If you use Arduino, then you must know and love the Arduino IDE, the software used to program all Arduino boards. The development of the Arduino IDE began in 2005 based on the graphical interface of what’s known as the Processing project and has been going on ever since.

Over these 16 years, the Arduino development team along with the help of our lively Arduino community have put in countless hours testing, using, and improving upon the software - and it has made the Arduino IDE an industry standard for electronics prototyping.

With an extensible framework built upon modular board support packages, the IDE now supports over 1,000 official and non-official boards. What’s more, it’s been cited by more than 3,000 books and is currently available in 66 languages…and counting! Just this past year alone, the Arduino IDE achieved a record 39 million downloads.

And now it’s time to level up once again!

A Short History of Development – From a Simple to Advanced IDE 

Though the straightforward, simple interface of the original Arduino IDE makes it great for beginners, more advanced users find the editing capabilities to be frustratingly limited, especially when compared to other cutting-edge editors. Some of the most requested editing features include: block folding, code indentation, auto-closing brackets, comment toggling, and regular expression search and replace. Also, many users would love to have the functionality of live debugging.

The 1.0 version of Arduino IDE was developed in Java, which was great for its time, but Java’s coding system makes it nearly impossible to effectively and efficiently incorporate the new requested features. Not to mention that Java is quickly becoming obsolete, especially for desktops, so continuing in Java would just mean the Arduino development team would need to spend inordinate time working on compatibility.

In the past few years, Arduino has started making upgrades. For example, in 2018, they developed “arduino-cli”, a command line tool in Golang that makes it possible for advanced users to integrate with their own preferred IDE. The Arduino team makes sure to maintain and work on improving arduino-cli everyday to keep it fresh and relevant.

Then, in 2019, Arduino released "Arduino Pro IDE” a new IDE based on cutting-edge software and constructed on top of Arduino-cli. With all the positive reviews, Arduino knew they were on the right track. 2020 was a year of development during which a dedicated programming team worked hard to deliver the new IDE from proof-of-concept to an operational tool ready to launch.

Welcoming the New Beta Arduino IDE 2.0 

As of March 1, 2021, the new beta version of the Arduino IDE 2.0 is officially available to download! (The code repositories are open source).

IDE 2.0 comes with a modern editor and offers a better user experience – even though the interface looks the same (so you should find it easy to adapt), it is now faster and more responsive. For example, the modern editor will automatically suggest autocompletions and there are navigation shortcuts to help to speed up your time. Also, the new IDE now has a live debugger!

Try the New Arduino IDE 2.0 Today and Help the Development Team! 

You can be a key contributor to the development of the new Arduino IDE by trying it out and reporting any bugs, inconveniences, or other imperfections. Just download the new software and communicate with the development team on the forum.

When you try to the new beta version of the new Arduino IDE 2.0, be sure to comment and let us know what you think. What new features do you appreciate most?

And then don’t forget to return here to our Vilros blog for more of the latest news and announcements from Arduino and Raspberry Pi.