I have always been an "IDE Person". I really like having at least a simple sidebar with my file structures, and have a few tools integrated is also a big help. IDEs are never perfect, since they have to assume a little bit about how you operate (and these assumptions can't be right for everyone)My History with IDEs - A VERY exciting read:- First there was QBASIC. This was essentially an IDE + BASIC interpreter. It worked rather well, had integrated help, and a lot of folks about my age probably started programming with it (it came with MS-DOS)- QuickBASIC was like a fuller-featured QBASIC, that could produce EXEs. The IDE was also improved.- Next, was Turbo C++; this was really a great product, integrated help, debugger, etc. Not bad!- Somewhere in here I moved from DOS to Windows development.- I then moved to DJGPP and used an IDE called RHIDE, which was a clone of the Turbo C++ IDE. RHIDE worked very well, actually. This is what I (mostly) built Legacy Forest with.- During this time I moved from Windows development to Linux; a tough change but one that was well worth it. My friend reduz helped me make the transition.- I used RHIDE in Linux, but it didn't work fabulously as the key-bindings didn't all work. - At this point, I looked at all these different Linux IDEs. I used a few of them, and in the end I settled on KDevelop which at the time was the best, I think.- KDevelop's natural build system for C++ is autotools. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate autotools. Really it's worth five hates. That was the hardest, most awkward part of KDevelop for me; figuring out how the heck autotools are supposed to work. I did figure it out, and it's not terrible, but it's... still autotools.- Somewhere in here, I moved from KDevelop's autotools to SCons. SCons is awesome, but doesn't work perfectly with KDevelop. Anytime I start a new KDevelop project I need to do all this manual hackery to convince it otherwise; after I do this, it more or less works.- Sometime in here, I started a job where I used Access/VB. I won't comment on this, it's really terrible.- Somewhere in here, I finished Venture the Void (I think)- Then I got another job doing PHP, and used Eclipse. I was really happy with Eclipse!Now, I'm going to move my Linux development from KDevelop to Eclipse. Or at least, I'm going to give it a shot. Generally I think Eclipse works better (sorry, KDevelop!) but KDevelop still works rather well. Let's see how it turns out.
2008-12-08