Integrated Development Envioronments

When you're first getting into programming you may hear the term integrated development environment (IDE) and wonder: What is it? and Do I need one?

An IDE is a common toolsuite for programming combining all the necessary tools (editor, compiler, and other programming tools)into one. Many will now help you with your programming guessing at what you are going to type and helping you complete it. Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse (Along with a whole lot of others) are popular IDEs that support multiple languages.

Some beginning programming books have you learn programming from a text editor, save the file, put it through a compiler (in a command window) and then run your program (as well in the command window). With the IDE all of that can be done with the click of a button. This makes it much easier to debug and test changes in your program.

If you want to get started, how about trying the C++ guide (a free download) from Microsoft's Development for Beginners site. and downloading one of these programs:

Visual Studio can be downloaded by language (VisualBasic, C#, or C++) as a free version here.

Eclipse is a free open-source program available here. It is written primarily in Java and is built by the non-profit Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse is also the development environment suggested by Android for programming Android applications. I've tried some basic programming in both Visual Studio and Eclipse and personally I like Eclipse better. What do you guys think?

Learning to Program!

Computer programming has always been a fascination of mine. A dream always just beyond my reach due (mostly) to laziness. Learning to program takes time, persistence, and many long hours in front of a computer. So lets get into it.

What do you need to begin programming?

First you should have a solid grasp of computer logic and program design. As a beginner programmer most colleges require you take a logic class either before or as you take your first computer science courses. Structured programming takes you through the software development process and helps the programmer design code that can be easily read by himself and others. Why this is important will become clear as we go along. Interestingly, the hardest part is designing the logic, or figuring the "how" of the program. After that you only have to translate that logic into computer language.

Computer language is achieved more simply by using a programming language. Though arcane, programming language is not computer language. Computer language is a series of 1's and 0's or binary bits. Programming languages in human language (or close to it), and are structured to be transformed into computer language by the compiler as long as proper syntax is used. Some programming languages include, Java, C, C++, C#, Python, and many others.