interactive development environment

programming, tool (IDE, integrated development environment)

A system for supporting the process of writing software. Such

a system may include a syntax-directed editor, graphical

tools for program entry, and integrated support for compiling

and running the program and relating compilation errors back

to the source.

Such systems are typically both interactive and integrated,

hence the ambiguous acronym. They are interactive in that the

developer can view and alter the execution of the program at

the level of statements and variables. They are integrated in

that, partly to support the above interaction, the source code

editor and the execution environment are tightly coupled,

e.g. allowing the developer to see which line of source code

is about to be executed and the current values of any

variables it refers to.

Examples include Visual C++ and Visual Basic.

(2002-09-21)