Skip to content

IDE - Integrated Development Environment

We have debated this a lot as a team which IDE is the best to use. Being very opinionated if we have a choice we make use of the tools that JetBrains provides as they have a solid offering and workflow for most languages. For Pascal, we recommend RAD Studio, the community edition is free to download.

The following should be considered when choosing an IDE

  • Git integration - built in source revision and code comparison
  • Code Inspection - ability to navigate method and follow code paths
  • Code Completion - assist in coding, showing methods and properties with their parameters
  • Code Syntax & Errors - fix basic syntax and coding errors
  • Code Refactoring - refining redundancies and improving code
  • Debugging - stepping through code to figure out errors and logic errors
  • Terminal - built in terminal support
  • Docker - containerization support and management
  • Database Support - built in connecting to databases
  • Deployment - built in deployment and server browsing

If you were wondering, each JetBrains has all of the above built in for your convenience.

Jetbrains offering

  • PHPStorm - PHP
  • PyCharm - Python - the community edition is free
  • WebStorm - For TypeScript and Javascript frameworks
  • IntelliJ - For PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, NodeJs

RAD Studio

Available in different versions, we recommend Community Edition if you're starting out and then the professional version if you're serious about deploying cross platform native applications.

Alternative IDE suggestions:

Both these IDEs are lacking in certain aspects and require a lot of configuration but might be less resource intensive for your computer.

  • Microsoft Visual Studio Code
  • NetBeans