>> ...so an IDE is a text editor, debugger, profiler, UI painter, VC 
>> interface and doc-gen tool, except that it's one program instead of 
>> several?
> 
> An IDE is an integrated development environment. I offered a list of 
> example features that an IDE might integrate. It doesn't mean it's all 
> one program. It doesn't mean that all IDEs have that particular list of 
> features.

Sure. But the saliant point is, an IDE is something that integrates 
several features /such as/ the above into something which is notionally 
a single "product"?

> Well, go download one. Visual Studio 2008 is free and pretty much 
> top-of-the-line, altho the free one integrates fewer tools.

Hold on, let me check...

...yeah, thought so. It's already installed on my home PC. (I attempted 
learning C++ a while back, remember?)

>> That sounds more like a CASE tool. (Does anybody still use those?)
> 
> Sure. And if you integrate it into your development environment, what do 
> you have?

Heh. Roses are Rational...

>> goes that if your language doesn't suck so much that you need to write 
>> so much cruft in the first place, you don't need an IDE. I am not 
>> entirely convinced by this argument.
> 
> It's a decent argument, but it sounds like it's being made by someone 
> who thinks "development" means "coding." Boilerplate has nothing to do 
> with ensuring that unit tests run before you check in the code, nor with 
> making sure that the right version of the documentation is distributed 
> with the release you pressed to the disk.

There are all sorts of tools I can think of which can do these things. 
But they're not "integrated". You'd have to set them all up one at a time.

>> Every IDE I've ever used has made my job harder, not easier. Then 
>> again, maybe they just means that an IDE is overkill for small projects.
> 
> Or your IDE sucks.

They tell us that Borland JBuilder and Microsoft VisualStudio J++ are 
supposed to be the best of the best. To me, they both seemed slow and 
buggy. (That was a while ago, obviously.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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