Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
An integrated development environment (IDE) consists of:
a source code editor
a compiler and/or and interpreter
build automation tools
a debugger
IDEs provide programmers with a single program to do all of their development. They includes features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying, and debugging software.Typically, IDEs are designed for a particular programming language to maximize their efficiency and consistency. There are some IDEs, however, such as Eclipse, ActiveState Komodo which are recent versions of NetBeans, Microsoft Visual Studio, WinDev, and Xcode, which support multiple languages. Basically, IDEs increase productivity of programmers by reducing the time it takes to learn a language by integrating the command line utilities into a cohesive unit.
To read up more, check out the link on wikipedia. I'll post more updates about IDEs as I learn more about how to use them.