Good IDE for micros

[andyg]

avr studio 5? istr people bashing it, inefficient etc. i downloaded the ms vstudio express 2008, i hope i can setup toolchains in there (never done this kind of thing), if not then maybe avr studio 5 is next in line.

Yep, version 5.

I like it, I've never had any problems with it. On my machine, it runs pretty quick, debugging is fast no problems at all (with AVR One).

Haven't tried ver 6 yet though...

[yyrkoon]

This is not a flame, just my own perspective.

Personally, I view the IDE as just another tool. Use the correct one for the Job.  Like picking a given language, or MCU. Granted, there will be a learning curve. Just like moving to another language, or MCU. Over the last 18 or so years though, since I started programming. I have become adept at reading through docs, learning just what I need to know, when I need to know it.

There are IDE's like TI's Code composer studio 5 that integrate certain plug-ins / tools for various MCU's.  Some of these tools are very handy, and highly integrated into the IDE. Making it easier on the developer. SYS/BIOS is one such tool that I personally like a lot.
Passed that, who better than the MCU's vendor to optimize code generation ?  Of course YMMV . . . If you know how to optimize code better than the vendor, what are you using an IDE for ?! Code completion? Tools that only work with a given IDE, for specific processors ? Brand specific debugging ? Real time analysis tools ? Starting to see a pattern here ?

A lot of times however. I find myself writing code in notepad++. As often times I write code in 3 different languages, for a single device using web interfaces. Yeah, I know, HTML and javascript are hardly what I would consider languages in of themselves either. But are not written in my native tongue . . . hence must be separate languages *shrug*

P.S. to the guy who mentioned emacs vs VI. Neither ! Nano all the way Sorry could not resist.

[nctnico]

Did you ever consider using Eclipse? The big advantage of Eclipse is that it is a very good IDE for a wide range of languages and platforms (which it aims to be).  You can debug PHP code the same way as debugging a piece of C code running on an embedded platform. With Eclipse you only need to learn one IDE and then you can use any language or platform you want and use the same editor you are used to. Eclipse even has several hotkey templates so you can import your favorite editor's hotkeys and work the way you used to work.

IMHO the tools provides by various uC vendors are intended to lock people into their products. This is a disadvantage for the customer! Besides that those tools often lack features like being able to access version control servers. When someone tries to sell me a microcontroller my first question is whether it is supported by GCC and whether there are free / open tools to program it. If the answer is 'no' then I skip it. My job is to program, not learn crappy vendor provided tools that (in most cases) are unsuitable for professional use in the long run because uC vendors don't want to interfere with the business of the compiler vendors. If you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a programmer then a microcontroller has to be a whole lot cheaper then a competing microcontroller which has free programming tools. A couple of years ago someone tried to sell me Freescale Coldfire controllers. It turned out programming the flash of these wasn't easy at all so I send the evaluation kit back for a refund.

[kblomqvist]

I would recommend Sublime Text 2 with SublimeClang plugin.

That's not IDE, but I think that the major reason for using IDE is autocompletion. At least that's the only feature that I'm after from IDEs. Otherwise, I prefer text editors. Of course debugging environment for in-system debugging is not supported, but I do not need that so often. For me it's more important that most of time I have a clean environment and autocompletion. Below you can see a screenshot from my project and how the environment looks like.

[yyrkoon]

Did you ever consider using Eclipse? The big advantage of Eclipse is that it is a very good IDE for a wide range of languages and platforms (which it aims to be).  You can debug PHP code the same way as debugging a piece of C code running on an embedded platform. With Eclipse you only need to learn one IDE and then you can use any language or platform you want and use the same editor you are used to. Eclipse even has several hotkey templates so you can import your favorite editor's hotkeys and work the way you used to work.

IMHO the tools provides by various uC vendors are intended to lock people into their products. This is a disadvantage for the customer! Besides that those tools often lack features like being able to access version control servers. When someone tries to sell me a microcontroller my first question is whether it is supported by GCC and whether there are free / open tools to program it. If the answer is 'no' then I skip it. My job is to program, not learn crappy vendor provided tools that (in most cases) are unsuitable for professional use in the long run because uC vendors don't want to interfere with the business of the compiler vendors. If you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a programmer then a microcontroller has to be a whole lot cheaper then a competing microcontroller which has free programming tools. A couple of years ago someone tried to sell me Freescale Coldfire controllers. It turned out programming the flash of these wasn't easy at all so I send the evaluation kit back for a refund.

If this was meant for me.  In short my point to the original poster was to go out and try various trial versions and try to determine from that what best suites him/her.

We're all different people. With different personal priorities. The one thing we all have in common however is that we each as individuals will use what makes us the most comfortable. When given the option.

Personally though. When a vendor provides a free IDE, with various free / good tools. With eval hardware at a reasonable price. There is no such thing as bad. then, if later you decide to spend hundreds to thousands in currency on hardware / software tools at least you'll have a better understanding of what *you* want. Of course with different individual priorities the term "good" is going to be subjective.

Oh, and as an aside, if you've already decided on vendor specific hardware. Who cares if they try to lock you into their software. If it works, and works decently, for you. Then I do not see a problem.