PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS

• A programming environment is the collection of tools used in the development of software.
• This collection may consist of only a file system, a text editor, a linker, and a compiler. Or it may include a large collection of integrated tools, each accessed through a uniform user interface.
• The development and maintenance of software is greatly enhanced.
• Therefore, the characteristics of a programming language are not the only measure of the software development capability of a system
• UNIX is an older programming environment, first distributed in the middle 1970s, built around a portable multiprogramming operating system.
• It provides a wide array of powerful support tools for software production and maintenance in a variety of languages.
• In the past, the most important feature absent from UNIX was a uniform interface among its tools. This made it more difficult to learn and to use.
• UNIX is now often used through a graphical user interface (GUI) that runs on top of UNIX. Examples of UNIX GUIs are the Solaris Common Desktop Environment (CDE), GNOME, and KDE.
• These GUIs make the interface to UNIX appear similar to that of Windows and Macintosh systems.
• Borland JBuilder is a programming environment that provides an integrated compiler, editor, debugger, and file system for Java development, where all four are accessed through a graphical interface.
• JBuilder is a complex and powerful system for creating Java software. Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is a relatively recent step in the evolution of software development environments.
• It is a large and elaborate collection of software development tools, all used through a windowed interface.
• This system can be used to develop software in any one of the five .NET languages: C#, Visual BASIC .NET, JScript (Microsoft’s version of JavaScript), F# (a functional language), and C++/CLI.
• NetBeans is a development environment that is primarily used for Java application development but also supports JavaScript, Ruby, and PHP.
• Both Visual Studio and NetBeans are more than development environments—they are also frameworks, which means they actually provide common parts of the code of the application.