.
Different people like different things though. It sounds like you're doing a very different kind of development than I do - that whole scary J2EE beans webapp enterprisey stuff.
Well, not quite J2EE, but it is Spring based. Spring relies heavily on magic that makes tracing code very difficult without a debugger. It wasn't my choice, and I wouldn't choose it again, but at least it's better than J2EE.
Debuggers are another benefit to using an IDE.
Running my app within NetBeans also makes it easier to deploy and launch a web application, so that's another bit of tedium that the IDE alleviates.
For me it's a win-win. It takes care of grunt work, I take care of code.