Introduction to Software Engineering/Methodology

Software development methodology is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system. What are different approaches? and what are the basic principles of each approach?

3. Subtopics

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment (IDE) also known as integrated design environment or integrated debugging environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a:

  • source code editor,
  • compiler and/or interpreter,
  • build automation tools, and
  • debugger (usually).


IDEs are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tight-knit components with similar user interfaces. Typically an IDE is dedicated to a specific programming language, so as to provide a feature set which most closely matches the programming paradigms of the language.