Maximum PC

hey, i'm curious what your favorite or what you think the best IDE is. I graduated about 6 months ago with a degree in computer engineering, and i always had trouble with my computer science classes, so i'm trying to sharpen up my programming skills on my own at home. what programming environment would you recommend for writing C programs?

also, besides C what languages are most widely used and desirable for companies? i've "learned" some Ada, Perl, C, and assembly language in school. should i expand on those or move to something else? i've got plenty of time to learn and practice; i'm committed to the military for 4.5 more years. thanks.

Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse are the best IDEs, IMO.

I am a HUGE fan of Visual Studio. Especially if you get into a big team-based environment and you have the Team Suite. I saw a brief demo of it, and it was amazing how well it worked and allowed everybody to be involved in the development and testing process. I am really excited to see VS2008. Too bad that it won't support .NET 2.0, 1.1x was good, but I think they REALLY hit things right with 2.0.

That being said, C# is exploding the past couple years. C/C++ are still used very heavily, and will probably never, ever die.

If you want something small/light weight for C/C++ work, you could look into these:
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
http://www.codeblocks.org/

There is another free IDE that is based on dev cpp, but I don't recall its name.

Visual Studio++;
VS2008 does support .net 2.0 (just tell it to compile to framework 2.0)

On *nix, I'd use kdevelop or vim.

As for languages -- I prefer Python and C#. Java might be useful to know as it's not hard to pick up if you know C#/C++.

Emacs for sure. (At least I amuse myself)

Huh. I didn't figure that it would. Nice! How is it over 2005? I haven't looked at it yet myself.

Pardon me while I casually puke.

vi, or gvim, are my preferred editors. I've used many IDEs and I generally just use whatever is offered / in use at my current workplace. They all have pros and cons, so I just try to adapt.

VS2008 can compile for .NET 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 with the same set of compilers. It's nice because you can use new features like type inference without having to move to .NET 3.5. (also, manifests are easier to use in C#/VB.NET)

However, I haven't had to use 2008 that much because 2005 still does the job just fine for me. I mostly run builds with nant while developing in vs2005 anyways (C++/Native builds are much easier that way)

The best IDE for C often depends on the underlying platform. For Windows, VS is generally considered the best IDE. On many platforms, there often is a full IDE -- just an editor and make system. I would suggest something along the lines of Jipstyles comment: figure out what is being used where you'd like to work and use it.


Depends on the industry and type of programming. If you plan on coming out of the military and working for one of the defense companies, knowing Ada is certainly a good idea. C++ wouldn't hurt either -- most of the old-timers snub it as being inferior to Ada (rightfully IMO) -- but it is becoming more popular on newer defense program contracts. In my experience, what passes for C++ is really just 'plain old C'. MATLAB is surprisingly popular.

In most regular businesses, you're probably going to be writing web apps. Smaller companies tend to use LAMP or C#; larger companies tend to use Java. Technology companies are the hardest to characterize. Google, for example, has three primary languages: C++, Java and Python.

I would highly recommend at least an introductory knowledge of databases and SQL (ie know ERDs, normalization, and basic/intermediate SQL). If you like math, I would recommend learning MATLAB.

Personally, I think everybody should watch the SICP lectures and learn LISP. The lectures really bring some hard concepts into sharper focus and invariably change your ability to program for the better.

I've seen much of the same, and I hate it. Well-written C++ is, on the other hand, quite easy and pleasing to read and write.

For java in windows I'm a fan of Netbeans, and I'm trying out doing other languages in it too. For now though everything else I program is in Visual Studio(windows) or Eclipse(linux).

C++ is easier to read and write than C? I think that most people agree it is safer; however, it is also requires the programmer to know much more about the language (eg more keywords, incantations for streams and static castes, etc).

Personally, I hate it when you have both C and C++ being used in the same project; pick one or the other.

For Java in Windows? Both work fine on other platforms... =)

wait... java runs on both platforms?

JCreator is nice for Java, it tries to mimic the VS interface somewhat and it's a native Windows app so it isn't slow like eclipse, and of course it's more familiar to people used to VS. I currently only know Java, Visual Basic, and PHP although I can get by in C/C++. I like notepad++ for working with things that are not Java though, like PHP, html, and C when I use it. I've used devc++ too occasionally, but I really don't use C/C++ much.

double post nuked by smartcat99s
Thanks for that, I didn't mean to do it.

If you want respect, use VIM or emacs. If you want to look like a noob, use a graphical IDE.

Well, you should let the guys at Google know that they're a bunch of noobs with their 'graphical' IDEs.

If you want to use a Java IDE that is very similiar to VS, then look no further than BlueJay which is the app that MS 'mimiced' (reads stole) for VS.

I mean... do you guys really MS came up with VS all by themselves? Come on! Guillible people. =)

This is my final answer.

Indeed, XKCD ftw.
Also@ Gadget: from looking it up on wikipedia, BlueJ started development in 1999, whereas VS5/6 were both made before then (1997 and 1998 respectively).
Also, BlueJ is written in Java so it suffers from the slowness inherent in any Java app, whereas JCreator doesn't have that issue.