I can’t tell you how many times I have, in late-night coding frustration, said something like, “why can’t you just do what I meant?” to my unsympathetic computer. It turns out that I wasn’t incompetent, just ahead of my time. A new generation of integrated development environments (IDEs) is promising to hold my hand, read my mind, and turn those wayward thoughts into well-structured, properly documented code with the help of AI. I think I may be more excited than terrified at the prospect.
There are a couple of IDE developments that show the direction IDEs are taking today. The first is that many developers are moving to Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, or VS Code, as the IDE for every platform and language in which they work. An enormous marketplace of plugins and extensions (62 for Arduino alone) has turned VS Code into a powerful, open platform used by more than 73% of developers, according to Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey.
The second IDE development is that programming in multiple languages, or for multiple hardware platforms, is becoming the norm rather than the exception. From boards such as the Arduino Uno Q that contain multiple processors to applications that span Intel- and ARM-based systems, developers are looking for a single environment to learn and use regardless of the target.
On top of all this, a new generation of IDEs is taking our AI partners, such as Claude and ChatGPT, into account to make vibe coding easier and smoother when integrated into the workflow. It’s a changing world for developers and their tools.
The code that you write, no matter how you do it, still needs to be secure, and we’re tackling that this month with Pedro Bertoleti’s article on securing code by using static libraries. Securing code is especially critical when the application can involve human health and safety, as in the software-defined vehicles described in Conhas Thakkar’s article.
In these cases, as in so many others, the design of code controlling hardware is at least as important as the hardware itself. This is part of an embedded system evolution that’s been ongoing as long as I’ve been involved with embedded systems and will continue for as long as I can see a future in the field. That makes the tools you use to develop software as important as those you use to design hardware, and Circuit Cellar will be including information on those software tools as we continue to support the engineers and developers building embedded applications.
I’m exploring a number of different IDEs right now for my various projects and I’m struggling to reach a firm conclusion. I’ve got VS Code, Arduino App Lab, and Segger Embedded Studio on my laptop right now (along with a handful of editors), and they’re all good. The days of independent developers being forced into bad software environments are long over, and that’s a very good thing. And that brings me to my question for you:
Do you do all of your coding in a single IDE or do you have multiple IDEs and editors that you use? I’m fascinated to hear how Circuit Cellar readers are approaching this very interesting new world of tools, and I’m especially curious given the rise in artificial intelligence as an aid to code generation. Let me know—I’m looking forward to your answers!
email: c.franklin@circuitcellar.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtisfranklin/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/curtis.f.franklin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curt_franklin/
Mastodon: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@Kg4gwa
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/kg4gwa.bsky.social
Issue Table of Contents can be found here,
as articles are made available online they will be linked.
PUBLISHED IN CIRCUIT CELLAR MAGAZINE • March #429 – Get a PDF of the issue
Fuel your passion! Subscribe to keep the innovation flowing.
Curtis Franklin has been a journalist working in the computer and technology fields for more than forty years. From his early career as a columnist at Computer Shopper and the founder of the BYTE Testing Lab, he has covered computing devices from handheld to supercomputing and applications from trivial to life-altering. In 1988, he was the first editor of an exciting startup publication that was then called Circuit Cellar INK. Since then, he has edited and written for publications including ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, InfoWorld, InformationWeek, and Dark Reading. Most recently, he was Principal Analyst for Cybersecurity Management at Omdia.
Curtis co-wrote one of the first books on podcasting and has been a host or co-host on more than 500 episodes of various podcasts, including hundreds of episodes of This Week in Enterprise Technology, a production of the TWiT Podcast Network.
When not telling stories of computers and the people who make them, Curtis is an amateur radio operator (KG4GWA), an artist, and a Florida Master Naturalist. He’s also active in the maker community, working on the teams that produce Maker Faire Orlando and Maker Faire Miami.
