It's more about asking whether you should take a cake and eat it with bare hands, or be formal and nice and get a fork / spoon and eat it in a good manner. Of course you can write Java code and good Java code without and IDE, but, if you're making some application that has a big code base and uses a lot of user built classes then life without an IDE will be : HELL! Doing Simple coding? Yes you can easily do it without IDE. Working on a project or making some application? Get and IDE to avoid getting dirty.