You use autocomplete? Good heavens. Am I the only one here who types the whole thing out every time? |
I swear by Visual Studio's Intellisense, do you have any idea how much longer it would take to take to write an application using large third-party libraries without autocomplete? You would spend more time reading documentation then you would code. Sometimes I even find out about convenient overloads I didn't know existed thanks to Intellisense.
I used to be cynical like you, but when I discovered that I code 3 times faster using Intellisense instead of online documentation.
Also, I would like to add to the discussions that Visual Studio's debugger is by far the best debugger out there. Period. The Code Definition window is also pretty convenient to have. These 2 features alone make VS my IDE of choice over even Netbeans (which I consider the best Open Source IDE by A LOT). Not to mention, Visual Studio's C++ compiler generates smaller AND faster code than GCC, and also has much better error messages.
My only really problem with Visual Studio is it's mediocre text-editor (but still better than some), but then again they all have flaws that annoy the pants off of me. With Netbeans having the second best editor, and Eclipse first. IMO
Truth be told, they are all great IDES, there's no point in arguing over which is better because each has so much functionality it depends on the user's opinion of each of those functionalities.
Just try each one for a few small programs and stress test all the different features and options that you personally want/need and stick with the one that just feels better for you.