Have started your programming journey and have come across this term “IDE” or “Integrated Development Environment“?
So don’t worry this is the right place where you will get all the information related to IDE (integrated development environment) and the best way possible to get the best IDE for your programming journey is to holding on the article till the end .
Lets get started and here is a list of topics we will be going through in this article
Table Of Contents:
What is an IDE ?
IDEs is basically a Integrated Development Environment. IDE is a collection of different types of tools that helps developer to write and navigate through the code easily.
It provides different ways to writing the codes in any computer program.
Tasks such as :
- Text editing.
- Code Compiling.
- Debugging.
- Code Testing can be done in a single application.
IDEs are very helpful in developing large scale and intricate applications.
Features of IDEs :
Programmers and Developers use IDEs just because of the variety of features and functionality they provide.
Here are some of the features IDEs :
1. Syntax Highlighting :
Syntax Highlighting is one of the underlining features of IDEs . It helps programmers in easily navigating through the code .
This is a feature of IDE that highlights the keywords and some special words in different colors so as to help the developer in easy writing of code.
2. Debugger :
While writing the code every programmer makes some mistakes and the programmer does not run.
This is the place where debuggers comes into play.
Debugger helps developers in pointing the errors in the program and gives short solutions to resolve those problems.
Also Debuggers in IDEs gives some hints to programmers while writing the code so as to minimize the errors while compiling the code.
3. Code Completion :
This is a very helpful feature in IDE that helps developers in writing their code fast and with less errors.
In Auto Code Completion the IDE recognizes the code that the programmers is going to write and suggests the words or lines of code according to it.
For example :
In the screenshot shared below the programmer has written just three letters and the IDE has suggested some keywords that can be used in the code. This is termed as the code completion feature of the IDE.
4. Plugins and Extensions :
Many IDEs have plugins and extensions that helps in making the software development process more easy and efficient.
Plugins and Extensions are programmers that add more features to the IDE but they need to installed by the developer according to the needs.
5. Code Editor :
The Code Editor of an IDE is the text editor where the programs are being written.
But in IDEs the Code Editors is being add with more features and functionalities such as code auto complete, syntax highlight and hints when errors are occurred in the code.
Here are some more features an IDE has :
- Building Executables.
- Source code editor.
- Specific Language Support.
- Inbuilt Compiler.
- Project awareness.
- Software Testing.
- Code Refactoring & Profiling
Where are IDEs used ?
IDEs are used for development of complex and high end applications as it has many integrations that help programmers in managing the code properly.
IDEs are also used for small and simple code as it has useful features like syntax highlight, auto code completion and debugger that help beginners programmers in writing down the code.
Difference between IDE and Code Editor.
To understand the difference between an IDE and code editor we need to understand what IDE and code editor are?
We have already discussed what is IDE in the above section so we would now understand what is code editor :
Code Editors are lightweight and simple applications that enables programmers to write the code.
Code Editors are not suitable for developing large scale applications . Some of the code editors come up with basic features like:
- Syntax Highlighting.
- Code Formatting.
- Debugger.
List of top rated IDEs by programmers in 2021:
- Visual Studio.
- IntelliJ IDEA.
- PyCharm
- Eclipse
- PhpStorm.
- WebStrom.
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Net Beans
- Code: Blocks
- Android Studio
- Komodo
- Adobe Flash Builder
- RubyMine
- Enide Studio 2014
- jEdit
- Particle
- BlueJ
- Coda
- Xcode
- Aptana
- Blackadder
- Geany
- MonoDevelop
- Espresso
- jGRASP
Top 10 best IDEs for Web development.
- IntelliJ IDEA (https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/)
- Visual Studio Code. (https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- Atom by GitHub. (https://github.com/atom)
- PyCharm (https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/)
- Sublime Text 3. (https://www.sublimetext.com/3)
- PhpStorm (https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/)
- NetBeans (https://netbeans.org/)
- Kite (http://guru99.link/recommends-kite)
- JSFiddle (https://jsfiddle.net/)
- Codepen (https://codepen.io/)
Top 10 best IDEs for Mobile App Development.
- Microsoft Visual Studio Code.(https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- Apache Cordova. (https://cordova.apache.org/)
- Android Studio. (https://developer.android.com/studio)
- Intellij IDEA. (https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/)
- XCode (https://developer.apple.com/xcode/)
- AppCode (https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/)
- Komodo Edit. (https://www.activestate.com/products/komodo-edit/)
- Atom (https://github.com/atom)
- Qt Creator. (https://www.qt.io/product/development-tools)
- RubyMine. (https://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/)
Top 6 Best IDEs for Machine Learning and Data Science.
- Spyder (https://www.spyder-ide.org/)
- Thonny (https://thonny.org/)
- Jupyter (https://jupyter.org/)
- PyCharm (https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/)
- Visual Code. (https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- Atom (https://github.com/atom)