While I have done my share of UNIX programming, I hate programming on UNIX/Linux.  I know the power of Emacs and so on, but terminal/command-line orientd UIs in general disturb me too much to be an effective programmer on the UNIX/Linux platforms.  Apparently Bjarke Viksoe feels the same way.  Bjarke is a talented Win32 programmer whose news page I visit once a week to see what new gadgets or tools he has written.  This week, he had a surprise in store.

He usually writes compact (read ATL/WTL) open source Win32 GUI components, but this week he wrote BVRDE (Bjarke Viksoe's Remote Development Environment), an IDE for editing, compiling, and debugging UNIX/Linux software in the comfort of an Win32 IDE.  Written in WTL, whole IDE weights only 1 meg (plus a few bytes), but it offers:

• Syntax highlighting for C/C++, Java, Makefile, HTML and XML
• Remote compilation of projects on all UNIX/Linux platforms using GNU C
• Remote debugging via GDB
• VS.NET style management of multiple remote projects

BVRDE loads fast, uses latest Win32 GUI gadgets, and is visually stunning.  Only complaint I might have is that he isn't releasing source code for BVRDE.  Since it's only version 0.1 (don't worry, it seems solid enough for playing with), I won't complain too loudly yet.  BVRDE could mature into an essential tool in my toolbox.