hfinucane

C++ does look similar to Java, but it's really not. Preprocessor magic + template magic + linking magic means pain.

I will admit to not having tried devc++ or visualc. I would imagine that visualc might be able to solve the problem, since they can control the build system, and can hook into their compiler directly (last I checked, GCC made this very hard).

I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest that you may be overestimating the pain points other people experience /not/ using an IDE.

I don't use emacs, but yes, yes, no idea, yes, yes, it's not a button it's a keystroke. Of course that last one was also tied to lisp.

To write a good C++ IDE, you need to deal with macros, C++'s obscene syntax (There are what- four complete C++ parsers?), and you need to parse all sorts of Makefiles, or else no existing projects will work.

That's how games work today, combined with a bunch of prediction and conflict resolution. Unfortunately, it sounds like their architecture fundamentally prevents this- all the rendering is going to happen server side. I'd be interested to know if they have some sort of halfway solution (rendering extra scenes that you can pick from?) or if they just hope no one will notice the extra 100ms.

(I know that doesn't sound like much, but for games that involve fast action- from starcraft to quake- it's a lot...)