[bwann]

I'm surprised there's no mention of QBasic that shipped with MS-DOS >= 5.0. This was built on top of EDIT.COM, and while it only ran a BASIC interpreter instead of compiling an executable like full-blown QuickBasic.

IIRC it had a rather extensive help lookup system for functions, data types, reference tables, error codes, and whatnot. You could step through your program, set debug points, all without exiting to DOS. It was my first ever exposure to an IDE, I thought it was pretty nice for what it was.

[djur]

I loved QBasic. That integrated help system also came with extensive sample code for each function, including some full programs. Copying and modifying those was a huge boost to learning how to program.

(The article does mention QBasic, though.)