Best of the free IDE's & why

Good day all, what a great forum.

as you can nodoubt see this is my first post here, and would be dumb not to admit i came here and registered to checkout the free hosting services (im sure many did)

well since im here i have a few questions that by looking around im sure many of you guys can point me in the right directions and give me some advice on whats best avoided in regards to the many IDE's out there -

this baffles me because some such as eclipse is totally free and if you have ever used it you should notice how it easily compares and beats several of the commercial tools (ms visual studio, Visual Web Developer, Expression Web, IntlliJ IDEA, Zend Studio to name a few) there are other well made given away free such as (NetBeans, Eclipse and VISUAL WEB DEVELOPER 2010 EXPRESS )

Please add more if i've missed any that you feel are as good or better than the ones above.

My question being is Which in your opinion is best and why and what do you code in? simple html/css or somthing far more ranging such as c# or whatever????

thanks in advance.
7anked

Hello and welcome. I think most us came here for the reason of free hosting (I did). I hope you find the discussions interesting, it's so much easier if you do Wink

The choice of IDE is much based on your preferences, the language, size of the projects, etc. I see no reason not to use a free IDE. Test different IDEs until you find something you like.

Most important for me is syntax highlighting. Eclipse is quite good for Java but a bit slow in my opinion. For HTML/CSS/PHP I have used Quanta Plus, it was quite good but I don't really like that it uses KDE. I never use WYSIWYG editors because I want to have control over what I make. Nowadays I mostly code in C++ using Geany which is a quite simple IDE but that's perfect for me. If I just write a short program in some language I don't use much, the choice is often Geany or gedit.

Though it pains me to say it, on eliminating factors like platform compatibility and cost, as a software package Visual Studio 2008 is probably the best IDE I have used for any language. I know, I'm usually "woo Linux, boo Microsoft" but if Microsoft have anything going for them it's that they really know how to treat their software developers. Eclipse comes in a close second, I find it's slightly more configurable than Visual Studio and the error handling is more helpful, but it does run a little too slowly, and there are a few awkward/unpolished things about it.

But since this is a topic for the best free IDEs, Eclipse is definitely up there.

I am currently using Eclipse (Aptana) but have a look at Netbeans (previous IDE) as well.

hi
i am familiar both of IDEs (Eclispse and NetBean)
but i prefer NetBean because it is good and easier for me
maybe other will vote for eclipse but i will go for NetBean as i my thoughts NetBean is easier and better than Eclipse
my vote is for NetBean
thanks

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