Why is an IDE needed or even useful for this process?
A lot of people go the IDE route because that's what they're told to do as beginners...frequently by other beginners. "Here, this is how you write software." People can't really be faulted for that approach if they have no way of knowing of the existence of any other approach.
I've worked in development environments for 20+ years. All kinds of industries, all kinds of operating systems and platforms, embedded, server, desktop, all the way up the stack from hardware. I've seen great code, I've seen ugly code, I've written my share of both. I've written and maintained extremely large projects with and without IDEs, many languages. If you are trying to learn a language and can barely get two lines together - or if you want to write a 20 line program you don't need an IDE, but its helpful. You'll need books, web. If you're writing a large software stack, need to integrate with other frameworks or libraries, an IDE is the way to go. Don't discount using an IDE. They're a great accelerator. -- Steven Toth - Kernel Labs http://www.kernellabs.com