Quote Originally Posted by code_glitch View Post
For me, an IDE is a good editor with built in compiler support, and as stoney points out, it does have its share of plugins for those extra bits you might want - I tend to find that if my code crashes my custom debug code, gdb doesn't fare much better...
Crashes are not always easy to catch in GDB, but if you can single-step, set breakpoints and watch variables, then I'd call it usable.

I think an IDE is a lot more than an editor with compiler support. That would make any stupid script turn an editor into an IDE. For me, the editor is a small part of the IDE. There is so much more, like code navigation, proper error reporting... I tried formulating a definition of the term IDE once but I left it since I got pessimistic, feeling that everybody seems to have a different pet feature that they will demand to be there or it isn't an IDE at all, like GUI layouts, class browsers... while at the same time some people will refer to full-blown IDEs as "editors", and some insist that Emacs is an IDE. So nobody would care about me suggesting a formal definition.

Anyway, it seems that the conclusion is that Lazarus is the one to try for an IDE with FPC support. Sometimes I think that a modernized version of the FPC IDE would be quite right, but as it is, it feels to much of a clone of Turbo Pascal from the 80's. (Not that Turbo Pascal was bad but some things, like everything visual, feel so crude today.)