Programming

568 readers

1 users here now

All things programming and coding related. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Am i missing out if I dont use an IDE? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So, I have been mostly self thaught programmer (C++), as its a big part of my job (not a regular developer). But so far I have been using a simple text editor like Geany to code and I compile stuff either in terminal (linux) or produce my own make file.

I am starting to wonder if I should switch to a full IDE, as I am on linux, I was thinking of trying KDevelop. But I am simply not sure if its worth, do I even need it?

I have never used an IDE, it seems kind of complicated for the start with "projects" and I havent really found any good introductions to how this workflow is supposed to work.

Do you think using and IDE is something everyone should use? Or do you think a text editor with producing your own make files should be enough?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I think there are two key aspects to IDEs:

a) the larger the codebase and the less familiar you are with it, the more of a nightmare it will be to hunt bugs or search places to insert code; this is where an IDE becomes extremely helpful by e.g. letting you search a struct across multiple modules, showing lints, compiler errors etc.

b) IDEs are only as helpful if they can be configured with your codebase, and sadly there are probably numerous codebases that won't play nice and let you crate a working config