We are a group of students trying to start up a C++ project. We have the most experience in Java because that is what were taught and I personally have experience in C, so this is going to be a learning experience for all of us. I am wondering which editing tool would be a good choice.
We also have access to all of the products of MSDNAA, so products like Microsoft Visual Studio is a potential option, however we plan to continue our project after we graduate, so our free license will expire at that time.
I understand that there are many, many free editors out there, but it is difficult to start looking without much direction.
I guess you never know until you try them all and pick whatever you like the most. Here are some IDEs for C++ that you can pick from (in the order of my preference):
One particularly good IDE, but works on Mac only, is Xcode.
Here are some Java IDEs that support C++:
My personal opinion is that every IDE except Emacs, vim and QtCreator is not worth using. Eclipse becomes popular, but I don’t feel like I need a slow as hell “combine-harvester” to write C++ code. Same goes for NetBeans. Others… well, try them and see.
Just remember that most IDEs support different build systems, so there is nothing wrong if everyone is using their IDE of choice while working on the same project. One of the good tools is CMake, it can basically generate project files for many IDEs.