A programming tool or software development tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs that can be combined together to accomplish a task, much as one might use multiple hand tools to fix a physical object.
The history of software tools began with the first computers in the early 1950s that used linkers, loaders, and control programs. Tools became famous with Unix in the early 1970s with tools like grep, awk and make that were meant to be combined flexibly with pipes. The term "software tools" came from the book of the same name by Brian Kernighan and P. J. Plauger.
Tools were originally simple and light weight. As some tools have been maintained, they have been integrated into more powerful integrated development environments (IDEs). These environments consolidate functionality into one place, sometimes increasing simplicity and productivity, other times sacrificing flexibility and extensibility. The workflow of IDEs is routinely contrasted with alternative approaches, such as the use of Unix shell tools with text editors like Vim and Emacs
Software development tools can be roughly divided into the following categories:
1) Performance analysis tools
2) Debugging tools
3) Static analysis and formal verification tools
4) Correctness checking tools
5) Memory usage tools
6) Application build tools
7) Integrated development environment
Editors and Its types:-
Editors or text editors are software programs that enable the user to create and edit text files. In the field of programming, the term editor usually refers to source code editors that include many special features for writing and editing code. Notepad, Wordpad are some of the common editors used on Windows OS and vi, emacs, Jed, pico are the editors on UNIX OS. Features normally associated with text editors are — moving the cursor, deleting, replacing, pasting, finding, finding and replacing, saving etc.
Types of Editors
Therre are generally five types of editors as described below:
- Line editor: In this, you can only edit one line at a time or an integral number of lines. You cannot have a free-flowing sequence of characters. It will take care of only one line.
Ex : Teleprinter, edlin, teco
- Stream editors: In this type of editors, the file is treated as continuous flow or sequence of characters instead of line numbers, which means here you can type paragraphs.
Ex : Sed editor in UNIX
- Screen editors: In this type of editors, the user is able to see the cursor on the screen and can make a copy, cut, paste operation easily. It is very easy to use mouse pointer.
Ex : vi, emacs, Notepad
- Word Processor: Overcoming the limitations of screen editors, it allows one to use some format to insert images, files, videos, use font, size, style features. It majorly focuses on Natural language.
- Structure Editor: Structure editor focuses on programming languages. It provides features to write and edit source code.
Ex : Netbeans IDE, gEdit.
DEBUG MONITORS:-
Debug monitors give debugging support for a program. A debug monitor executes the program being debugged in its own control thereby giving execution efficiency throughout debugging. There are debug monitors which are language independent and can handle programs written in several languages.
Debug monitor give the following facilities for dynamic debugging:
1. Setting breakpoints into the program
2. Initiating a debug conversation while control reaches a breakpoint.
3. Displaying variable's values
4. Assigning new values to variables.
5. Testing in defined assertions and predicates including program variables.
PROGRAM ENVIRONMENT:-
The term programming environment is sometimes reserved for environments containing language specific editors and source level debugging facilities; here, the term will be used in its broader sense to refer to all of the hardware and software in the environment used by the programmer. All programming can therefore be properly described as takin place in a programming environment.
Programming environments may vary considerably in complexity. An example of a simple environment might consist of a text editor for program preparation, an assembler for translating programs to machine language, and a simple operating system consisting of input-output drivers and a file system. Although card input and non-interactive operation characterized most early computer systems, such simple environments were supported on early experimental time-sharing systems by 1963.
Although such simple programming environments are a great improvement over the bare hardware, tremendous improvements are possible. The first improvement which comes to mind is the use of a high level language instead of an assembly language, but this implies other changes. Most high level languages require more complicated run-time support than just input-output drivers and a file system. For example, most require an extensive library of predefined procedures and functions, many require some kind of automatic storage management, and some require support for concurrent execution of threads, tasks or processes within the program.
Many applications require additional features, such as window managers or elaborate file access methods. When multiple applications coexist, perhaps written by different programmers, there is frequently a need to share files, windows or memory segments between applications. This is typical of today's electronic mail, database, and spreadsheet applicatons, and the programming environments that support such applications can be extremely complex, particularly if they attempt to protect users from malicious or accidental damage caused by program developers or other users.
A programming environment may include a number of additional features which simplify the programmer's job. For example, library management facilities to allow programmers to extend the set of predefined procedures and functions with their own routines. Source level debugging facilities, when available, allow run-time errors to be interpreted in terms of the source program instead of the machine language actually run by the hardware. As a final example, the text editor may be language specific, with commands which operate in terms of the syntax of the language being used, and mechanisms which allow syntax errors to be detected without leaving the editor to compile the program.
INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT (IDE) :-
An integrated development environment (IDE) (also known as integrated design environment or integrated debugging environment) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of:
- a source code editor
- a compiler and/or an interpreter
- build automation tools
- a debugger
Sometimes a version control system and various tools are integrated to simplify the construction of a GUI. Many modern IDEs also have a class browser, an object inspector, and a class hierarchy diagram, for use with object-oriented software development.
USER INTERFACE:-
User interface is the features of a computer system which allows the user to interact with it.
A user interface, also sometimes called a human-computer interface, comprises both hardware and software components. It handles the interaction between the user and the system.
There are different ways of interacting with computer systems which have evolved over the years. There are five main types of user interface:
- command line (cli)
- graphical user interface (GUI)
- menu driven (mdi)
- form based (fbi)
- natural language (nli)
Command Line Interface
Command line interfaces are the oldest of the interfaces discussed here. It involves the computer responding to commands typed by the operator. This type of interface has the drawback that it requires the operator to remember a range of different commands and is not ideal for novice users.
Graphical UI
Graphical user interfaces (GUI) are sometimes also referred to as WIMP because they use Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers. Operators use a pointing device (such as a mouse, touchpad or trackball) to control a pointer on the screen which then interacts with other on-screen elements. It allows the user to interact with devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notations. The term was created in the 1970s to distinguish graphical interfaces from text-based ones, such as command-line interfaces. However, today nearly all digital interfaces are GUIs. The first commercially available GUI, called "PARC," was developed by Xerox. It was used by the Xerox 8010 Information System, which was released in 1981. After Steve Jobs saw the interface during a tour at Xerox, he had his team at Apple develop an operating system with a similar design. Apple's GUI-based OS was included with the Macintosh, which was released in 1984. Microsoft released its first GUI-based OS, Windows 1.0, in 1985.
A menu driven interface is commonly used on cash machines (also known as automated teller machines (ATM's), ticket machines and information kiosks (for example in a museum). They provide a simple and easy to use interface comprised of a series of menus and sub-menus which the user accesses by pressing buttons, often on a touch-screen device. Preferably, if one has knowledge on UML modeling, it can be a good example when designing the architecture of the machine.
Form Based
A form-based interface uses text-boxes, drop-down menus, text areas, check boxes, radio boxes and buttons to create an electronic form which a user completes in order to enter data into a system. This is commonly used on websites to gather data from a user, or in call centres to allow operators to quickly enter information gathered over the phone.
Natural language
A natural language interface is a spoken interface where the user interacts with the computer by talking to it. Sometimes referred to as a 'conversational interface', this interface simulates having a conversation with a computer. Made famous by science fiction (such as in Star Trek), natural language systems are not yet advanced enough to be in wide-spread use. Commonly used by telephone systems as an alternative to the user pressing numbered buttons the user can speak their responses instead. An Example of this type of interface is Voice Recognition.
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