IDEs in LINUX the good bad and the not so ugly !!

4 10 2008

TARGET AUDIENCE:HIGH SCHOOL & UNDER GRADUATE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Well in undergraduate college courses we all are taught to write programs in C/C++ etc we all are very happy and enthusiastic about it but little do we know about the stark realities of real word programming !!
the TURBO C++ IDE used in most colleges and homes by students is though easy ( if i may call it so :) ) to learn doesn’t teach us good project management skills. I know that project management skill like code reuse , splitting the code into many files etc can be done even in this IDE but the point is that it doesn’t enforce it !!

So let me point out a few popular IDEs

(i will not feature CODE::BLOCKS as i myself have not used it fellow developers are welcome to leave comments about the use of CODE::BLOCKS IDE)

that are available to students using linux

( i am a staunch supporter of linux )

1.GEANY

it is a very simple IDE and IDEAL for beginners if you are using UBUNTU you’ll most probably find it in the repositories.

NOTE: it does not have a debugger built in.And has very elementary project management features.

to compile a sample C code

/*————hello world.c————–*/

#include <stdio.h>

int main()

{

printf(“Hello, World !!\n”);

return(0);

}

/*——————————-*/

step 1.click on File->New

step 2.replace all the text with the code given above.

step 3.save the file

step 4.click Build->compile (it should not give any errors)

step 5.click Build->build (it should not give any errors)

step 6.click Build->execute.

Voila !! there you have your output.

Note: incase you are using math.h header file

goto build->set includes & arguments

and change the compile entry to gcc -Wall -c -lm “%f”

and build entry to gcc -Wall -lm “%f”

2.Anjuta

It is a very mature and stable and useful and …. IDE ideal for many practical uses but for now i will explain only how to write and compile a sample C code

1.click on File->New->project

2.forward

3.Project Type select “Generic” under the C tab.

4.give a relevant project name (***without spaces***) and forward

5.destination :select the path of an empty folder.

6.Apply

7.in the files sidebar select “src”->”main.c”

8.you are by default given a sample hello world program

9.click on Build->compile

10.Build->build

11.Build->execute program.

you should be able to see the “Hello world” output in a seperate window

NOTE:in case you are using the math.h header file

in files sidebar select “src”->MakeFile

in that replace the entry on the 86th line

“CPP = gcc -E” with “CPP = gcc -E -lm”

and save the makefile you may need to change the g++

entries if you are using c++ to code.

I am leaving KDEVELOP and NETBEANS for you to practice on.

incase this article of mine has been of any use to you please leave a message.

(you could help me monitarily by taking a survey by clicking the add snippet at the bottom right

when you make an account i will be credited with 1.25USD)

regards and Best of Luck

kunal ghosh

(kunalghosh)





Scripting it up using JavaScript !

3 09 2008

There have been many times with me, and i suppose it might have happend to you too, when i wanted to learn a programming language without having to spend bucks on buying books ! (i guess i was acting a bit stingy ;-P)well i did find many sites where there were PDFs or web tutorials but recently in slashdot i read a post which lead me to Appjet’s website where they were offering a Very Interactive tutorial of JAVASCRIPT, I actually tried it out and must comment that there offering is a very nicely thought out one, because of the following reasons:

1.Experimenting with your code while learning , with the inbuilt code window.

(really nice addition)

2.They have a very well structured lesson plan ! keeping in mind that the viewer will be anabsoulute     beginner.

3.They provide an online IDE which is quite capable ! and very useful.

4.Also they have capabilities of server-side scripting all at one place.

5.They also provide online hosting upto 10MB and likely to increase ! which is indeed quite promising.

6.You can download the apps you have written and host them yourself if you actually want to !!

well that was a small review of a very promising service which has a lot of potential in the future . PROVIDED they dont make any strategically stupid decisions ! like going completely closed source !

bye for now !

kunalghosh

(kunal ghosh)