GDB can work as a backend for an IDE and even in mid-2000s you had VS-like IDEs like Anjuta that provided a very decent interface. A little bit later Eclipse/CD

GDB can work as a backend for an IDE and even in mid-2000s you had VS-like IDEs like Anjuta that provided a very decent interface. A little bit later Eclipse/CDT did a great job and IMO in terms of features it was better than VS around late 2000s / early 2010s. It did eat up all the system resources though (i used to have "only" 1GB of RAM on my midlate-2000s PC and until i added another 1GB i had to choose between Eclipse/CDT and Firefox if i wanted to avoid constant HDD noises :-P). I remember working at a gamedev studio around 2007 and while almost everyone else used Visual Studio 2005 (i think, i don't remember exactly), i used Eclipse/CDT with some makefiles that another developer (who used Vim) had written and always felt VS was more limited overall. (it has been almost a decade since i used Eclipse/CDT though, i don't even remember why i moved on from it)