More IDE Options​

Apart from the IDEs provided by the boards manufacturers, I gave a try to cross-platform IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans and Qt, but wasn't able to go far away.

Interesting developments are coming on the field of IDEs, with two major trends. 

Customisable IDEs

A new breed of IDEs is coming. They are light, based on an open structure, and rely on extensions for customisation. 

Let's mention GitHub Atom and its derivatives, Visual Studio Code by Microsoft and PlatformIO. 

Another option pioneered on the BeagleBone is Cloud9. Cloud9 runs as a server, either on the cloud or on a local machine. The front-end is provided by any browser.

The technology is promising but still very young, and far from providing the same experience as established IDEs.

However, the biggest challenge relies on selecting and managing the extensions, as virtually every feature (like language, code-sense, versioning, debugging) is provided by an extension.

Online IDEs

On October 21, 2106, a DDoS against one Domain Name System provider (namely, Dyn) resulted in many world-class websites being unreachable. Apart from services like Twitter and GitHub, development was impacted for some online IDEs and IoT clouds.
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That very day, I wanted to work with the Particule Photon board, a nice piece of hardware, but the tools are mostly online. 

There is an offline IDE, but it is difficult to install, requires a virtual machine, takes too much resources, and fails to provide the required reliability. Even worse, it still relies on the cloud.

The offline IDE has been in beta for a long time, and doesn't seem to be on the top priority list. Critically, the company doesn't understand the consequences of this online-only strategy.
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Similar case involves ARM with the online mbed IDE. Local build was operational for the previous version, mbed Classic, but suffers from incompatibilities with some of the libraries, such as Bluetooth.

​The new mbedOS offers an option for local build, but actually requires an internet connection to download the many files required for development
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Arduino is well known for its Arduino IDE and offers as an option Arduino Create, the new online IDE. Similarly, Code Composer Studio by Texas Instruments is available online and offline.

Should the online IDE go down, the offline IDE is still available as a backup plan.
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For that reason, I do not recommend boards relying on online-only IDEs, like the the Particule Photon board and the mbed SDK platform. 
Offline tools are not an option.
Backup plans

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Posted: Mar 03, 2017
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