An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software developers to design, develop, and debug their code.
The term 'IDE' comes from the notion that the features provided by an IDE 'integrate' with the developer's work environment. This means providing tools for editing code, compiling it, running it, debugging it, and more.
The use of a well-designed and properly configured IDE will save programmers time in two ways:
Eliminating redundant steps - because they have only to do one thing at a time with one tool;
Reducing wasted time - because they are doing more in less time.