What is your ideal IDE?

[LB]

What would you want and not want in your ideal IDE?

For me, all I would want are:
-Syntax Highlighting and Auto-Indenting
-Intellisense
-Automatic calling of the preprocessor/compiler/linker with ability to change settings
--Project Management that is simply a Tree control with folders and the files my project uses
---Maybe ability to change configurations
-Maybe a debugger, I personally don't find inbuilt debuggers of any use

Anything more than these, and my IDE feels extremely bloated. NetBeans is a good example of a bloated IDE, it has so many things going on that it uses more than twice the memory of all my other programs comined, and when I close it the window goes away instantly, but the process takes five minutes to close! That's more than the startup time! (which is also pretty long)

VC++ comes pretty close to what I want, it doesn't have much more stuff than the points mentioned above and it opens and closes quickly. It feels pretty clean, besides all the dirt and grub Microsoft put in it anyway.

[Disch]

-Maybe a debugger, I personally don't find inbuilt debuggers of any use

How on Earth can you function without a builtin debugger? I can't imagine how frustrating that would be. What do you use instead?

[Catfish]

@ Disch: I personally prefer to re-read my code a lot. Now it is true what they say... that it's hard to see your own mistakes, but less so by the 20th time you read the line.

Edit: I originally wanted to reply "Your brain."

[firedraco]

How on Earth can you function without a builtin debugger? I can't imagine how frustrating that would be.

This.

[TheMassiveChipmunk]

I would need:
--Emacs key bindings
--Syntax Highlighting
--The ability to make keyboard macros
--Intellisense
--The IDE would have to be under a GPL license
--Extreme Customization

Emacs has all of these things , elisp , and much much more.

[Disch]

@ Disch: I personally prefer to re-read my code a lot

Really? When you uncover a bug, you just sit and reread your code until you find it? You don't explore the runtime environment at all?

That's insane. I mean that literally. It's not a sane thing to do. =P

Integrated debuggers are the single most important feature of any IDE. Without it you're just using a glorified text editor.

[LB]

The problem is that the bugs I get are ones that make no sense, and the debugger actually shows everything as working correctly even when the program crashes.

Even if the debugger DID work as it should, it is usually just extra hassle because it is not very hard to isolate where a crash occurs and see what the values are just before the crash. Debuggers show me so many useless things that I don't need to see.

Glorified text editor sound like what I want :p

[Disch]

The problem is that the bugs I get are ones that make no sense, and the debugger actually shows everything as working correctly even when the program crashes.

Then you are looking at the wrong things. Maybe you just don't know how to effectively use a debugger? ;P

Even if the debugger DID work as it should

You mean there are some out there that don't? I mean that people actually use?

it is usually just extra hassle because it is not very hard to isolate where a crash occurs

Assuming the bug results in a crash (very, very few do)

Debuggers show me so many useless things that I don't need to see.

Strange. They only show me what I ask for.

[codekiddy]

Ideal IDE:

visual studio WITH:
+ sintax highlighting
+ repaired intelisence
& std library not modified by $MS
& full support for C++11

that would make me more hapy then a brand new car :D

[Pravesh Koirala]

Maybe a debugger, I personally don't find inbuilt debuggers of any use

Wow!!, you are some programmer. For me, debugger is the most important thing for an IDE.

Now, as for my IDE, I would like to have following things..

glorified text editor

Plus

-Extremely powerful and easy to use Debugger
-Plugin Support and lots and lots of Plugins to choose from.
-Simple interface.

And it would be nice if it were cross-platform. I mean, who would want to use different IDE for different systems?
Currently I'm using C::B, but it has a long way to go before it can be my dream IDE.

[codekiddy]

Pravesh,

glorified text editor

Plus

-Extremely powerful and easy to use Debugger
-Plugin Support and lots and lots of Plugins to choose from.
-Simple interface.

Visual studio has all that :D
Extremely powerful and easy to use Debugger
Plugin Support and lots and lots of Plugins to choose from.
Simple interface -> it has more that simple interface, most butiful GUI enviroinment IMO.

but it's not cross platform.

[Pravesh Koirala]

@codekiddy,
Yeah I know, and I even use it occasionally. If only it were cross platform and with the things you mentioned in your earlier post, I'd be more than happy to use it.

[Jessy V]

Code::Blocks for life !!!
That's the only IDE that combines all these as far as I know :
- runs on most popular platforms
- supports many compilers
- Has a plugins system
- Is extended and extendable to other languages
- Is fully Open-Source
- Has support for a cross-platform GUI toolkit (wxWidgets)

I think it's just misssing support for the configure build of wxWidgets (where the libraries are named another way).

I am currently used it in a version that I modified by myself, and it just works fine.
I find obvious that Visual studio doesn't have a template to create extensions for it... A pure Microsoft Product ;)

[chrisname]

There are tons of IDEs that do all of those and more, and many of them do it better.

MonoDevelop is an example of one, though it's only for .Net and Mono languages.

[strongdrink]

To VIm.

[codekiddy]

yeah, Code::block is the best (for linux)

[Albatross]

Nowadays I use Qt Creator a lot, and I'm pretty happy with it. Its code completion works better than Netbeans's, its startup time is good, it has all the tools I ever use for C++ development... oh, and of course it's very good for developing Qt applications.

I might try Eclipse CDT + Qt sometime soon, though.

-Albatross

[ascii]

I use Visual Studio on Windows (which is my main OS nowadays), but when I used Linux I was a hardcore Emacs + Make + GCC user. My ideal IDE would basically be Visual Studio, but the ability to go into a "Emacs" mode so you can fullscreen to a window where there is nothing but your editor (which is pretty simple to do with Emacs lisp) and use Emacs for hardcore text editing, but seamlessly pop out of it to use the debugger and other nice visual studio features (Class View, Solution Explorer etc.) Oh how nice it would be.

[codekiddy]

ascii,
visual studio has! full screen future :)

[ascii]

Not in the sense I described, and it still doesn't have my emacs commands and as far as I know no good color-themes.