First of all, that stands for Integrated Development Environment and you might just know this concept from your daily activities, as it is “related” to almost every product development cycle. Let me detail.
Now, imagine you’re into woodworking and you want to make a kitchen table. It goes without saying that you already have an idea of the steps involved in the making of the table, you have the materials and some dimensions in mind on how the table should be like.
You have of course the tools to work with, but some are in the garage, some in the attic of the house and some on your neighbor’s basement. And you have no sandpaper for the finish step. Yes, you could make the table, but how much time would that take and how would your calves look like from all of those trips to the attic? Two watermelons 😄
Fortunately, though, we usually build that table in a woodshop, in our garage, or even in the garden, near the shed, where we have all our tools near by, where we can test that the table doesn’t wobble or where we can fix it in case something is not as we planned it would be (for example, if you make it too tall.. a little saw time and.. problem fixed), where everything is.. integrated.
This is what a software IDE is all about. Having all the tools and ways to develop, test, debug and fix your (software) product in one place. For being more productive. That’s it!
IDE examples are countless and they are all associated with one or more programmingrlanguages. In an IDE you can code in one of more programming languages the same as in a woodshop you can build not just a kitchen table but also a fancy lamp. Furthermore, for the same programming language there can be multiple IDEs as well as you can build that kitchen table in either your woodshop, in your garage or in the back of your garden. The only requirement/need in both cases is to have the tools near by and.. tiiime 😊
To be a little more focused on a particular one, since I plan on learning Python with you in this Call of Code journey, for developing in Python, we have PyCharm as a desired IDE.
I’ll let you explore this and now that you know what an IDE is all about you can go ahead and.. make a table.