IDEs: Programming languages and Integrated Development Environments: Computer Science: GCSE (9:1)

Integrated Development Environment

A program used to create software. It includes tools to help programmers, usually including an editor, error diagnostics, a runtime environment and translators

Translator

The facility in an IDE that converts high-level code to machine code, it can be an interpreter or a compiler

Auto-Complete

A facility of the editor in an IDE which suggests the rest of an instruction being typed, to help speed up development

Error diagnostics

IDE facility which gives additional information on an error to help the developer debug the code.

Editor

The feature of the IDE where code is written. It often colour codes the text, highlights syntax errors and allows easy indenting

Run-time environment

The IDE facility which runs the program, it usually allows line-by-line execution and tracing of variables, to debug logic errors

Breakpoint

A feature of an IDE that sets a place in the code where execution stops, so you can check the variables at that point, to debug logic errors

Stepping

Executing code line by line, while checking the variables. Most IDEs provide this feature to assist debugging

Debugging

Fixing errors in code, made easier by an IDE with features to help the programmer

Text editor

Code can be written in a simple one of these, but the programmer would have to do all his own syntax checking, translating, running and debugging without help from an IDE

IDLE

The basic IDE provided with Python, it includes a code editor with colour coding, syntax checking, breakpoints, stepping and a run-time environment

Visual Studio

Microsoft's IDE for building programs for Windows or any operating system that supports the Microsoft .NET Framework

Eclipse

An open source IDE built for Java but now supports Python, C++ and many more languages