[ACCEPTED]-Best C++ IDE or Editor for Windows-editor

Um, that's because Visual Studio is the 1 best IDE. Come back to the darkside.

I've found the latest release of NetBeans, which 1 includes C/C++ support, to be excellent.

http://www.netbeans.org/features/cpp/index.html

I personally like Visual Studio combined 6 with a third party add-in such as Visual 5 Assist (http://www.wholetomato.com/). I've tried a few of the others 4 and always ended up back with Visual Studio. Plus, Visual 3 Studio is a widely used product in development 2 industries, so having experience using it 1 can only be a plus.

The Eclipse CDT works well for me. It supports MinGW 3 and Cygwin as targets. It also integrates 2 well with CVS and Subversion.

The latest 1 build, Ganymede, is available here.

There are the free "Express" versions of 4 Visual Studio. Given that you like Visual 3 Studio and that the "Express" editions are 2 free, there is no reason to use any other 1 editor.

I vote for Visual Studio, but it seems that 7 C++ is treated like second class citizen 6 (not the compiler and stuff but IDE support) compared 5 to .NET languages like C#, but hopefully 4 MS will do something about it by the next 3 version of Visual Studio (new standard is 2 coming and they promised that 10 should 1 be new 6).

VIsual studio is by far the best IDE but 1 you can also take a look at Code::Blocks

If you are interested in doing Qt development, then 1 Qt Creator works fine and is free.

I prefer to use Microsoft Visual C++ express on windows. Though 8 the 2008 ide is fine, the 2005 express has 7 better support for many of the open projects 6 which you might want to participate in. It's 5 a pain to compile Firefox or a half life 4 2 mod on 2008. Also as a general tip when 3 looking for software, I like to search wikipedia 2 for "comparison of " In this 1 case you would search comparison of Integrated Development Environments.

Hope that was helpful.

I think the debugger in Visual Studio (Express) is 2 the killer thing that prevents me from using 1 another IDE.

Visual Studio + Visual Assist X (http://www.wholetomato.com/)

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Visual studio is the most up to date and 6 probably "best" free ide. Dev C++ is a little 5 dated, and mingw doesn't compile most of 4 boost, (except regex). Most of the other 3 compilers are dated and fading, like mars 2 and borland. But you can use whatever you 1 like!

One that hasn't been mentioned is CodeLite, a powerful 2 open-source, cross platform IDE. It has 1 code completion amongst other features.

Emacs. Xemacs works fine under Windows. For 2 using it as an IDE, I recommend running 1 it under Cygwin.

There are some features in an IDE that are 19 so transformative that you don't know how 18 you lived without them. Integrated help 17 was one. IntelliSense-like functionality 16 was another. VS 6.0's Debug and Continue 15 was absolutely killer. Visual Studio kicked 14 butt for quite a while. Not bad, given 13 the awful NeXTstep rip-off it all started 12 as. (Or is it that memories of NeXTstep 11 has faded until VS seems okay?)

Sure, there 10 are much better EDITORS that VS, but as 9 a complete package for Win32 development 8 nothing seems to come close.

There are free 7 Express editions now, but they seem pretty 6 crippled.

I am quite enjoying Eclipse under 5 Linux (and derivatives of it on Windows 4 used in some FPGA vendor toolchains). I 3 -really- don't like the lack of integrated 2 MSDN-style help, though.

I think it's basically 1 down to those two choices.

The Zeus editor has support for C/C++ and it 3 also has a form of intellisensing.

It does 2 its intellisensing using the tags information 1 produced by ctags:

alt text http://www.zeusedit.com/images/_lookmain.jpg

I will quote myself from this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/780837/what-is-a-good-linux-ide-for-code-completion/917854#917854

Someone 56 already said this before me, but QtCreator 55 is really good for Qt4 development.

Not 54 only it has a really good code completion 53 support. It also knows a little more about 52 the code and what to complete then I thought 51 I needed. For example it knows about slots/signals. This 50 means that connecting slots/signals via 49 code is much easier then before.

The code 48 editing is really nice. I remember that 47 when refactoring code, (a few variables 46 starting with underscore) it remembered 45 the cursor position between lines and 44 this made the refactoring much easier. The 43 code indentation is smart enough to not 42 get in my way (KDevelop was configurable, but 41 QtCreator learns how I code. At least 40 it feels like it does).

