What Does Software Development Environment (SDE) Mean?
A software development environment (SDE) is an environment that automates or augments the routines involved in a software development cycle. This includes programming-in-the-many tasks like team and project management as well as programming-in-the-large tasks like configuration management. An SDE supports the large-scale and long-term maintenance of software as well.
Techopedia Explains Software Development Environment (SDE)
Language-oriented environments: These environment types are developed around one language, thereby offering a tool set suitable for that particular language. They are very interactive and provide restricted support for programming-in-the-large. Cedar for Mesa/Cedar, Rational Environment for Ada, Interlisp for Lisp and Smalltalk for Smalltalk are some common examples of language-centered environments.
Structure-oriented environments: These environment types include techniques that let users directly manipulate the structures. These techniques are language independent, which triggered the concept of generators for environments.
Toolkit environments: These environment types offer a set of tools that incorporate language-independent support for programming-in-the-large tasks, which include version control and configuration management.
Method-based environments: These environment types include support for a wide variety of routines involved in the software development process. This includes tasks like team and project management. They also feature tools for certain specification and design techniques.