Why so many, you may ask? Well products like Visual Studio, they were created as an IDE for Microsoft’s Visual Basic, C# & C++. Dev C++ was created as a free alternative to Visual Studio for C/C++. Many other IDEs are made for this reason but each with their own little spoonful of individuality.

Visual Studio.

Well, in my view, Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs out there. It has everything the software engineer could ever want!

It has all the usual features like a Code Editor, Debugger, Designer, and many other useful features.

The designer is one of the cooler features. It is capable of handling Windows Forms, WPF, Web Designer, Class Designer, Data Designer and Mapping Designer. This is very handy and cuts out a lot of boiler plate code writing.

Also, MS VS debugger is very handy.

This debugger owes much of its feel and functionality to CodeView, a standalone, text-based debugger that shipped with Microsoft Visual C++ version 1.5 and earlier.

More advanced features of the most recent versions of this debugger include:

• Full symbol and source integration.
• Attaching and detaching to and from processes.
• Integrated debugging across programs written in both .NET and native Windows languages (calls from C# to C++, for example).
• Remote machine debugging.
• Full support for C++, including templates and the standard library
• Debugging ASP.NET Web Services.
• Standard as well as more advanced breakpoint features, including conditional, address, data breakpoints.
• Many ways of viewing program state and data, including multiple watch windows, threads, call stack, and modules. The way library and user data types are displayed can be configured (e.g., to show contents of a container class, rather than it’s raw structure).
• Scriptability or the ability to control via a macro or scripting language. Any language which can talk to COM can be used.
• Edit and continue support, enabling source code change and recompilation without having to restart the program (32 bit applications only).
• Local and remote debugging of SQL stored procedures on supported versions of Microsoft SQL Server.

The main shortcoming of the Visual Studio Debugger is its inability to trace into kernel-mode code. Kernel-mode debugging of Windows is generally performed by using WinDbg, KD, or SoftICE.

Dev C++.

The best thing about Dev C++ is that it is completely free! It was developed by Colin Laplace.

Its features include

• Support GCC-based compilers
• Integrated debugging (using GDB)
• Support for multiple languages (localization)
• Class Browser
• Code Completion
• Debug variable Browser
• Project Manager
• Customizable syntax highlighting editor
• Quickly create Windows, console, static libraries and DLLs
• Support of templates for creating your own project types
• Makefile creation
• Edit and compile Resource files
• Tool Manager
• Print support
• Find and replace facilities
• Package manager, for easy installation of add-on libraries
• CVS Support
• To-Do List
• CPU Window

Also, just out of interest its source code is available.

Eclipse.

This is another great completely free IDE. It is mainly know for it’s Java IDE, but since then many more languages have been added to Eclipse such as C++, PHP and COBOL.

It has a very wide user base and is active in development, unlike Dev C++.

Eclipse varies from the other IDEs in that language support is added via the use of plug ins, so it is very easy to add support for a new language.

Conclusion…

Overall, for C++, C# and Basic I would use Visual Studio, but for Java programming it would be advisable to use Eclipse or Netbeans.

Harry.