Then there are the 39 cool key combinations. Most of the functionality 38 of the IDE can be accessed using shortcuts. The "control+k" thingie 37 is a nice thing, which some command line 36 users would like, but I am more GUI oriented. I don't 35 use it.

What I really like, is the split window 34 command. Yes, KDevelop3 does it, but not 33 as nice as QtCreator. My favorite is control+e,3 32 which I use to display the header and 31 implementations of my classes. Once again, the navigation 30 here is the best I have seen (control+e,o).

It 29 also has a nice SCM integration. I usually 28 use SVN, and quite frankly it's not as 27 good as I need: no shortcut to diff the 26 project, no diff to commit the whole project, no 25 option to commit several files.

I also 24 don't like the "total integration 23 of external tools". I still like 22 the external QtAssistant - control+tab 21 is easier to read large articles. But.... when 20 you define a QString s, and 3 lines bellow 19 you want to read the interface of QString, you put 18 your cursor on "s" and press F1 17 - the assistant comes as a sidebar with QString's 16 documentation. A huge advantage.

Want to 15 follow a definition? F2 to the help. F4? Changes header/implementation 14 (yes, eclipse does this better...).

The 13 debugger is good. It's not as good as 12 VisualStudio but ... it has support for 11 Qt4 internals (you can see the value of 10 QString and QList!).

I can continue... but 9 IMHO you will need to give it a second 8 and third try. It really is a good product. Not as 7 flexible as Eclipse (hi ryansstack), but 6 it's a really small, fast and young project. I 5 stopped developing QDevelop because I 4 really found what I was looking for.

ps: yes, I 3 mean stopped developing QDevelop. I was 2 in the development team.

My response is 1 for Qt4 development only. Be warned.

SlickEdit is very cool, and does support 4 something like intellisense. At my current 3 company I now use Visual Studio, and I've 2 mostly gotten used to it - but there are 1 still some SlickEdit features I miss.

As a complete all-in one package, Visual 2 Studio 2008 is the best IDE for C++ development 1 with Windows

Visual studio is great, but there are few 13 tricks you can enhance it with. SonicFileFinder 12 is one - helps you to search source files 11 by partial match. You can map solution-tree 10 to Alt+1, partial filename search to alt+2, and 9 properties-window to alt+3. These are the 8 three most used windows.

Another great tool 7 that is ofter misunderstood is ctrl+shift+F 6 shortcut for searching file contents. People 5 dont use because it's so slow, but my advice 4 is - deal with it. Searching the whole 3 solution (or even all files in project folder) is 2 only slow the first time you use it. Consequitive 1 searches are as fast as jump-to-definition-feature.

With Intellisense, code folding, edit and 9 continue, and a whole host of other features, Visual 8 Studio is certainly the best IDE. However, for 7 simple code editing, I often use UltraEdit. It 6 has some great features not found in Visual 5 Studio. One surprisingly useful feature 4 is being able to select a column in the 3 editor. You can find and replace within 2 the column (useful for tabs vs. spaces wars...) delete 1 the column, etc...

I've tried SlickEdit, Notepad++, emacs, jEdit 10 and Visual Studio. VS wins hands-down for 9 Best Windows IDE.

jEdit is probably the 8 best GUI cross-platform editor/almost-IDE, and 7 emacs is probably the best terminal cross-platform 6 editor/almost-IDE. The advantage with using 5 these is that when you jump to a Mac or 4 Linux box, you know how they work.

I tried 3 Eclipse, but it ran like a no-legged dog 2 it was so slow, so I didn't use it much. Maybe 1 tech is better now, but eh.

How about CodeBlocks, i find it so fine 1 with me, especially the new 10.05 version.

I would recommend C++Builder, from Embarcadero, for 3 C++ work and there is also a free version available. If 2 you prefer Visual Studio, download one of 1 free express editions.

Here's another vote for Visual Studio. The 9 debugger and Intellisense are definitely 8 it's hallmarks. While other IDE's offer 7 code-completion, I've often found them to 6 be somewhat sluggish in this area for some 5 reason (sluggish being a reference to the 4 speed at which code-completion occurs and 3 offers selections).

