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The best IDE for a low-spec PC
Pages: 12
May 9, 2020 at 9:30am
Hi,
so I have a low-spec PC and I was wondering what is the best IDE for a PC like this (for writing and compiling C++). My PC has a 2GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB of RAM and an integrated GPU with 64MB of v-ram. I thought about using Code::Blocks, but I don't know how demanding it is. Also I don't like running software under the min. system requirements.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
so I have a low-spec PC and I was wondering what is the best IDE for a PC like this (for writing and compiling C++). My PC has a 2GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB of RAM and an integrated GPU with 64MB of v-ram. I thought about using Code::Blocks, but I don't know how demanding it is. Also I don't like running software under the min. system requirements.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
May 9, 2020 at 11:02am
I've written and compiled C++ with a 1/5GHz, 1/8GB, 1MB v-ram system, but I've never used IDE.
May 9, 2020 at 12:22pm
I use an iPad, which has got to be a shittier experience than that, and I’ve found that the repl.it ide online is pretty good. of course my only other experience was on eclipse with a Mac, so idk. Maybe check it out and see if you like it. Also I agree with keskiverto; at the end of the day, all an ide really is doing is applying some pretty colors and a monospace font, which isn’t very taxing or helpful really, and compiling really isn’t some speed intensive process, so you should be fine. I’d suggest just getting something like sublime or Notepad++ and then just compiling it online if you’re really that worried.
May 9, 2020 at 12:45pm
OS plays a role too. Windows is more taxing than a lightweight Linux distro.
Vim editor has pretty colors and monospace (I'm told).
Vim editor has pretty colors and monospace (I'm told).
May 9, 2020 at 1:53pm
If you get Linux on it, just use an editor and compile from command-line. Joe is my personal recommendation
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 1:54pm
May 9, 2020 at 3:08pm
I have a laptop from like six years ago with roughly those specs. ~1.5 GHz Sandy Bridge CPU with 4 GB of RAM. It runs Visual Studio 2015, and probably all the later ones, just fine.
May 9, 2020 at 3:27pm
Code::Blocks is also a very good recommendation.
If you _do_ want to go command-line-compile, then any decent graphical editor will do. I like Notepad++ or Sublime.
Sorry, TheToaster, but I think Joe is a piece of garbage. It claims to be WordStar-compatible, but that claim is spuriously technical. The vast majority of its command set is not WordStar... Though, to be honest, I am a bit biased by having messed with it some twenty years ago; it can certainly have been improved since then...
...and I very much like the old Borland Classic editors. I would still be using my Delphi 5 IDE to edit stuff it could handle Unicode and unbounded line lengths...
If you _do_ want to go command-line-compile, then any decent graphical editor will do. I like Notepad++ or Sublime.
Sorry, TheToaster, but I think Joe is a piece of garbage. It claims to be WordStar-compatible, but that claim is spuriously technical. The vast majority of its command set is not WordStar... Though, to be honest, I am a bit biased by having messed with it some twenty years ago; it can certainly have been improved since then...
...and I very much like the old Borland Classic editors. I would still be using my Delphi 5 IDE to edit stuff it could handle Unicode and unbounded line lengths...
May 9, 2020 at 3:57pm
I'm running Windows 10 and sometimes Windows 7 on the PC I mentioned. So Code::Blocks should be fine with the specs I mentioned and with Windows?
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 3:57pm
May 9, 2020 at 4:16pm
vs code is lighter than full vs and may suit you.
Lets examine how bad modern software is.
you have a glorified word processor, and it struggles to run on 2 cpus each doing billions of operations per second with billions of bytes of ram available.
That computer could have functioned as the universitie's entire server room when I was in college if it had a network card bank plugged into it.
That said, do you have solid windows sysadmin skills? Gut the startup crap with ccleaner, kill all the not needed services and background processes and give it a full bore gamer's rig cleanup and speedup. Defrag if its a rotating drive. I suspect that vs2019 will run smoothly on it (it may be slow to start up, though) if it were clean. Be sure to muck out the registry. Use a lighter weight security suite & a hardware firewall if you can.
You can also do many other clever things. Notepad++ and a compiler works great for me. Are you doing big projects/real stuff or homework? All you need for homework is n++ & any compiler. N++ is arguable better for small things as its faster and supports macros which VS removed for some unholy reason. It also supports rectangular edit and multi-line identical edit, as well as plug ins that can format code for you.
Lets examine how bad modern software is.
you have a glorified word processor, and it struggles to run on 2 cpus each doing billions of operations per second with billions of bytes of ram available.
That computer could have functioned as the universitie's entire server room when I was in college if it had a network card bank plugged into it.
That said, do you have solid windows sysadmin skills? Gut the startup crap with ccleaner, kill all the not needed services and background processes and give it a full bore gamer's rig cleanup and speedup. Defrag if its a rotating drive. I suspect that vs2019 will run smoothly on it (it may be slow to start up, though) if it were clean. Be sure to muck out the registry. Use a lighter weight security suite & a hardware firewall if you can.
You can also do many other clever things. Notepad++ and a compiler works great for me. Are you doing big projects/real stuff or homework? All you need for homework is n++ & any compiler. N++ is arguable better for small things as its faster and supports macros which VS removed for some unholy reason. It also supports rectangular edit and multi-line identical edit, as well as plug ins that can format code for you.
