[burnie]

Hi -- I'm interested in finding out about people's preferred development environment. After toying with eclipse, bouml, anjuta, and a couple of others for a little while and discovering with each that there is a fair learning curve, I decided to ask for suggestions or recommendations. Many of my friends have basically evolved their own environment; the standard automake processes that drove anjuta are fine but really incomplete (hence anjuta) but anjuta is perhaps a bit too focused on GNOME to be appropriate for my purposes.

Appreciate your thoughts --

[GNU-Fan]

Hello,

most of the time I simply use gedit and keep a small terminal window on top.

But as this hardly counts as an IDE: NetBeans is my most favorite.

[ls354]

I've grown to develop an aversion for IDE's in general. But I have use several IDE's for respective projects. NetBeans, Eclipse, Zend Studio, and Eric python IDE. If I had to choose then Netbeans is the one.

Currently I am working with Python and I love "scribes" text editor. Because it dares to go out of whats mainstream. So Scribes and a command line check it out .

[burnie]

I'd actually discounted NetBeans without a close look. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take another look at it.

[Cabhan]

I personally use Vim for basically everything that I do, with the exception of Java, which I use Eclipse for.

One of the best things that you can for yourself is learn to use Vim and/or Emacs effectively. Both of them are extremely complicated programs with a fairly steep learning curve, but they are designed to make editing source code and configuration files as easy for the developer as possible. Both are different from any other editor you've ever used, but both have excellent tutorials available (the command "vimtutor" for Vim, or open Emacs and press Ctrl-H, then 't').

As far as Eclipse goes, while it is also a very complex program, you don't need to use all of its features at first. The Create Project and Create Class screens are pretty simple to use, and it is an excellent editor, with source code completion, incremental compilation, and visual warnings/errors (I'm sure that Netbeans does all of these as well). I know that you can use it for languages other than Java, but for Java, it's definitely excellent.

I've never really given Netbeans a shot, but it's pretty complex as well. It does have a Swing GUI editor, which can be helpful, so give it a shot.

It really comes down to what you find convenient and easy to use, but remember that these are all very complex programs, which can be used for anything from writing a simple CLI program to writing a web browser. Don't be intimidated by features that you're not going to use anyway.

[burnie]

I've been using Emacs for several decades with great success -- NetBeans so far looks actually richer than I need. My download version includes Ruby on Rails as well as Swing, Java, C/C++, and other tools. Ruby attracted my attention a year or so ago but I felt I needed a bit more guidance as my memory is not so swift anymore. So my current choice is NetBeans.

Thanks all for your helpful comments.

[burnie]

After playing around with NetBeans, I decided its focus had too much Java orientation, so I went back to Anjuta. My problem with it earlier was that, despite the voluminous overhead it created, it failed to import a very simple project from source as soon as I broke the single C source file into a C file with a separate .h file (complaining about circularity). This didn't come without a warning that Anjuta is not particularly adept at importing arbitrarily structured projects from sources. I had tried to import it into a GTK project because the program I imported had no GUI -- I was looking for a simple but robust way to add a GUI to a terminal-based program. So in retrospect it was obviously going to be circular from the naming conventions until I puzzled which functions to rename to what - and I haven't yet bothered to do that.

At this point, Anjuta seems like the path I want to follow, since it imported the entire GEGL project cleanly. Starting new projects with the GTK toolset may be a bit easier. So I guess I'm still interested in input on this subject from anyone who remains interested.

[Thrillhouse]

Originally Posted by Cabhan

As far as Eclipse goes, while it is also a very complex program, you don't need to use all of its features at first. The Create Project and Create Class screens are pretty simple to use, and it is an excellent editor, with source code completion, incremental compilation, and visual warnings/errors (I'm sure that Netbeans does all of these as well). I know that you can use it for languages other than Java, but for Java, it's definitely excellent.

I've never really given Netbeans a shot, but it's pretty complex as well. It does have a Swing GUI editor, which can be helpful, so give it a shot.

I really only do Java development anymore but I've come to prefer Netbeans over Eclipse. I used to use Eclipse but I've found Netbeans to have much better UML capabilities. Again, this is a feature that really only applies if you're doing pretty serious Java development but it's definitely an added bonus. The other features (debugging tools, code completion, XML...) are pretty much identical between the two so it's usually just a matter of which one you're more comfortable with. But I would recommend trying Netbeans. I used to think I wouldn't leave Eclipse and that was true until I tried Netbeans. Things are a little more intuitive for me and I think the selection of plugins is a little better.

Originally Posted by burnie

After playing around with NetBeans, I decided its focus had too much Java orientation, so I went back to Anjuta.

That's true. Both Netbeans and Eclipse are Java IDEs first and foremost. Have you tried KDevelop?

[burnie]

Originally Posted by Thrillhouse

Have you tried KDevelop?

No - I don't know if it matters but I'm using gnome rather than kde; GTK seems to provide a somewhat lower level DE (not quite IDE??) than anjuta - how does it compare to KDevelop?
===
Answering my own question -- KDevelop looks like a very usable IDE, and despite its name it's really not all that gnome-centric - so thanks for that suggestion.

[bpx]

Kate for anything and everything in general, including web design, Latex source etc.

For Java, Netbeans rocks I have to say, however for C++ I'm liking Eclipse more and more.