Other than VS, NetBeans 2 is a good polished IDE and is updated on 1 a very regular cycle.

I think it's largely a matter of taste, but 5 I would recommend begginers to stick to 4 a pure editor (vi, emacs...) instead of 3 a full fledged IDE so they can figure out 2 the whole toolchain that modern IDEs hide.

Just 1 for the record, my weapon of choice is Emacs.

personally i dont like microsoft......I 4 hate to admit that visual studio is the 3 best IDE i ever use.....Netbeans is gud 2 but drasticaly slow....other free IDEs are 1 useless.. so people try to stick with VS....

M$ VS2008 is a better IDE for this.

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The question says specifically IDE so I 9 am guessing thats what you want. In that 8 case, the main options are Visual Studio 7 and Eclipse CDT as stated above. Of those, I 6 personally prefer Eclipse. However, don't 5 necessarily limit yourself to an IDE. I 4 prefer to use vim as my editor and WinDbg 3 as my debugger. For compilation, your project 2 will probably dictate this. I currently 1 use NMAke on the command line.

Use Visual Studio 2010. You can get the 1 full version free with DreamSpark

vi or gvim if you don't like terminals.

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Personally, I have found Bloodshed's Dev-C++ to be very good. However, I 3 do not recall an update in a very long time. I 2 have, because of this, switched over to 1 NetBeans for everything.

notepad++ or codeblocks for large projects

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I think the anwser to this question depends 17 on following question: Do you want to develop 16 cross-platform applications ?
If the anwser 15 to this question is a clear YES, than you 14 should start right away with some IDE that 13 support cross-platform compilers like gcc/mingw.

Personally 12 ive tried CodeBlocks and QtCreator beside 11 VS... If developing cross-platform software 10 using Qt, surely QtCreator is the best choice. Since 9 QtCreator is still a quite new IDE, it still 8 has some bugs... for example it's "intelli-sense" doesnt 7 support namespace aliaces yet.. but i think 6 it will evolve pretty fast, to a very good 5 and complete IDE.
Codeblocks is a quite 4 "small" IDE, but has everything an IDE needs. Still 3 its "Intelli-Sense" (especially when dealing 2 with meta-programming stuff like boost), and 1 debugger is less powerful than VS's.

My favorite IDE was good old msdev.exe, a.k.a., Microsoft 5 Development Studio, a.k.a., Microsoft Visual 4 C++ 6. It was the last version of Visual 3 C++ that didn't require me to get new hardware 2 just to run it.

However, the compiler wasn't 1 standard-compliant. Not even remotely.

Visual Studio BUT...

Go get ReSharper plugin 3 from http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/index.html. I'm a Java developer who uses IntelliJ 2 and ReSharper gives a lot of the IntelliJ 1 functionality to Visual Studio.

It looks like you did not mention Ultimate++ iDE. It 6 is quite fast. It is not perfect as Visual 5 Studio but it has several useful features 4 such as function list, it shows which function 3 you are in,searches, multiple releases, package 2 system, a gui designer a faster container 1 library. Code completion...

QT and NetBeans are the best cpp IDE's that 1 I've ever used.

c++ IDE for MSWindows 1-Visual Studio 2-CodeBlocks 2 (nighitly build) others (devcpp, netbeans, eclips,...) just 1 sucks, dont waste your time

I'm a bit surprised because nobody has mentioned 8 Codeblocks: http://codeblocks.org I think it is probably one 7 of the best IDE's for C++. It is specially 6 useful if you do multiplatform programming, since 5 it is available for Linux, Mac and Windows, and 4 it uses the same project files for all versions. It 3 works perfectly with mingw, allowing you 2 to even perform cross-compiling. It also 1 directly supports wxWidgets visual development.

I have used Netbeans for java, and it works 1 great. Not sure how it works with C++, though.

Dev-C++ is a complete stand alone debugger compiler 4 and linker, and also offers "IntelliSense". If 3 you want to break away from VS (that also 2 includes VS express) i suggest using this 1 tool.

Ultimate++ if you want to program for both Linux and 2 C++ also you have the choice to choose your 1 compiler.