CRM Newsletter
 
NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 CIO BlackBerry News and Tips
 CIO Research and Analysis
 CIO Microsoft
 CIO Insider
 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions

November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.

Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group

The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.

Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award

Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 

Developers Rate Satisfaction with Their IDEs

Programmers spend a huge amount of time in the integrated development environment, where they write, debug and optimize their applications. A new Evans Data report identifies the IDEs that make developers say, "Boy, do I love this tool!"

 

May 28, 2008CIO

While developers can still write applications with a command-line compiler and a text editor (emacs versus vi flame war, anyone?), most programmers these days turn to an integrated development environment (IDE). An IDE can present a common user interface to all the tools in the developer's arsenal, from debugger to unit testing tools to source code management system. But with dozens of popular IDEs to choose from, which one is best?

For the third year in a row, Evans Data conducted a worldwide survey of developers' satisfaction with the features of various IDEs. The 2008 free report (registration required) compiles the feedback from over 1,200 developers. The results are based on experience, not hearsay; only users of an IDE were asked to rank the features of each IDE.

The goal, says the report, was to shed light on the different toolsets and characteristics of each IDE and to show the strengths and weaknesses of each. "The design philosophy behind integrated toolsets can differ significantly as vendors target different market segments and provide different capabilities focused on the needs of those segments," its author writes. But whether an IDE is an open-source tool or designed for enterprise use (or both!), it ought to fulfill and ideally exceed user expectations.

The IDE that most clearly achieved that goal is IBM's Rational Application Developer, which got the best scores from their users for the second time in three years. Its rankings were head and shoulders above competitor tools in user satisfaction. The next three IDEs in developer ranking are JDeveloper, Microsoft's Visual Studio, and Sun Studio. Other IDEs evaluated include Adobe Creative Suite / Macromedia Studio, Codegear's Delphi, MyEclipse and NetBeans. MyEclipse and NetBeans were at the bottom of the heap overall, though individual features had high satisfaction rankings.

The report also looked at the product attributes and features that matter most to developers. The IDE attributes ranked as most important are debuggers, ease of use and the performance of the resulting applications. None of these is surprising; every developer depends on a debugger to help identify and solve software defects, and an IDE that gets in the way won't last long on a development desktop (at least not if the developer has anything to say about it). Plus, since the point of all the programming is to create production applications, the code really ought to run fast.

The least critical IDE capabilities—relatively speaking—are the IDE's code profiler, sample applications, and the availability of third-party tools. The availability of third-party tools has decreased in value rather significantly, says the report, perhaps because buying complete "out of the box" solutions has become more popular during the last year.

Fifteen IDE features and capabilities were rated by the users, including quality of tech support, the size and quality of the developer community, and documentation. Each of the eight IDEs spotlighted are examined on those product feature satisfaction rankings. Delphi, for example, gets extremely high marks for ease of use, but very low ones for sample applications.

Other stories by Esther Schindler © 2009 CXO Media Inc.
 
 
Loading...
 
WHITE PAPERS

Top 10 Business Drivers

The restructuring of Wall Street that took place in 2008 will have a major impact on the investment management business in 2009.
 

How is open source changing the face of enterprise software?

Learn how open source and business intelligence ignite enterprises to reach new levels of performance excellence.
 

Red Hat Open Source Security

The rapid innovation and collaboration of open source development helps Red Hat provide industry-leading security tools and processes.
 

Now is the Time for Open Source

In today's economy, we are all trying to do more with less. Another modern business necessity is flexible, mobile data and systems-complex IT.
 

Bridging the IT Visibility Gap in Complex Composite Applications

Composite Application Management
 

Enhance the Performance of your Data Center

Enhancing performance through Virtualization realizes operational efficiencies and offers reliability.
 

WEBCASTS

Profit from Power Savings

Cut Costs & Green Your IT Operations with PC Power Management

Find out how and why 400 organizations have d...
 

IT Consolidation Made Easy

The Primary IT Initiative for Reducing Costs
 

CIOs Weigh In On Virtualization

Date: November 19, 2009 Time: 2:00 PM EST

Gary Beach, publisher emeritus of CIO magazine,...
 

Webcast- Vantage 11: Redefining Application Performance Management

Redefining Application Performance Management
 

Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change: The Open Solution

Architecting BI Applications for Change
 

Taking a Seat at the Executive Table: The Reality of Virtualization

This year, for the first time, the number of virtual machines is on track to exceed the number of physical machines...
 

Resource Alerts

Get instant email notifications by topic when white papers, webcasts, and case studies are added to our library.

 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Disciplined Autonomy: Resolving the Tension Between Flexibility and Control

Enterprise Capture: Your Onramp to Business Process Automation

Seven Technologies for Advanced Mail Protection

Server Consolidation: Leveraging the Benefits of Virtualization

Join us at the US-Brazil IT-BPO Summit, on November 10th in New York.

Unified Communications: Thoughts, Strategies and Predictions. Join the discussion

Read the RSA report: Security for Business Innovation

Webcast: Looking to the Cloud for Email and Collaboration Services

64-page prescriptive guide to security, compliance, and IT operations.

Keep your IT expertise up to date. Join the Intel Premier IT Professionals.

A new fleet of PCs with a total ROI in 10 months. Find your ROI.

eZine: A Roadmap to Reducing IT Complexity

Reduce risk, gain agility. See how Progress can help your business.

Virtualization Technology as a Business Solution

eZine: A Roadmap to Reducing IT Complexity

World-class trading technology solutions from NYSE Technologies.

If You're Paying for Telecom, You're Paying Too Much. Contact Asentinel Today.

Trade-In your old printer and save up to $1,000 plus free recycling!

infoBOOM! - The Mid-Sized Company CIO's Exclusive Community

Live Webinar: Applying Business Analytics. Click here to learn more

White Paper: Right-Sizing Your Power Infrastructure

Webcast: Unleashing the Power of Customer Data

White Paper: Managed Security for a Not-So-Secure World

SharePoint - Unchecked growth of content is unsustainable.

White Paper: Legacy Tools: Not Built for the Helpdesk

Tolly Group Lab Test Results: Cisco vs. ShoreTel

SETLabs: The Impact of Performance Engineering

Top to Bottom Performance Management Excellence at the City of Chicago

See how AT&T can help protect your network.

Top Five CIO Challenges

Streamline IT Costs. Boost Performance with WAN Optimization.

Want to know how you can maximize employee productivity?

Build your 1st app FREE with Force.com

TDWI checklist helps define data readiness for analytics. Download report.

Increase UPS efficiency without sacrificing protection.

A Clear View Toward Virtualization

Virtualization Technology as a Business Solution

The rules of infrastructure management just changed.

A Clear View Toward Virtualization

Interactive Q&A helps you discover key ways to maximize IT assets.

Ready to virtualize tier one applications? Check your virtualization maturity.

Think you can't afford a Cisco Switch? Cisco Catalyst Switches are now more affordable.

Five minute business analytics assessment. Immediate results.

The Case for Investing in Business Analytics Technology. Read white paper.

Cut Costs & Green Your IT Operations with PC Power Management

White Paper: 4 Customer Service Myths

Mobile Security: The Essential Ingredient for Today's Enterprise

White Paper: Improve Agility with Operational Responsiveness

White Paper: 5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support

Global Research: CIOs Weigh In On Virtualization