I’ve been thinking about what I consider the bare minimum to be for a IDE.
First off let me start by saying that an editor with snippets is NOT an IDE, it’s an editor. The hardcore guys out there that favor that type of tool musn’t be suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or the likes.
I personally have found myself having a hard time accepting the fact that I have to write all my well known classes and functions completely.
Here’s my list of features:
- Intellisense - Context sensitive autocompletion and discovery of members of a type + the type of member accros the board (xml, html, code files….)
- Refactoring - being able to safely rename methods, classes etc.
- Code navigation - much like ctrl-b in resharper, intellij, netbeans,….
- integrated debugging support accross the board
- background compilation for compiled languages (instant feedback)
- easily extensible with your own plugins (prefferably in yaml, xml etc)
- proper find-replace functionality with regex support
- code formatting and folding accross the board.
- and most importantly it has to let me get on with my job.
- integration of unit test frameworks not just a vendor specific one.
- integration with source control applications
What needs to be added to this list ?
On a side note I also want to link to a post from Mike Duncan who has aggregated a bunch of really cool tools.
15 hot tools that made me a coding Paris Hilton
del.icio.us tags: programming, ide, development tools