from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
interactive development environment
integrated development environment
<programming, tool> (IDE, integrated development environment)
A system for supporting the process of writing software. Such
a system may include a {syntax-directed editor}, graphical
tools for program entry, and integrated support for compiling
and running the program and relating compilation errors back
to the {source}.
Such systems are typically both interactive and integrated,
hence the ambiguous acronym. They are interactive in that the
developer can view and alter the execution of the program at
the level of statements and variables. They are integrated in
that, partly to support the above interaction, the source code
editor and the execution environment are tightly coupled,
e.g. allowing the developer to see which line of source code
is about to be executed and the current values of any
variables it refers to.
Examples include {Visual C++} and {Visual Basic}.
(2002-09-21)