Why not use an IDE for programming?

Question

I am learning programming (c++) and my IDE is code::blocks. I heard that some programmers dont even use an IDE at all, and I am curious as to why they dont use one. Doesnt the IDE help save time so the programmer can do more work in less amount of time? I am most likely missing something here, and I'm wondering why some people prefer not to use an IDE? Since Im new to this, I want to learn the best way to program from more experienced users.

Answer 1

Programming without a good IDE (sorry, no idea if Code::Blocks is good) is like running a marathon barefoot to prove how tough you are. In some cases they don't add much, but for large projects (typically OO) the alternative is to constantly wade through a reference of every class's methods and every method's parameters. Also, IDEs can generate a lot of boilerplate code so you can spend more time on the important parts.



Some will say you should learn to program in a plain text editor to learn the language. I can agree with that for about the first week, but language syntax is about 1% of programming and you just handicap yourself if you refuse to use whatever productivity-enhancing tools you have available.

Answer 2

IDEs can be really helpful with its code completion and other helpful features.



But it's not good for learning programming because it's too easy to let the editor do the guess work for you instead of learning for yourself. It may save you time in completing an assignment, but you don't learn a programming language that way; you end up learning how to use the IDE commands. It makes you lazy and a poor programmer.



The other issue is sometimes you want to change a small bit of code that a simple editor is easier to use. Bringing up a resource-intensive IDE isn't worth the trouble.



But if you ever get on a big development project where multiple people are working on different parts, an IDE is almost always necessary to help manage a project.

Answer 3

There are several reasons:



1. Some language doesn't lend well to IDE. In a Dynamic Language, an object's members (e.g. method, property, instance variable) may be added, removed, or changed at run-time, it is impossible for an IDE to enumerate all the object's members and give code completion. In these languages, using IDE have little advantages, and may instead become a "box" to the programmer's mind (since you instinctively won't type anything not in the code completion suggestion). Example of dynamic language: Python, Perl, Lisp



2. Some text editors are better code editor than most IDE. This seems counter-intuitive, but some programmer-oriented text editor (e.g. vim, emacs, gedit) is capable of doing most of the thing you want like syntax highlighting, press F5 to run, inserting snippets, etc while keeping themselves small and fast by not having features that are used much less. These editors blurs the boundary between text editor and IDE.



An IDE does many things: editing, compiling, debugging, GUI designing, project managing, "make"-ing, etc, etc, etc the list goes on. As a programmer, you spend most of your time writing and editing code, most of the other features in IDE won't be used. A standalone text editor usually have a much more powerful editing features than an IDE's text editor because... well because their focus is on editing text.



3. Text editor is universal. You don't have to use five different editors to write programs in five different languages.



4. Some people "worships" their favorite text editor. This is why when you ask "what is the best text editor?" in a programming language forum, the thread is very likely to get into a flame war of people defending their favorite text editors (to death).



PS: Notepad is NOT a programmer's text editor. It is silly to write anything serious in notepad. Most programmers would only use Notepad if and only if they are not on their own machine and the machine doesn't have any other text editor.

Answer 4

You are missing a lot. I learned in college in the early nineties on a Vax VMS. That meant that I wasn't using a graphics user interface, let alone an ide (actually for some programs I did -- both Borland C++ 3.0's and GCC's rhide which are text based IDEs). I got to the Mac GUI a bit before I learned Windows and X-windows (I majored in painting) I learned both those GUIs simultaneously, and suddenly I was able to keep my program running in one window while I looked at my program in notepad or vi or pico (the latter two on Unix or Linux). With GCC I learned to run gdb, the Gnu De-Bugger. It let me step through my programs with as little hassle as opening and maintaining a project file. I ran Borland's IDE for a while before I dumped Windows totally but even then I was using BCC a lot (the command line version.) The desktop works just as well as and ide if you have the functionality (there are also gprof and lint which I suggest you look up).

Answer 5

Yes its right without IDE is faster but not in C++, the below are some of the softwares which may or may not use IDE



COBOL

Clipper

Java



But I prefer using IDE for C++ is best. By the way I am programmer in many languages over 13 years

Answer 6

Experience users do not prefer an IDE because such things as intellisence can slow them down. When they know the code is correct, it is easier to edit it using something simple like Notepad. I prefer an IDE because I an not an excellent experienced programmer and still need it to catch my errors. A lot of my co-workers can type faster w/o an IDE slowing them down.

Answer 7

It depends on the code and the programmer. I use IDEs for some work (just about all of my desktop apps), but for most of my web work a text editor (I use Edit Plus) is faster and easier. I use Firefox and Firebug for client-side debugging and tail (or baretail) for server-side debugging.



Considering that I come from a world in which a screen was 64X16 (characters) and you didn't print anything but the final, debugged, version of the source (the early 1970s), even a text editor with syntax highlighting is future shock.

Answer 8

I don't use an IDE because it adds extra code that I don't need and this slows down the program. I also think that not using an IDE makes you a better software developer because you have full control of the code, and you make better, faster programs because you created every single line, this might sound painful but if you really enjoy making programs it's not. IDE's also slow me down I don't know why.

Answer 9

Look harder. There are abandonware sites, mostly European, for a lot of old stuff like this that is no longer sold, but has never been officially released for free use either. I found copies of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++ on the first page of a web search for each.