How would someone go about making an IDE?

[AlTech]

I want to make an IDE. I know that it's probably stupid of me to think it can be achieved by a one man crew. 

 

But i want to try nonetheless.

 

I want to make an IDE which can handle multiple programming languages including:

C++

C#

HTML

CSS

Javascript.

 

I know that the base will have to be made using Visual C++ for the best performance. But how would i go about making an IDE? I know i need compilers, Debuggers, correct formatting of text.

 

EDIT: Could i just use MinGW for the C++ compiler since it's open source and free?
 

Could i take an open source IDE and then add language support in addition to the current ones supported?

 

If so then I could take Komodo Edit (already supports HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript) and then add C++ and C# support.

 

What would be the best option and if i wanted to make my own IDE from Scratch how would i do it? Is this too ambitious?

 

 

AND (this is a BIG IF) IF i ever made my own programming language, how would i add that to the IDE?

[You_are_a_cunt]

You're trying to mix apples and rocks and expect to make a good pie out of it.

 

HTML, PHP, CSS and Javascript are web-oriented and don't need much compiling (although PHP needs to have a PHP server for it to work)

 

C++ and C# need a compiler.

 

Easiest way to do it is by not doing it

[AlTech]

Just now, revsilverspine said:

You're trying to mix apples and rocks and expect to make a good pie out of it.

 

HTML, PHP, CSS and Javascript are web-oriented and don't need much compiling (although PHP needs to have a PHP server for it to work)

 

C++ and C# need a compiler.

 

Easiest way to do it is by not doing it

If i wanted to do C# and C++ elusively then how would i start to make it?

 

Assuming i wanted to.

[tiferrei]

Well, since you want so much variety of languages I really suggest that you take a look at Github's Atom, really, that thing can do ANYTHING firstly because it's modular and open-source. Just see it like this, imagine you want to start building robots and you need to program an arduino, no need to get the ugly IDE, just install Atom's Arduino module, and tons of really good themes, also, auto detection for most programming languages, the default ones are HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, GitHub Flavored Markdown, C/C++, C#, Go, Java, Objective-C, JavaScript, JSON, CoffeeScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, ShellScript, Clojure, Perl, Git, Make, Property List (Apple), TOML, XML, YAML, Mustache, SQL, but you can get literally millions of them with plugins. Just take a look at my setup, I do everything with it, Computer Science classes in python, iOS development, Arduino programming, etc. And also loads of theme packages, I love the Material Design one.

Atom.mov

[You_are_a_cunt]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

If i wanted to do C# and C++ elusively then how would i start to make it?

 

Assuming i wanted to.

Just download an existing IDE. Microsoft Visual Studio has been serving my needs just fine.

 

There really isn't any point in building your own IDE with all the options you already have

[Nineshadow]

You basically need a text editor and some buttons which interface with the compiler.

 

Of course, there's also debugging, project management , etc. , but those are more complicated.

[Gachr]

8 minutes ago, tiferrei said:

Well, since you want so much variety of languages I really suggest that you take a look at Github's Atom, really, that thing can do ANYTHING firstly because it's modular and open-source. Just see it like this, imagine you want to start building robots and you need to program an arduino, no need to get the ugly IDE, just install Atom's Arduino module, and tons of really good themes, also, auto detection for most programming languages, the default ones are HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, GitHub Flavored Markdown, C/C++, C#, Go, Java, Objective-C, JavaScript, JSON, CoffeeScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, ShellScript, Clojure, Perl, Git, Make, Property List (Apple), TOML, XML, YAML, Mustache, SQL, but you can get literally millions of them with plugins. Just take a look at my setup, I do everything with it, Computer Science classes in python, iOS development, Arduino programming, etc. And also loads of theme packages, I love the Material Design one.

Atom.mov

What plugins are you using?

[madknight3]

There's certainly nothing stopping you from taking an open source IDE/editor and building on it. Depending on your experience and the quality of the code, it may be tough to understand how it works, but if you pick through it enough you might figure it out enough to know how to work with it. Make sure to follow the licensing requirements if you make the project public. This could also lead you to contributing to the existing project which isn't a bad thing either.

 

I think it would be a fun project to do it from scratch though. Maybe given enough time it could turn into a releasable product, but I wouldn't worry about that at this stage. Just view it as a learning experience for now and see how things go. I'd recommend keeping things on GitHub or something so it's easy to share your code/get feedback, etc.

 

I'm certainly no expert in this area. I've never done this kind of thing but this is probably how I'd being things.

 

Start with the text editor.

• Add the basic functionality (New, Save, etc)
• Add syntax highlighting for the supported language(s)
• etc

You can make your app run other command line apps and get their output. With that you should be able to start to get some functionality like

• Linting
• Compilation
• Execution
• etc

That's probably a good enough place to start.