Any development I could do to help...

[milkshake]

@PokeParadox: Certainly I have found in my limited experience of CodeBlocks that is does make a 'good effort', however that effort (again based on very limited experience with CodeBlocks) is a long way off what Visual Studio offers.

@crow_riot: Yes totally agree, Visual Assist X is where it is at, most of the stuff I put in my post are features that Visual Assist X provides (I think I did put a disclaimed right at the top of the post saying it assumed Visual Assist is installed)

For the record, my post isn't intended to feed the trolls, it is more that I thought maybe all the people who have trouble seeing why people use Visual Studio really don't understand how good it is. It's like if someone thinks vi is an alternative then they must be joking, trolling or just have a huge lack of understanding of why people use Visual Studio (which my post addresses a small number of reasons). As I also said, if something free/open really can match Visual Studio I think it would be a really good thing, as would crap loads of people 'in the industry' as it would mean studios could save a ton of money with Visual Studio licenses. There seems to be this idea that companies don't think twice before buying software, certainly for AAA software houses I have worked at, this doesn't hold true. They only buy licenses for software where needed, if there is a free version that does the job then it would be serious considered (and ultimately adopted). But the notion that I could fire up vi, capture a frame from my game, click on a pixel and view the history for it, find the final shader to draw it, then step through the shader code is a bit laughable to me.

The other reason for the lengthy post is it is getting a bit old/boring to keep having threads invaded by anti Windows/closed source/etc. comments. I haven't extensively tested every IDE/debugger/editor in existence, but I have used the main culprits over the last few years, and I currently do not believe anything rivals Visual Studio for C/C++ projects (by projects I mean editing, refactoring, debugging, profiling, etc).

So for me it is win-win, either it is accepted Visual Studio has its merits (I am not saying everyone should use it over what they currently prefer, just that it has merits so everyone can understand that is is a viable choice for some people), OR someone comes along and says 'Hey, actually you can do all the stuff just as well in this free editor, check it out!'.

EDIT: 

@TrashyMG: I think people using the editor they prefer makes most sense, never going to hear me argue that, all I really want to counter is the 'anti' people who are anti other people using a specific OS/editor/license.

+1

 

[foxblock]

What about CodeLite? I've heard it spun off from Code::Blocks and it seams to have more regular releases.

CodeBlocks does have regular releases, one just has to use the nightly builds (which have been stable in my experience): http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=8683kbi0sjvnpbpee9ivctsiv1&board=20.0

(I used CodeLite for a short while, the differences to Code::Blocks felt negligible)

Anyway, I use CodeBlocks on a Windows machine for all my development purposes (including Pandora). While the set-up wasn't as smooth as it would have been on a Linux machine, it works wonderfully and I don't need to switch OSs all the time (there are several Windows-only applications I need and honestly I don't give a crap whether they are "free" or "open source").

My problem with many open source applications is their lack of a good interface or default settings. Usually it seems like devs don't care enough to polish this and you need to tweak settings for an hour before you have a good user experience. (Well, honestly why would they as they don't get any money for development and if the program is working for them or some users and others can adjust it, it seems like wasted time on their end.) Commercial developers on the other hand get paid to make sure their application works well for most users out of the box (though I also get annoyed when someone cuts all settings for "simplicity" sake). Being able to go and change anything about an application is great, but most of the time I don't actually have the time or skill to do this, so I would rather pay somebody to give me a good user experience out of the box.

CodeBlocks is somewhat like this, some settings certainly needed tweaking (such as the colour scheme for example, for which there should be a few default sets imo) and afterwards it is fine. But especially the code completion does not work all that well all the time (usually it is decent, but nowhere near what Visual Assist X seems to offer) and syntax highlighting could be better. Overall it's a good IDE though.

I do not like Visual Studio on the other hand, the default syntax highlighting (compare with Sublime Text for example, that is worlds apart), code completion and project management seemed atrocious to me - maybe it just needs the Visual Assist X plugin, but that defeats the point I made earlier, a commercial IDE should work well out of the box and not need another commercial plugin for full functionality. The debugger is ace though and gdp a piece of total crap compared to it.

Anyway, I agree with PokeParadox, one should invite as many developers as possible with little entry hurdle. So if Windows is a valid option, don't force them to use Linux (if anything point out advantages/disadvantages of either way).