What is the Best IDE in YOUR opinion?

Ok, first off… Forget about platform (Win, MacOS etc), Forget about how small or fast the compiler or executables is. Forget about the features and functions provided by the underlying language.

Looking at a given IDE strictly from the point of view of CREATING the app, in your individual opinions which one is “best” and why? Also include “xyz could be best if it did or did not do z”

I mean for laying out the GUI, entering “methods”, adding “events”… Just the action of creating a project, again not for compiling, and not for what the compiler produces

I like Creo‘s IDE (http://creolabs.com). Modern and user friendly.

Productivity wise VB6 was pretty damned fast at doing layout & code
You could see your code in many ways (one method at a time or all at once)
For a fast typist you could just fly writing code since you could type the declarations & everything
It is/was fast as heck at doing pretty much everything it tried to do
And pretty darned rock solid in the toolset it provided
Language wise it was object based but not object oriented so it left a lot to be desired and it had tons of limitations (64K etc)

Delphi use to be similar (although now it seems to be quite a mess)

I’m not going to list the “X could be best if…” as there are several tools that could be mentioned but there would be long long lists of what they’d need to do to get there

Try for free leads me to a page called Download that has no downloads ?

EDIT : So I asked on their contact page and got this reply

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My most loved IDE: IntelliJIdea combined with Jformdesigner from Formdev. Fast and furios, running on all platforms (Win, MAC, Linux) and used in my case on Linux. Used to build Desktop Apps (Java Swing), Webapps (JavaSwing with Swingweb and Webapps with Vaadin) and IOS and Android with GLUON in JavaFX. Complete toolchain in one place without changing anything and with a really good Databasetool integrated in IDE (DataGrip). That’s the IDE I love most.

I flew round VB5
And Delphi 1 & 2 were pretty good too.
In contrast, Xcode is an unfriendly maze

Agree about Xcode - it has the potential to be much simpler but its never been taken

+1 for Delphi

Vote for Delphi and yeah VB6 right under it.

Unpopular opinion: I think XCode may be the best one I’ve used in recent years. Honestly, once you get past the learning curve it’s incredible - particularly the debugging tools it provides.

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As I saw I am allowed to have more then one favorite (thanks @HMARROQUINC ) I would fill up my list with:
B4J for Desktop and Web
B4I for IOS
B4A for Android
B4R for Arduino (and yes, with Inline C you can use all the mcu specific fun)

If the Xojo guys had done a halfway good job with lots more attention to detail the IDE could be great. Other IDEs have way too many too small buttons and options. I remember fighting with Eclipse and some Python IDE.

With Eclipse I was fighting also. IntelliJ reduces the fights and has less problems with it then xojo

VS on Windows. On MacOS it’s a hot mess. Only IDE I’ve ever seen that is a completely different program on other OS’s.
I like Xojo’s IDE, just wish it had a mode where I could see and edit all the code instead of it keeping everything separately.

Xcode is fine for “code”… but Interface Builder (my opinion) is the worst design ever. And it was the GUI portion of the IDE that I was looking for opinions about.

VB6
It was incredibly extendable, it allowed to create custom components and tools like: CodeSMART for VB6 - The Complete VB6 Toolset

FAST, not only to design GUI, also for coding. It was usable without the mouse, that increases performance. (xojo cant even make the Tab key work in the inspector)

Customizable, if an option was not right for you, you can change it, either it had an option or you could make it

is there someplace I could still get a copy of VB6 (or a clone)…

Dont get me wrong
Xcode has some excellent tools buried in it
Its just the learning curve for how to build any kind of app using it that makes it not my most favourite IDE
It could be way easier to use - just isnt

I think Visual Studio is the best IDE there is.
And sadly, that doesn’t say much about Visual Studio - it only says a lot about everything else that I have seen.

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