Integrated Development Environment

An integrated development environment, commonly abbreviated IDE, is a software application that combines the tools a programmer needs into one program, typically a source-code editor, a compiler or interpreter, and a debugger, so a developer can write, build and test code without switching between separate standalone tools. Early examples of combining these functions appeared in the 1970s, including the Maestro I system built by the German company Softlab, but the concept reached a mass audience through Borland's Turbo Pascal, released in 1983 under the direction of the Danish programmer Anders Hejlsberg, which packaged an editor and an unusually fast compiler into a single inexpensive product for personal computers. The integrated approach Turbo Pascal popularized became the standard shape of programming tools, and modern IDEs such as Microsoft's Visual Studio and the open-source Eclipse and Visual Studio Code extend the same combined-tool idea with features such as automatic code completion and integrated version control.