Thursday, August 25, 2011

Integrated Development Environments

I am sure that about 90% of programmers and probably around 45% of web developers have used or are currently using an Integrated Desktop Environment (IDE) to do their work. IDEs make it possible to write the code, compile it, and distribute it all from one program. Some of the more advanced IDEs offer code completion and method descriptions.

Let's say you started a new Java project in the Netbeans IDE, my personal favorite. The most commonly used way to output something in java is "System.out.println("Something here");
When you type the "." after "System" it will come up with 31 methods and give the javadoc description for each upon click. After you type or select "out." 41 more methods complete with descriptions come up. This happens for all the classes / methods in the given language. Even ones that you create.

To download netbeans go to netbeans.org
It has support for many language included but not limited to C/C++, java, Most forms of Web, and Ruby.
Another popular IDE is Eclipse, but I downloaded the amd64 version like a fool and cannot run it.

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