I keep being advised by various people to try other programming IDE's, rather than the default Arduino one.
My Arduino IDE does struggle these days when I open the library tab.... freezes for a good minute.
Anyway... suggestions?
I downloaded Visual Studio after reading a few recommendation, but I find it baffling. It hasn't installed correctly and cannot find any on the libraries, even though the path appears correct.
After an hour, I bailed.
Yeah. The Arduino IDE is primitive and featureless, but OMG is it simple to use and easy to install (on any of 3 major OS families!), compared to almost anything else.
Was your attempt with "Visual Studio" or "Visual Studio Code"? They are very different products...
What do you mean by "library tab"?
Typical rhetoric from non-Arduino coders.
I programmed professionally and used Enterprise provided tools. Fancy and expensive.
But for hobby use, I find Arduino acceptable; but, I do have a deeper understanding which I find valuable and I still work with non-Arduino command-line environment.
Rather than becoming frustrated, I suggest you play around with Arduino from the command line which will give you some insight into what an IDE hides.
Arduino CLI: An introduction | Arduino Blog
Also, if you want to explore automation:
Remember the ArduinoIDE is designed to make your life easier; some of your friends may be envious.
Ray
Arduino IDE is a kiddie toy. I can't imagine doing any serious code development with it. I use Eclipse / Sloeber.
Using the IDE with a good "external editor" is a not-unreasonable compromise. Especially if you already have a favorite code editor.
When I open the library tab (to find a new library or update), it literally freezes for about 60-90 seconds. I know it is updating and downloading, but it seems to get slower and slower.
Also very annoying that it's right next to the Serial debug command! Amount of times I have missed the debug command and opened the laggy library box.
Standard Arduino IDE is OK, I have done fine with it for quite a while. Would like the ability to bookmark line numbers and also it does sometimes have issues with com ports. But, it's not that bad.
I downloaded Atom last night.... that didn't go well either lol.
I have Visual Studio Code. Correct one? I used the links in a review of the top 5 recommended IDE's.
Hmm
It's also annoying that you didn't give me a straight answer to my question.
This thing is never referred to as "the library tab" because it is not a tab.
From now on, please call it by the real name so that we can understand what you are talking about: "Library Manager"
Perhaps you could call the problem "too much of a good thing" or "an embarrassment of riches". The Arduino Library Manager index contains tens of thousands of releases of over 4500 libraries, and more every day! It takes a while to process that thing, which is done every time you open Library Manager in Arduino IDE 1.x, in addition to downloading it from the Internet if the local cache has expired.
You might be happy to know that the beta stage Arduino IDE 2.x does not do this processing on opening its Library Manager view, so there is no delay at all.
They did add it a couple of years ago, but unfortunately it never made it into a production release:
Excellent choice! I don't use it for Arduino sketch development, but I use it for pretty much every other bit of code I write.
Microsoft did make an Arduino extension for VS Code. Maybe this is the one you bailed on already? I'm perfectly happy with the Arduino IDE (in combination with Arduino CLI for my automation needs) so I never bothered to try out that extension.
OK, I just cannot get Visual studio to find the Arduino Path. It's not exactly user friendly is it.
Shame, it looks like a nice environment to use, but it just keeps sending me around in circles trying to set the path.
All of my Googled assistance suggests solutions I don't appear to have.
Back to the old Arduino IDE then!
Are you just using raw VisualStudio, or using an Arduino-specific plug-in? Without an Arduino-specific plug-in, you will never get an Arduino application to compile in VS. The VisualMicro plug-in works well. VisualStudio Code also has an excellent Arduino plug-in.
I have downloaded the arduino plug-in and the requested c++ stuff.
I just cannot find where to specify the path to the Arduino however. I just seem to go around in circles and never actually find where I can adjust it.
Not sure why it's not detecting the default path, but it says it's incorrect and therefore I cannot select a board, port or anything.
Watched several Youtube videos... none have covered this issue
Give it 15 more minutes and then I will admit defeat. Life's too short and all that
edit.... I have found the path, and it's correct. So no idea why it is saying it's wrong.
It's the same path as the Arduino IDE on my desktop, yet it says it cannot find the Arduino IDE path.
Paths are set in the configuration files, IIRC in the .vscode subdirectory. They must be hand-edited. PITA.
OK. Uninstalled it all and started again.
Downloaded the 64 bit version, but bottom right on the screen says Win32.
It clearly didn't 'uninstall' anyway, as once re-installed, it already had all of the extensions sitting there, along with the last .ino file I had open. I hate that, if I ask you to uninstall... THEN UNINSTALL, don't leave c&*p all over my laptop that you downloaded.
I hate it.
I will stick with the Arduino IDE. Thanks for the advice
Right, I am determined to get PlatformIO working.... but still no luck.
It cannot find the libraries. Now I thought it imported them from the Arduino directory, but now I suspect I have to import them individually?
Also, bottom right shows Win32, even though I am running Win64. I uninstalled and re-installed but it still shows incorrectly.
I thought this IDE automatically 'configured' itself?
Arduino and C++ extensions are installed.
Also, my laptop has started completely freezing since installing PlatformIO.... No option but to power down to escape it.
Any ideas?
Do you know what that thing signifies? I don't, but I'm doubtful they would use up space on the status bar for something like that.
Try clicking on it. Maybe the meaning will be revealed then.
That's definitely not the PlatformIO vibe.
I understood it operated around some intelliSense system
I find the library manager a bit slow too and initial compilation of any new sketch is sluggish. But just tweaking and recompiling is fine, even on my ancient Mac.
However, I may have lower expectations having worked on systems that had a twenty minute time to remake everything from scratch on the development hardware available at the time.
I think @robin2 mentioned using Geany and a Python script to invoke the toolchain - it's a nicer editor at least.
I don't think I am ever going to get that working. Unintuitive doesn't even begin to cover it.
Click on Win32 and it just says 'open folder to configure settings' (thanks for that useless news flash - what folder/settings you Donkey).
Paths seem correct, yet it cannot find any library. Shame, looks good
Did you try clicking it? Pure speculation, but it may be a command that opens the folder for you.
The "configure settings" may be referring to the platformio.ini configuration file. This is what I meant when I said that automatically configuring itself is not really the PlatformIO vibe.
