Ever since I wrote my first piece of code way back in the post-SSC summer vacations, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). One can certainly code on a simple text editor like Notepad, Wordpad or Vim instead of using some hi-tech tool but then I don’t take pride in remembering the package names of standard APIs and libraries. Instead, I’d rather like somebody to remember all that while I can concentrate on the logic being developed. I’ve used several IDEs since the summer of ‘02 and drawn a few conclusions. Here’s the whole story…

I started off with the ol’ Turbo C++ for basic development stuff in C/C++ . Must say, there are some sweet memories associated with Turbo and even today, a glance at this IDE can bring a smile on my face! Turbo had some hidden features too. Hidden as in the ones which nobody even bothered to explore. Features like Runtime Debugger, Pattern Search and Replace, Watch Expressions, etc. The whole idea of using it in its fullest glory thrilled me like anything! However, after a few years of coding, things started unraveling and I found a new world, the one which was gonna be my world…the world of Open Source! Needless to say, I switched over to GNU C Compiler (GCC) just to explore the intricacies of the Standard Template Library (STL) and the Standard DirectMedia Library (SDL). The IDE which began this change to take place was none other than my favorite Console based Editor, the Vi Editor. I just found it geeky to code some tiny Systems Programming Practicals in Vi and then running them from the Console. It took no time to replace “Ctrl+F9″ with “gcc file.c -o file.o; ./file.o”.

Now that I had made a switch from Turbo to GCC, I had to find out something that shall make things simpler to use. Fortunately, I came to know about using Visual C++ for GCC while undergoing preliminary training sessions at Lambent (yeah, I was one amongst the ten, not so fortunate, students selected for Project Setu). Using Visual C++ was a bliss, maybe the joy of stealing stuff from Microsoft amused me then! But even that joy was short-lived and I found out another powerful IDE, this time a pure Open Source one. There I was, experimenting with my PaintBrush application developed in GCC using Code::Blocks. Now this was the first time that I found out about the true power of using a GUI based IDE. Code::Blocks could do a lot more than just compiling the code and fetching the output. Plus, there were many options to choose from, before you created a project. Tried out Dev-C++ as well, but something kept me bound to my ol’ Turbo, SIMPLICITY! After all, Turbo has helped me conquer newer vistas during my Engineering days… So if there’s a small piece of logic working at the back of your mind, and you’re on a Windoze box, Turbo has got everything you need! Whereas if you’re a Java freak, Textpad shall do the needful…

Turbo had been my code-mate all the way until I took up an Open Source project for my final year B.E., a plugin for my favourite Mozilla Firefox. Working with XML User Interface language (XUL), the Document Object Model (DOM) and Javascript didn’t really need an IDE then. It was just a few Kilobytes of code and guess what?…that was enough for all the magic our Nagpur University needs. In the meanwhile, I got in touch with one of my brothers-in-law. This guy, a passed out IITan working with Yahoo India, gave a few networking tips in Linux and some nice tools to be used to walk through millions of lines of code. And that’s where Vi Editor came back in picture. I was completely dazzled to see the prowess of Vi coupled with two effective command line tools, CTags and CScope, all of them being Unix tools.

CTags simply prepares indexes out of a source code and CScope helps us walk through the code using Vi Editor. That was the first time when I saw Ctrl+Click like feature in its making. It helped me figure out the way in which our IDEs build what Microsoft calls Intellisence in Visual Studio. But still, there was something that lacked to fulfil my requirements. I still had to manually run CTags to make all those indexes and then use the key combinations to walk through the code. True, that was simple and fast, but I needed more! Well, I also got into a bit of Java Servlet programming. My batchmates used Netbeans for the purpose but since I’ve had a feud with Sun Microsystems almost a year ago, I chose to Eclipse the Sun!

Soon enough, the college campus was replaced by this Dalmatian themed Office environment and I found myself, handling some complex code. It had been just a couple of days since I joined Umundo and they armed me with Adobe Flex Builder 3. For the first time since I began with my coding adventures, I was handling a code, so voluminous and organised, that it gave me goosebumps as I Ctrl+Clicked to get deeper within the code, especially, the framework. There was something that differentiated the coding I did at college from the one which I was about to start… Earlier, getting the code to work used to be the only objective. Whereas from now on, getting the code working was gonna be a minimum requisite to qualify as a code runner, being a coder needed lot more than that! There were many issues that I had to deal with. Memory management, complexity of code, documentation, formatted code and output, readability are a few to quote here. While the first two required my own creativity and skill, the latter comprised more of an organised and disciplined kind of work. I needed something that shall take care of my discipline so that I could concentrate more on THE code. I found most of it with Adobe Flex Builder 3.

