Integrated Development Environments

Quote from Wikipedia:

An integrated development environment (IDE), also known as integrated design environment and integrated debugging environment, is a type of computer software that assists computer programmers to develop software.

IDEs normally consist of a source code editor, a compiler and/or interpreter, build-automation tools, and (usually) a debugger. Sometimes a version control system and various tools to simplify the construction of a GUI are integrated as well. Many modern IDEs also integrate a class browser, an object inspector and a class hierarchy diagram, for use with object oriented software development. Although some multiple-language IDEs are in use, such as the Eclipse IDE, NetBeans or Microsoft Visual Studio, typically an IDE is devoted to a specific programming language, as in the Visual Basic IDE.

Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment - Wikipedia's definition
• List of free IDEs
• http://www.codeblocks.org - Official Code::Blocks website
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ - Visual Studio IDE