PROGRAMMING FOR BEGINNERS: All Concepts Explained (2016)

5. Software tools for developing and/or running written software

There are several different types of software for creating (or writing) programs. Knowing them all is essential as you will encounter these terms and concepts in almost any computer literature.

5.1 Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Integrated Development Environment (also called IDE for short) is a single software which includes compiler, linker, source code editor, debugger and optionally interpreter. It essentially includes all you need to create programs. There are several IDEs, some are commercial and some are free. The most popular commercial IDE is Microsoft Visual Studio, which includes C++, C# and Visual Basic compilers.

5.2 Source code editor

Source code editor is a software used for writing program source code. There are two types of text editor softwares in general: Rich Text Editors and plain text editors. Source code editor is a plain text editor. Plain text editor softwares can create and edit plain text files (i.e. text files with only plain text, without any text formatting, such as bold or italic text styles), whereas Rich Text Editor software is designed for creating and editing formatted text. Examples of Rich Text Editor softwares are Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect.

Because of source code files are plain text files, you can create and edit them using any plain text editor, including Notepad software which is Windows built in software. But source code editors specifically designed for source code editing have many useful features, such as code section highlighting for easy readability, code auto completion for faster typing, code alignment functions for code organization and many others. These features are for easy creation or editing of source code only, in the end source code is saved as plain text file.

5.3 Compiler

Compiler is a program for converting program source code into machine language code or into bytecode. When compiling source code of a compiled programming language, then compiled code is called executable code (i.e. machine language code). When interpreted programming language's source code is compiled, the resulting compiled code is called bytecode. Bytecode is not human readable code, but it is executed by the interpreter.

5.4 Debugger

Debugger is program which is used for debugging (debugging is practice of finding and fixing program errors) program code. It allows programmer to run program in debug mode and watch program condition on each step while program is being executed.

5.5 Linker

Linker is program for joining several source code (sometimes program is written in several source code files) files and librarys (code written by other programmers that can be reused in other programs) together to generate single executable file.

5.6 Interpreter

Interpreter is a program for executing programs written in interpreted programming languages. When program written in interpreted programming language is running, interpreter is translating program's each instruction into machine language instructions at program runtime. Appropriate interpreter is necessary to be installed on computer on which you want to run programs written in interpreted programming languages.