Developer(s) SlickEdit, Inc. Operating system Type source code editor | Stable release 2016 Size ~148 MB License proprietary | |
SlickEdit, previously known as Visual SlickEdit, is a cross-platform commercial source code editor and Integrated Development Environment developed by SlickEdit, Inc. SlickEdit supports Integrated Debuggers for GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Groovy, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, XCode, and Android JVM/NDK. Some of SlickEdit's other notable features include built in beautifiers that can beautify code as you type, code navigation, context tagging (also known as Intelligent code completion), symbol references, third party tool integration, DiffZilla (a file differencing tool), syntax highlighting, and over 13 keyboard emulations.
Contents
In 2014 SlickEdit released a SlickEdit Standard version of their product and renamed their original product SlickEdit Pro.
History
SlickEdit began in 1988 as a character-mode editor for DOS and OS/2. Clark Maurer, currently CEO of SlickEdit Inc. (formerly MicroEdge Inc.), was employed at IBM's Watson research lab. He was one of the developers of the internal IBM editor E; this experience enabled him to quit IBM and begin development of the first SlickEdit releases.
At the beginning of the '90s, most DOS editors were struggling with limitations of the 16-bit address space or DOS memory handling (640k). SlickEdit's programmers found a way to overcome these limitations. SlickEdit's current version can now handle large files of up to 2 TB in size.
As operating systems with graphical user interfaces became more popular, SlickEdit continued to produce versions of the program with high functionality and good usability. Today SlickEdit is feature rich in C++ , C Sharp, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Html, Objective-C, Groovy, Google Go, and many more. SlickEdit can be used for everything from Web Development, IOS Development, Android software development, and Desktop Development to Mainframe Development. SlickEdit supports debugging for GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Groovy, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, XCode, and Android JVM/NDK. SlickEdit is currently working on Version 22 of their product.
Supported languages and operating systems
SlickEdit lists around 60 supported programming languages and file types, including C, C++, CSharp, Groovy (programming language), Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Go, HTML, PHP, XML, Windows batch files, AWK, Makefiles and INI files. SlickEdit also supports opening Visual Studio solutions and Xcode projects as workspaces.
Some of these are only supported with syntax highlighting, such as Makefiles and INI files. Like most other code editors, SlickEdit allows the user to add support for additional languages and to modify the way it operates on the ones listed above.
SlickEdit claims to support 76 different encodings and to run on seven operating systems:
The 32-bit Linux SlickEdit binary can also run on a FreeBSD system which is configured for Linux binary compatibility, although this is not a supported configuration.
Until version 4.0b, SlickEdit supported the OS/2 operating system.
Slick-C
Slick-C is the proprietary scripting language of the editor. Much of the editor is actually written in Slick-C, and all the Slick-C source code is included with the product. This means that the user can look at how things work and modify the behavior to suit her/his needs.
As the name suggests, the language resembles C, though it has some elements from REXX (parse, substr, ...). The original author of Slick-C liked the string parsing features of REXX and added similar features to Slick-C.
Support
In addition to direct support for customers, SlickEdit also hosts a web forum where users can help one another.
Criticisms
According to some, SlickEdit suffers from an overabundance of features. In a review of version 11 of SlickEdit, released in 2006, Tom Plunket wrote: