Language toolkit

Newborn developers often have a limited understanding of the tools available to make working with code easier, increase efficiency, and protect against many mistakes. These tools are not a silver bullet for the difficulties the language may present, but they can significantly smooth out the rough edges. The following is a list of common and popular tools recognized by developers around the world, but it is only a small portion of what is available. Over time, you will become more familiar with these tools and discover new ones that suit your needs.

Text editors

• Visual Studio Code

  Site: https://code.visualstudio.com/

  Price: free

  A powerful and efficient editor for text files and source code is available. It has a rich library of extensions that enables customization for personal preferences. It can also be configured to work with source code, allowing you to compile, run, and debug your code with ease. Additionally, it has a powerful search engine for files and folders, making it easier to search, read, and work with large projects.

• Notepad++

  Site: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

  Price: free

  A lightweight editor for text files and source code, it supports syntax highlighting for common programming languages. Compared to Visual Studio Code, it is more convenient for quickly opening and viewing files and due to its lightweight design, it is comfortable to work with a large number of text files.

IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

• Microsoft Visual Studio IDE

  Site: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com

  Price: Community Edition is free

  An integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft, providing a comprehensive set of tools including a code editor, compiler, debugger, and profiler, for various programming languages and cross-platform development. A great option for beginners, as its modern interface is user-friendly and requires minimal customization out of the box.

• Qt Creator IDE

  Site: https://www.qt.io/product/development-tools

  Price: free for open source projects (more details: Qt Open Source)

  Initially, Qt Creator was positioned as an IDE for developing graphical interfaces for C++ applications. Over time, the framework has acquired numerous capabilities and evolved into a comprehensive ecosystem for cross-platform development. It offers a vast library of primitives for various needs such as networking, graphical interface, database work, and handling popular formats like images and text files. Today, Qt Creator serves as a competitor to Visual Studio and is particularly popular among developers creating applications for various Linux distributions.

• Eclipse IDE

  Site: https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages

  Price: free

  Eclipse is a highly capable multi-platform development environment, but it is also quite heavy. One of the key features of Eclipse is its modularity. The philosophy of Eclipse is that any developer can modify the development environment to fit their needs by connecting additional extensions. It is used as a foundation by some compiler developers for specialized OS or microcontrollers, such as the QNX real-time OS, Red-Hat Linux and more.

• JetBrains Clion IDE

  Site: https://www.jetbrains.com/clion

  Price: free for students and teachers

  Powerful multi-platform IDE from JetBrains. Like other IDEs, it provides a comprehensive set of tools for comfortable software development. It is convenient for cross-platform development in both C and C++.

Extensions

• JetBrains ReSharper C++

  Site: https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper-cpp

  Price: free for students and teachers

  An extension for Microsoft Visual Studio, it adds advanced features for working with source code such as extended code highlighting and hints, building dependency diagrams between projects, recommendations for correcting common errors in code, enhanced information during debugging, improved searching and navigating within projects, etc. It competes with Visual Assist.

• Visual Assist

  Site: https://www.wholetomato.com

  An extension for Microsoft Visual Studio that provides additional features for working with source code, such as enhanced code highlighting and hints, increased information during debugging and coding, advanced search capabilities, and improved project navigation. It competes with JetBrains ReSharper.

• Incredibuild

  Site: https://www.incredibuild.com

  Price: have to contact incredibuild team to find the price

  Application/extension for distributed compilation of projects, which unites all developer workstations into a single network, providing the possibility of using dozens of machines to assemble and compile the source code. This speeds up the build process for large projects.

Package managers and build systems

• Cmake

  Site: https://cmake.org

  A cross-platform automation system for building an application from source code, which generates the necessary artifacts for subsequent assembly on the target platform. It is currently considered the standard tool for building various libraries when supplied as source.

• Conan

  Site: https://conan.io

  Price: free

  A package manager and dependency manager for organizing C++ libraries and frameworks. It supports work on various platforms such as Windows and Linux, and has integration with tools such as CMake and Visual Studio.

• Ninja

  Site: https://ninja-build.org

  Price: free

  Project build manager for C and C++ applications. The main advantage of this manager is quick project assembly. It supports cross-platform development and works with all popular compilers.

Code analyzers

• PVS Studio

  Site: https://pvs-studio.com

  Price: 30 days trial

  Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS) static code analyzer by PVS-Studio. The main aim of the analyzer is to analyze the source code for various errors that may go undetected by compilers or during code review. It helps reduce the number of errors related to language syntax and pitfalls.

• Cpp Check

  Site: https://cppcheck.sourceforge.io

  Price: free

  A free code analyzer that helps you catch common errors in your source code that might be missed by the compiler or during code review. It is cross-platform and supports popular Linux distributions and Windows.

• Valgrind

  Site: https://www.valgrind.org

  Price: free

  A set of tools that can help you investigate various problems while the application is running, such as memory leaks and performance profiling. It is compatible with multiple Linux distributions.

Git clients

• SmartGit

  Site: https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/

  Price: free for open source projects

  A complete, cross-platform tool for working with Git repositories. Out of the box, it provides the following features: receiving and sending changes to the repository, viewing the history of changes, a text editor for resolving conflicts, etc. Supports integration with all popular repositories like GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, etc.

• Atlassian SourceTree

  Site: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

  Price: free

  A great free alternative for working with Git using a GUI. It has the same functionality as SmartGit, with the exception of the absence of its own editor for conflict resolution. However, this can be easily fixed by integrating Visual Studio Code or any other editor that can compare files. In all other respects, it completely duplicates the functionality of SmartGit: it is cross-platform and supports integration with popular repositories such as GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, etc.

• Git Kraken

  Site: https://www.gitkraken.com/

  Price: free for open source projects

  A cross-platform and highly efficient client for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It supports integration with GitHub, Bitbucket, and Gitlab, and has all the necessary functionality for everyday work, such as viewing the change history, submitting and receiving changes, switching between branches, and a built-in conflict resolution editor.

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