Editor

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is an application that brings together everything you need to write, organise, and run programs — in one place.

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│               IDE                   │
│  ┌──────────┐      ┌─────────────┐  │
│  │   File   │      │   Editor    │  │
│  │ Explorer │      │             │  │
│  └──────────┘      └─────────────┘  │
│  ┌───────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │          Terminal             │  │
│  └───────────────────────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

The editor#

The editor is where you write your code. It looks like a text editor, but it understands the programming language you’re working in. That understanding powers three features that make a real difference when you’re starting out:

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free, lightweight code editor made by Microsoft. It supports almost every programming language and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

What it includes out of the box#

VS Code comes with the core features you’d expect from any IDE — a code editor with syntax highlighting, a file explorer, an integrated terminal, and Git support. It handles the basics well for most languages without any extra setup.