Your point and the point of the comment to which you are replying seem to suggest a 3rd space. (1) There are IDEs, which include things such as build automatio

Your point and the point of the comment to which you are replying seem to suggest a 3rd space. (1) There are IDEs, which include things such as build automation, debuggers, function lookups, etc. (2) There are text editors which maybe give you syntax highlighting. I don't think I'm saying anything novel by suggesting that there is also an in-between: something that provides syntax highlighting, function lookups, etc., but which doesn't try to build your project for you. You can use emacs like this, and you can use an IDE like this. So, many people voting for text editor and many voting for IDE may actually mean something more like this.