Better alternative to arduino IDE ?

[Theremingenieur]

I'm very happy with Eclipse and its Arduino for Eclipse plugin for now.

 

[Constantin]

I couldn't get eclipse installed on my Mac properly. May have been due to the many changes that the Arduino guts have undergone in the last two years.

For the time being, my platform of choice is visual studio with visual micro. The cost is similar to the IDE being advertised above. Plus, visual studio already offers debugging via visual gdb or the pro version of visual micro.

I see this combination (VS+VM) as the main competitor for this advertisement. Both sets of programs are Windows only and both seem to focus on giving the user a GUI experience. One has been around for years and has a proven track record of support, etc. the other one is new to the show.

In other words, that's a pretty steep hill to climb but if one solution is significantly easier to use then this might finally be the path forward to allow more folks to benefit from a fuller-featured IDE (esp debugging). Let's hope that the competition between the two will lead to more innovation.

 

[stevech]

I couldn't get eclipse installed on my Mac properly. May have been due to the many changes that the Arduino guts have undergone in the last two years.

For the time being, my platform of choice is visual studio with visual micro. The cost is similar to the IDE being advertised above. Plus, visual studio already offers debugging via visual gdb or the pro version of visual micro.

I see this combination (VS+VM) as the main competitor for this advertisement. Both sets of programs are Windows only and both seem to focus on giving the user a GUI experience. One has been around for years and has a proven track record of support, etc. the other one is new to the show.

In other words, that's a pretty steep hill to climb but if one solution is significantly easier to use then this might finally be the path forward to allow more folks to benefit from a fuller-featured IDE (esp debugging). Let's hope that the competition between the two will lead to more innovation.

Cost? Visual Studio Community is free. Visual Micro is free. The "Pro" software-debugger option for Visual Micro is low cost ($23). That debugger has its place, but it's not like using hardware breakpoints. The web page is vague on the debugger being optional.

After the trial period, I got VS+VM with the debugger option. I rarely use the debugger but I wanted to support Visual Micro's developer - a very dedicated fellow with excellent work. I especially like VM's serial monitor with multiple windows for multiple boards, and the ease of arranging those windows as panels. And the automatic disconnect/reconnect of each monitor as the board downloads/reboots.