Talk:Comparison of integrated development environments/Archive 1

Archive 1

How to make this article better ?

I wonder what we are trying to achieve with that page.. Providinng a good list of available IDE's per language to inform? If so, I suggest that we try to establish that list here, then update and clean-up the article. I can see a few discrepancies, and there are issues about the definition of what is an IDE (already debated below). I agree that source code editor should not be considered IDE: IMHO the IDE article would also need beefing up to make sure we agree on a good definition before listing IDEs here.

See integrated development environment

What do you think? Pombredanne 18:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge

A merge from the List article into the Comparison article would create a larger, much more categorized list of IDE's. -Gimmekat 23:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• Well since the timing of this coincides so closely with the "This page is a mess" comment I left on the list, it's probably no surprise that I agree with this proposal. I don't think the list can be usefully structured, and there isn't much point to repeating the information in two places in this case. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 23:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. If nothing else, the list should lose the categorization attempt and simply be...a list. Cheezmeister 22:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sun Java Studio Enterprise IDE

I cannot make head or tails on what the release date for the last stable release of this IDE is. I assumed it would be launched in conjunction with an update on Netbeans seeing how SJSE is based off of it, but this needs to be verified/fixed ASAP. -Gimmekat 04:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Quincy!!

what about Quincy!!!

Well, exactly. What is Quincy? Where do you get it? What can you do with it? This is Wikipedia; edit it! peterl 22:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

size

i think size should be compared too, i would rather have a IDE thats no bigger than 100 megabytes, than one that could ballon to over a gigabyte with plugins.

On the face of it, this is true. But a problem arises when you start filling out that field -- how do you count the size of the program? If plugins are counted against the size, what about IDEs that are written in Java, should they count the JVM? And programs that use a platform-neutral widget toolkit, they would essentially be penalized for not running native Windows controls, for example. How much space is expressly used by the IDE often depends on the individual user. Plus, some IDEs come in different packages like a minimal version and an enterprise edition, which one do you count? Do you measure size by the installer/zip archive, or the installed footprint? What if program files are very small, but user-created data files are abnormally large? I think size is gray enough an area that, even if you chose a criteria, it would eventually become not useful. And, finally, some of it would likely run afoul of WP:OR. Ham Pastrami 06:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Specially since that in commercial compilers, the bulk of those MBs is something like MSDN and a lot of by-tools (internationalization tools, helpfile authors etc), and not the base development system itself. Moreover, most don't require a full install (except for a few .NETs that require large MSDN redistributables that they only use for a small %) Counting those would make the comparison like apples and oranges. 88.159.74.100 15:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Language independent IDEs

This list is very language-based. But many IDEs today are not tied to a specific language; e.g. Visual Studio does all the MS languages, Komodo does open source, Eclipse is primarily a Java IDE but is easily extended into Perl, PHP, Python. Should this page be re-orged into one list, with another column of languages supported? peterl 22:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

My vote is no. Granted, generally, IDEs are not tied to specific languages, there are only a few IDEs that will function with Python. If one is looking for a python IDE, this is the place to go. If one is looking for an IDE and going to pick a language to match that IDE, this is probably not a place to be.

It's easier to enumerate names than languages. If you make a "languages" column, that is going to create a lot of ugly, unreadable text in the table. However, if you really desire this feature you could create another table that lists multilanguage suites, but there should be no cause to modify the existing tables. Ham Pastrami 08:42, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I would not like the current setup to change because of that. A lot of open source IDEs collect languages for their feature list, but their support is limited to basic parameterisation of the build process and a bit of highlighting, and template code generation (that is easy inherited). The few IDEs that really support languages to the fullest (like MSVC) can better be multiply named. This also allows to be more specific about with which language which properties/targets of the IDE are supported. 88.159.74.100 16:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Eclipse is not and IDE

Eclipse is a is an open-source, platform-independent software framework, written primarily in Java, for delivering what the project calls "rich-client applications", as opposed to "thin client" browser-based applications. So far this framework has typically been used to develop Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), such as the Java IDE called Java Development Toolkit (JDT) and compiler (ECJ) that comes as part of Eclipse (and which are also used to develop Eclipse itself). However, it can be used for other types of client application as well. Therefore it shouldn't be listed here has and IDE... JBuilder,Flex, MyEclipe, Rationa Web Developer all are IDEs based on the Eclipse framework, but Eclipse itself is not an IDE, is a plataform to build applications (and for the most part, it has been used to build IDEs) —The preceding comment is by 189.132.178.49 (talk • contribs) 00:37, 5 June 2007: Please sign your posts!

