The IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment.
So what is it?
Essentially an IDE is an advanced text editor program! It’s your assistant!
You see, programming languages like JavaScript, uses a set of keywords and syntax etc. and we learn and use them to write a set of orders (instructions) and give it to the computers to run.
But because there many keywords in JavaScript and the syntax sometimes complicates, we need an assistant to help us along the way. IDE is here to server the purpose!
Basically IDEs check the source code and highlight the part of codes that does not fit the syntax of the target language (JavaScript in this case). So one of the work of an IDE is to constantly check the source code while we’re adding new instructions and reminds us when we do something wrong.
IDEs can do more than just highlighting errors! For example some of the IDEs are capable of reading the source code and automatically include the external dependencies that the source code might need. (We will get into that dependency stuff later in this tutorial).
Also some of the IDEs can guess what keyword (object, method etc.) we are about to write down and put those instructions automatically without us needing to write them all. This of course increases the speed of writing and developing programs.
In short if you think about it, it’s a good idea to have a cool and eager to help assistant named IDE along the way! So why not!
Alright, now let’s see a number of IDEs that can be used to write JavaScript programs:
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Visual Studio Code: This is a Microsoft created IDE that is
really powerful and easy to use.
Note: other than JavaScript, this IDE can be used for other programming languages as well. So it’s a good choice if you’re working on other languages too.
BTW, it’s free!
Here's the link to download this IDE: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/javascript-
Brackets: The next IDE that is also really powerful and good
assistant is the Brackets IDE. The IDE is created by Adobe System and is
freely available to download.
You can download it in this link: http://brackets.io/-
Sublime: This program at first might not satisfy your expectancy
from an IDE but there are multiple cool plugins that can be added to the
program which will exponentially increase its capabilities as a great
JavaScript IDE.
Here's the link in which you can download the program: https://www.sublimetext.com/download-
Atom: Another program that can be used to develop JavaScript
applications is Atom.
This program is also free to download and here’s the link in which you can get it:
https://atom.io/Note: To write a JavaScript program, it’s a good practice to use IDEs but that does not the only way to do so! As matter of fact, we can just use a simple text editor like Windows Notepad to write a JavaScript application.
But using simple editors are tedious and cumbersome! Essentially because they don’t provide any help and you are all on your own.
In the quick example section however, we will use one of these simple editors (Notepad to be specific) and show you how we can write and execute a JavaScript source code.