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

submitted 1 year ago by Ministar@lemmy.world to c/programming

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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?

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[–] furrowsofar 1 points 1 year ago

It kind of depends on what you mean by an IDE. A good language sensitive editor (LSE) is a must and frankly I use Geany like you. Mostly I do Bash and Python stuff these days, but have also done a bunch of C programming in Visual Studio. I also sometimes use a Python IDE (Spyder) for very specific things.

Where I have never liked IDEs is building and packaging code. Give me GNU Make or another tool please. IDEs just make things complicated. Debugging... I do not know. Graphical debugger is good, not sure it has to be in an IDE but maybe it helps. The other place I like IDEs is integration of other tools like static code checkers. The code navigation is really helpful too (an LSE at another level especially with many modules). The thing I do not like is IDEs are often just too much. So I tend to start with Geany, and go into an IDE if it makes sense, like for a bigger project or something or some feature like static code checking.

The thing I do recommend though is version control. Probably these days git, but there are things I both like and dislike about git. Another good tool is meld (or some other diff tool). The there are the standard "diff" and "patch" commands.