Although that sounds reasonable, if you ask Java developers what they use, a lot of them will say "Eclipse". I'll change the page to say "Eclipse JDT" just to make it clear what project they are using, but removing the word "Eclipse" from that line would be hopelessly confusing. William Pietri 01:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, I agree, Eclipse JDT should be used..., I know that most people confuses Eclipse the platform with Eclipse + Most commonly used plug ins for eclipse, that is why I think that from an encyclopedia point of view (neutral?) the difference should be explained (it should be about what is true, not what the majority believes... don't you think?)

Netbeans is not and IDE

I think that we should apply the same arguments about Eclipse to Netbeans. There is a difference between the "Netbeans platform" and "Netbeans IDE".Ramiro Pereira de Magalhães (talk) 17:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

In keeping with WP:N and WP:LIST#Criteria_for_inclusion_in_lists I think it would be prudent to exercise some discretion as to which IDEs are actually placed in these lists. I think the easiest and fairest way to do this is to check if the IDE has a WP article in good standing (that is, an article that has established the subject's notability and is not due for speedy deletion). Otherwise, we will inevitably get a lot of no-name and self-promoting entries that only serve to clutter the list. To start, I will remove entries that have no WP article at all (i.e. are only linked externally). Ham Pastrami 08:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Fields in chart

I would like to propose some changes to the organizational structure of the chart, and before doing so I'd like to get feedback from others who use and/or help to maintain this article.

• Removal of "Latest stable release". This puts an undue strain on the maintenance of the chart, as I don't think people consider release date to be a first-tier consideration, i.e. this IDE is perfect for my needs, but the latest release is a month old so I'm going to pass. It is relevant for an IDE to be reasonably up-to-date, but this is a detail that the user can probably afford to check on his own after picking some candidates.
• Removal of "Author". I don't think this is relevant at all to the function of the IDE, unless a person is looking for a specific IDE "made by so-and-so", in which case they aren't really interested in a comparison of IDEs but rather a list of de facto IDEs.
• Replacement of "Proprietary" license type. I think this plays too much into the duality of proprietary vs open source. Let's instead state specifically what kind of proprietary license it is -- shareware, freeware, shrinkwrap, etc and only resort to "proprietary" if it is difficult to describe.
• Addition of "Feature" fields. Right now, IMO the biggest piece of information that is missing is the feature set of the IDE, such as whether it includes a GUI builder. I'm thinking of adding fields that would work like this:

Existing fields	Features
	Syntax highlighting	Build chain integration	GUI builder	Code documentation
blah blah	Yes	requires MinGW install	No	?

Ham Pastrami 04:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. What I really liked about the article was that it showed pretty quickly how active they are, and when the last sampling was done. The web suffers enough from outdated listings. I do agree on the gui builder field (with a coding system to quickly list some features, like being able to interactively design code and gui, or only generate templates from the designer to fill with code) I'd also propose a similar coded field to group some stuff like intellisense behaviour, code documentation tools etc 88.159.74.100 15:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

How about we keep a uniform month/year stamp for the latest release, so that there is an idea of how active the development is, without having to include the details of version numbers? At least, to me it doesn't seem like comparing version numbers from two different programs really makes sense. Ham Pastrami 10:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Since there have been no more comments, I am removing version numbers from the table. The uniform display will be month and year. BTW, all information in these tables should be derived from their WP articles. The idea is that this article exists to organize information that has already been sourced and verified (or at least, is not disputed). If there is contention over the facts, take it to the IDE's article rather than using these tables as a soapbox. Ham Pastrami 22:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I am in favor of adding a features area. I can implement it for all Pascal IDE, but I would like to wait until all languages have at least a skeleton of the features part. Why hasn't this idea gone forward? --194.39.218.10 (talk) 14:12, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Cygwin

I am removing references to Cygwin in the tables. Rationale is that Cygwin is a porting tool, not a platform itself.

• If the developer provides Cygwin-generated binaries, then they are Windows programs. Just list them as such.
• If a user is able to port Linux software himself using Cygwin, then ALL such software is potentially a Cygwin program, and you do not need to state this explicitly. Just list them as Linux programs.

Ham Pastrami 09:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)