Come winter and I was already done with a couple of ActionScript projects. It was time to move on towards some Java Application code. Adobe Flex Builder being an IDE exclusively meant for ActionScript, didn’t really solve my purpose. I needed something more subtle and complete. All this while, I had seen everybody working on MyEclipse, Carbide C++, Netbeans, XCode and the likes. However, MyEclipse, Carbide, Flex Builder and Eclipse had something in common, the core of Eclipse IDE. And No sooner than I discoverred this fact, I was clear about using Eclipse as my code-mate!

From ActionScript, Java, Java EE, Spring, Swing to J2ME, Symbian, PHP, Ruby to Struts, Hibernate… Eclipse has the most of it for almost everything. Also, using the nifty Subversion plug-in from within Eclipse was sheer bliss. I didn’t need to worry about formatting my code any more. And the best part, I didn’t commit any legal violations while using Eclipse in its full glory. There’s a lot of IDEs based on Eclipse out there, but at the same time, a plugin is also available for almost every area of development that one might think of. Also, there’s this huge developer community which keeps adding stuff to the Eclipse arsenal.

Thus, Eclipse remains my favourite choice of an IDE so far. It has given apt justice to whatever code that went through my finger-tips. Hail Eclipse… Hail the Code!

Phew…! That one hell of a post!

Well i have made the source code of my first ever big project (no it isn’t that big now but still my favourite one), TheSnake, which I worked on as our second semester C project.Wasn’t sure someone would indeed be interested but hey I’ve got a visitor who wants to take a look at it . And it’s better to open up something than making it die in dark. Thats all for now. Good night everyone.

First project added and uploaded in the projects page.

This one is really a rare scenario for the most part, but if you are in some sort of C++ programming class, using TurboC++ (Dos program), you can access the Windows Command Prompt. While I have found how to do this, the trick is finding what to do once you get there. I mean, if you have exploits on your thumb drive, this could be a means of reaching it? The systems here are locked up to the point where firefox can’t update it’s self. So the usefulness of this is at your digression. 

1. Find and open TurboC++. It should be full screen.

2. Click on edit > command prompt (If this is wrong, I can’t fix it until later because the schools computers don’t even let me access this blog.)

3. Fire away, defeat the man. Once you get on it, have some fun. I don’t believe the school system has updated to SP3 (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and I really hate the proxies that keep me off of facebook!

Introduction:

I developed this game as my term assignment in Level-1 and Term-2 (February – March 2007) in C Programming course. This is my first huge project in C, technically last one (as already have learned C++ and Java).

Brief Description:

This is a typical Pacman game. where player plays as a Pacman who’s object is to eat all the seeds in the board or better I say it maze. In the maze player is not alone. There are enemies, four of them, to catch u. If they catch player loses life. Right now there is four levels. Hope I could increase level in recent future.

Project Detail:

Developing Language: C (could be said C++ as I have used few feature exclusive to c++ but this program is a structured not object oriented one)

Used API: Turbo C’s BGI

Operating System: Windows (though I have developed this project in windows xp sp2, wish that in all version of windows this code would work)

Software Architectural Information:

In my consideration this project could be divided into two part. firstly the algorithmic part and next is display oriented part.

Algorithmic Part:

Main algorithmic part of this code is BFS. BFS is used to calculate the distance of each block of maze. The enemies ran through the shortest path. When I have wrote this code, I didn’t have much knowledge of algorithms. So the code could be little bit frustrating for advanced programmers. As a result new comers will be enjoying the code.

Display Oriented Part:

As already I have specified that this project is developed in Turbo C so the display and color oriented work is done using Turbo C’s BGI. More specifically by drawing raw circle and rectangle. This is very ideal project for those how wanted to do better graphics with TC’s circle and rectangle functions.

Few Screen Shots Taken Using DosBox :

Lastly:

Sharing my one of best creations …. …

Click Here to download the game. This is a zip file where an exe file and other necessary files are given. This game could be run only in windows as this is developed in Turbo C.

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