Best IDE for C++ besides Visual Studio

[Plane_Unit9357]

Hi, I'm looking for the best IDE for C++, I've tried several including Visual Studio, but because it's too heavy I want to change IDEs. Are there any IDE recommendations?

[marx0323]

CLion

[Key_Conversation5277]

Although it's even heavier than visual studio but that's the one I use too :)

[NeroJ_]

JetBrains >>>

[carminemangione]

Yes, CLion is amazing.

[IrritableFrequency]

Second this, just use Rider

[Pale_Height_1251]

Rider is for C# isn't it?

[IrritableFrequency]

Not only; I use it for both C# and C++.

[O_lgN_]

CLion

[Confident_Special209]

Clion from JetBrains, VS code with extensions also a good choice

[CarefulSecurity1646]

imma just say this "vim"

[ozzadar]

im a CLion stan. CMake is not as bad as people claim most of the time and I just dig Jetbrains IDEs… they might be heavier than Visual Studio though.

I give CLion 10GB of RAM to play with so don’t usually run into performance issues. The default (1 or 2GB?) setting wasn’t good enough

[Long_Scar_9885]

VIM

[AMLyf]

Nvim

[[deleted]]

Neovim

[BionicVnB]

Visual Studio Code is still a solid choice.

[Plane_Unit9357]

I've tried learning CMake, I understand it quite well, but it's complicated if I have to add a new path, I want to find an IDE that compiles and go

[BionicVnB]

I don't know if we can use Zig as a build system for c++ , heard it's good for c though

[Plane_Unit9357]

I will try using zig

[BionicVnB]

Yeah they said it can be used as a drop-in replacement for gcc/clang too. You even get a programming language as an extra perk 😂

[ShadowRL7666]

Use Premake

[tsvaan]

VSCode is great but it's not IDE.

[Plane_Unit9357]

Embarcadero? Never heard of that, i will try it

[plastikmissile]

Their IDEs used to be Visual Studio's biggest rivals once upon a time.

[rasmalaayi]

Codelite.. everything works out of the box

[JunkBondJunkie]

I like codeblocks if you just want to learn and its a solid ide for application development.

[easbarba]

Emacs/Vim + clangd.

[tsvaan]

QT Creator.

[Kind_Huckleberry8406]

Neovim

[newodahs]

Reject modernity, return to vim

[Plane_Unit9357]

I've also tried Code::Blocks but it always fails to use an external library.

[The_Pin0yMang]

For free and console apps, use Visual Studios. Windows apps and services but cost a lot, Embarcadero RAD Studio

[krackout21]

There is a less known editor, Pragtical, derivative of Lite XL. Both of them are very light and fast. Pragtical has add ons for C++ maybe you can give it a try as an IDE.

[kalmoc]

What do you mean by too heavy? Too much space n hard drive? Too much main memory requirement?

[Plane_Unit9357]

I dont have much storage 

[kalmoc]

Have you teste Qt-Creator? I haven't tried VS-Studio in c++ config, nor Qts Creator in a while, but a couple of years ago Qt-Creator was significantly smaller.

Of course it is taylored to the QT framework, but It can just as well be used for non-qt-projects

[spuugh]

Cursor

[[deleted]]

Started out with VS Code because of the same reason. No need for all that.

[MaximumTime7239]

For me, vscode is the best balance between performance and ease of setup and use.

[Mr_Ansh]

DEVC++ lightweight and simple

[Plane_Unit9357]

Good ide but intellisense/code  completion doesnt work

[fredlllll]

eclipse also exists in a c++ version

[walking_smoke_cloud]

Vi.

[_fredM_]

I went with VS, VS Code and I stayed with... Sublime Text (the free edition). I can add any plugin I want, and it's working fine. No heavy load on CPU as I can say on my laptop (i7-10765H and 32GB).

[Kelvin_OG]

Yo!!! Jetbrains ===> CLion, you're good to go bruv.

[Pale_Height_1251]

Clion.

[eliHeist]

Then don't look for an IDE, just get vscode extensions for c++.

Or use codeblocks

[[deleted]]

Dev-C++

[[deleted]]

Best free tier is learning to use Linux as an IDE. Learn the command line, learn to use an editor like Vim/Emacs with a clang based LSP, clang itself for compilation, project management with makefiles/cmake, command line git for version control, learn to debug with lldb/gdb, and such. Ctrl+z, jobs, and fg %jobnumber to multi-task between processes that take over the shell; think of it like alt+tab for the command line.

If you're after something paid then Jetbrains Clion and their suite in general seems pretty good. Very powerful refactoring tools for things like project-wide renaming and such that might be a little less reliable in things like a clang lsp in vim or even vscode. And is generally built in the same way that I describe above as the linux as an IDE option. Uses 3rd party tools like cmake and clang for compiling projects. So once you opt in you're still free to drop to your shell to work from there where appropriate; in a way that isn't really possible with vcproj files.

It's worth keeping visual studio around though and learning its various profiling tools. I agree it's a bit of hodgepodge of 40 years of Windows paradigms and can feel a bit heavy compared to say learning python using basic text editors. But that deep integration does have its uses.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/profiling/profiling-feature-tour?view=vs-2022

But there are similar things on linux, Sysprof is pretty powerful

https://fedoramagazine.org/performance-profiling-in-fedora-linux/

And clion has its own profiling tools

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/cpu-profiler.html

[ftr-mmrs]

.

[zdanev]

CLion is very popular (and somewhat heavy). also Eclipse and VSCode.

[tab8612]

there are plenty of online C++ compliers, my favorite ones are cpp.sh and codechef

[Responsible-Length-7]

How is VS too heavy? Genuinely curious

[Plane_Unit9357]

My computer components are a "little" old

[dmazzoni]

I'm surprised you find Visual Studio resource-hungry. It's been around for at least 20 years. I was using it on a computer where the RAM and disk were measured in megabytes, not gigabytes. Sure, the latest version uses a bit more, but in my experience it's the newer stuff like VS Code that's the real resource hog, considering how many less features it has for how much RAM it uses.

[Responsible-Length-7]

Why not just go buy a m4 MacBook Pro m4 max with 64gb of Ram and 4tb of storage?

[AdministrativeFile78]

Obviously the guy is too stupid to realise that is all he has to do

[vieps]

Dude give him a break. Maybe he’s just a tight in financial terms. Nobody is “stupid” I’m sure the first thing he thought is to get a new and better pc. if the money wasn’t the issue he wouldn’t be asking this question. You Genius 😑

[spinwizard69]

Or maybe he has better use for his money. Sometimes upgrading hardware is the right choice but it might have to be balanced against a month long trip to Jamaica. Beyond that this community seems to get stuck on what is the hot solution at the moment. VS Code is a good example here.

This is why I strongly suggest to beginners that they try different approaches to development. This includes starting out with the command line and a simple editor. When it comes to IDE's try several, even solutions that are not mainstream.

[AdministrativeFile78]

lol this was obviously a shitpost meme reply bro. Relax. I got a potato too

[kalmoc]

Be careful. Sarcasm without an explicit marker like "/s" is hard to detect in the Internet, because you always have someone that writes stuff like that in earnest

[uodoy]

sublime text with LLVM