this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
45 points (97.9% liked)

Programming

3347 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
 

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
[–] starship_lizard 5 points 2 years ago

There's a lot of value in using an IDE, from just general formatting stuff to being able to tell what class functions do without having to dig into the class itself. Not to mention autocomplete.

There's lots of free solutions out there now, so if you're curious I'd give it a shot. I think you'll find once you start using one it'll be hard to go back to just a plain text editor.

I like vs code a lot, if you're looking for specific recommendations. It's lightweight and can be upgraded to do pretty much anything via extensions.