I honestly don't understand ranting about the IDE. I am a professional programmer and as such I can see the limitations of the IDE, but I can also see the advantages in its simplicity for what is a basic device.
As far as I can see it would seem that for anyone who know enough to be aware of the limitations of the IDE, it would be trivial to find a replacement for it in less than a minute on the web so where is the issue?
I got my arduino last week, wrote a few sketches for it, then thought I wanted a better editor so used visual studio, where a plugin was available with instructions how to do it. Visual studio has a much better editor than the Arduino IDE, but it cost 40 times more than the whole arduino UNO to buy. Having said that, I still use the arduino IDE as it works for me.
and then to mention eclipse as a decent IDE... 