What is the full form of IDE

i) IDE: Integrated Development Environment

IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. It is a programming environment that contains a lot of things in a single package i.e. code editor, compiler, debugger and what you see is what you get (WYCIWYG). It is actually a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. It combines all the basic tools that developers need to write or test software. This type of environment allows an application developer to write code while compiling, debugging and executing it at the same place. It can be a standalone application or a part of one or more compatible applications.

For example: The IDE for developing .NET applications is Microsoft Visual Studio and IDE for developing Java Application is Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, MyEclipse, BlueJ, RSA etc.

ii) IDE: Integrated Drive Electronics

IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics. It is a standard interface used for connecting motherboard to storage devices like Hard Discs, CD-ROM/ DVD Drives, HDD etc. IDE is different from SCSI and ESDI as its controllers are on each drive which allows drivers to directly connect to the controller or motherboard. The original IDE had a 16-bit interface that connected two devices to a single ribbon cable.

IDE was adopted as a standard by ANSI and named for it as Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA). The first IDE standard was introduced in 1994, it could support data transfer rates of 8.3 Mbps. In 1996, Enhanced IDE was standardized which could support data transfer rates of 16.7 Mbps.