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CLion

Score7.6 out of 10

11 Reviews and Ratings

What is CLion?

JetBrains offers CLion, a cross-platform IDE for C and C+.

The smartest, most intuitive, and user-friendly C++ IDE

Pros

  • User-friendly UI
  • Supports VIM for fast coding
  • Smart code completion
  • Cross-platform support
  • Split-windows feature
  • Supports both C and C++
  • Provides free student license

Cons

  • Doesn't feature built-in compiler
  • Compiler installation can be tricky for beginners
  • Makefiles support is poorly developed

Return on Investment

  • Very intuitive UI for students to understand
  • Code completion helps students to write less and learn more.
  • Students can understand compiler errors easily.
  • Debugger helps us in identifying code errors and shows suggestions accordingly.
  • CLion has enabled us to save $36000+ in licensing with its free student licenses.

Alternatives Considered

Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Other Software Used

Comindware Tracker, Google Authenticator, IntelliJ IDEA

High mobility and good debugging features for software development with a huge community support

Pros

  • Software development
  • IDE

Cons

  • Committing and pushing to git takes a lot of time.
  • Spell check sometimes give funny results, indicating wrong places for parentheses.

Return on Investment

  • Better, faster debugging with quicker delivery of software.
  • Its mobility and speed resulted in better cross-platform development process and faster delivery.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio IDE

Other Software Used

Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, PyCharm, Visual Studio IDE, TeamViewer

CLion offers a great IDE with professional-quality support at a price any budget can afford.

Pros

  • Low cost.
  • Part of the JetBrains system of developer tools, a toolset that is widely respected in software development.
  • Supports multiple languages--not just C and C++.
  • Easy to learn and adapt to when coming for other IDE's.

Cons

  • JetBrains, the company that created and maintains CLion, is located primarily in Russia. While that doesn't concern me it does create worries for some people.
  • No real cons. The product is great and the support is equally excellent.

Return on Investment

  • CLion is so inexpensive compared with our "standard" IDE that it's hard not to see a better return on investment outside in our exploratory efforts.
  • The learning curve is very shallow. A veteran developer can be working in CLion in minutes. A student or fresh hire with little development experience can adapt and become productive quickly as well.
  • When combined with other JetBrains offerings, it's a great tool that is worth using, especially when budgets are tight and expectations high.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Visual Studio IDE and Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Other Software Used

Visual Studio IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, GitHub, Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS)

CLion - the best IDE for you

Pros

  • Built-in CMake support.
  • Unit testing.
  • Code documentation.

Cons

  • CLion only runs on 64bit systems

Return on Investment

  • CLion helped us to speed up our development.
  • Version control support reduced many problems like merge conflicts.

Alternatives Considered

Eclipse

Other Software Used

IntelliJ IDEA, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Evernote, OneNote, OneDrive