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 4:26pm
May 9, 2020 at 4:24pm
Marginal value, man. The more units you have of something the less each unit is worth. Now that compute power and memory are plentiful we no longer want to spend very many hours optimizing our programs, since our time is still scarce.
May 9, 2020 at 4:28pm| I’d suggest just getting something like sublime or Notepad++ and then just compiling it online if you’re really that worried. |
I already use Notepad++ and Sublime for web development. And you're telling me that there is a way to compile a .cpp file into an .exe file online, in a browser? I'd love to do that!
I'm not planning to use C++ for anything too crazy anyways. So if you could give me some more info about online compiling, that'd be amazing!
@highwayman
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 4:31pm
May 9, 2020 at 9:02pm| Sorry, TheToaster, but I think Joe is a piece of garbage. It claims to be WordStar-compatible, but that claim is spuriously technical. The vast majority of its command set is not WordStar... Though, to be honest, I am a bit biased by having messed with it some twenty years ago; it can certainly have been improved since then... |
It has improved quite a bit and has been updated. And it is great. There are quite a few people who use it nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMBQmhO8KqI
I've tried many editors over the years and I've always ended up coming back to Joe for some reason. As for Wordstar compatibility, that doesn't bother me too much. I have used Joe's command-set and it I don't find it difficult to learn at all. Muscle memory using Joe for years outweights WordStar compatibility for me at least :)
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 9:13pm
May 9, 2020 at 9:07pm| bld wrote: |
|---|
| I'm not planning to use C++ for anything too crazy anyways. So if you could give me some more info about online compiling, that'd be amazing! |
See the links in:
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/270251/#msg1164184
That way you get somebody else to worry about keeping their compiler up to date!
I've never used an IDE for C++. I didn't particularly enjoy using one for other languages either.
Last edited on May 9, 2020 at 9:09pm
May 10, 2020 at 12:08am
Well, it’s pretty easy. Just look up "c++ compiler online", or look up https://repl.it. I strongly suggest repl.it, but any of them will do for you I suspect...
Last edited on May 10, 2020 at 12:11am
May 10, 2020 at 6:41pm
Alright, thanks for the help. But is there a way to download the program as an .exe file after compiling it online? I tried a few online C++ compilers but I couldn't find any option for this.
Last edited on May 10, 2020 at 6:46pm
May 10, 2020 at 11:13pm
Em. Well technically you could with repl.it easily enough, but any executable that you try to download is probably not gonna be able to run on your computer sadly; that’s the one downside.
May 13, 2020 at 3:21pm| but any executable that you try to download is probably not gonna be able to run on your computer |
Why is that?
May 13, 2020 at 3:41pm
And most run Linux, and Linux executables are generally not portable across different machines.
May 13, 2020 at 3:48pm
The compilation stage is likely going to be the only major bottleneck with that PC. That would be a concern with an IDE or command-line.
The main question is how long would it take to complete the compilation for what would be an average sized amount of code for you. Is that time lag acceptable?
More memory and/or a faster processor certainly would speed things up.
If you want an IDE for that PC, I would recommend Code::Blocks. It is less of a hog than Visual Studio.
http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?topic=16779.0
C::B is also more agnostic when it comes to operating systems. You get used to how to do things with C::B on Windows, switching over to Mac or *nix should be easy.
The specs of the PC IMO might be better suited to doing command-line work. YMMV.
The choice is yours, on my programming PC I use MSVC and C::B.
The minimum requirements for VS2019 don't look all that hefty considering it is Windows and MS:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/system-requirements
VS2017 is about the same:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/vs2017-system-requirements-vs
A summary of the stats for my programming PC (over 6 years old, pieced together from a used PC box):
The only major change since I built this PC up as a used kit was getting the SSD to replace a regular SATA HD. That really does make a difference in overall performance.
The main question is how long would it take to complete the compilation for what would be an average sized amount of code for you. Is that time lag acceptable?
More memory and/or a faster processor certainly would speed things up.
If you want an IDE for that PC, I would recommend Code::Blocks. It is less of a hog than Visual Studio.
http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?topic=16779.0
C::B is also more agnostic when it comes to operating systems. You get used to how to do things with C::B on Windows, switching over to Mac or *nix should be easy.
The specs of the PC IMO might be better suited to doing command-line work. YMMV.
The choice is yours, on my programming PC I use MSVC and C::B.
The minimum requirements for VS2019 don't look all that hefty considering it is Windows and MS:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/system-requirements
VS2017 is about the same:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/vs2017-system-requirements-vs
A summary of the stats for my programming PC (over 6 years old, pieced together from a used PC box):
Operating System Windows 10 Pro 64-bit CPU Intel Core i5 2400 @ 3.10GHz Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology RAM 12.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz (7-7-7-20) Motherboard Hewlett-Packard 1495 (SOCKET 0) Storage 232GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB (SATA (SSD)) 1863GB Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 (SATA ) |
The only major change since I built this PC up as a used kit was getting the SSD to replace a regular SATA HD. That really does make a difference in overall performance.
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