While the new SlickEdit Studio delivers on its promise of multilingual support and a high degree of customizability, counter-intuitive interfaces and excess Java baggage dull this IDE's luster.
by Danny Kalev
April 6, 2004
arket trends are a dominant factor in the evolution of IDEs. 15 years ago, syntax highlighting and extensive online help were all the rage; in the late 1990s, it was variables' value examination by a mouse movement and auto-completion of member functions and arguments. Nowadays, multilingualism seems to be the hottest game in town. SlickEdit Studio v2 adopts this concept wholeheartedly with its support for numerous programming languages including C/C++, Java, Ada, C#, VB, FORTRAN, and others. Additional features include the ability to install Eclipse plug-ins, symbol referencing and lookup, key-bindings, and code beautifiers.
Leader of the Pack
The installation pack contained only a single CD. Compared to the 14 CDs of C++ BuilderX (of which only one was actually useful), it was a modest, though brave, start. The installation went smoothly—too smoothly in fact. As a multilingual IDE, SlickEdit automatically installs features and components that developers who stick to a single programming language don't need. The result isn't just a substantial waste of disk space but a longer installation time and constant background noise during code editing, debugging, and testing, as you will shortly see.
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arket trends are a dominant factor in the evolution of IDEs. 15 years ago, syntax highlighting and extensive online help were all the rage; in the late 1990s, it was variables' value examination by a mouse movement and auto-completion of member functions and arguments. Nowadays, multilingualism seems to be the hottest game in town. 
