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Extensible IDEs?
Whatever Fits queries: "We are trying to integrate our own specialized development environment. We are currently using Visual Studio and the add-in feature of that, but would like to get away from the Microsoft tax and have had to rewrite our software from scratch for reasons outside this scope. The current project includes adding specialized features to the IDE to handle our project types, extra tool-windows for user interaction, and an external process to run the compiled code. The compiled language is even open for debate right now, but would have to be something rather common or easy to learn. I really want to try to run Perl with SOAP for our backend. This is going to run on Windows systems but I am hoping to go for something cross platform for future extensibility if possible. What IDEs can be recommended that offer this kind of extensibility and keep the price per copy reasonable? I have a small list already built, but I have no experience with any of these but Visual Studio and would like to hear both success and horror stories of integration."
Several readers have suggested emacs, but one thing you must remember (and that many emacs users will deny) is that any code produced in emacs becomes the exclusive property (under copyright) of Ricky Stallman and the FSF. This means that you *must* release the source code for free under the GPL. This is one reason why emacs is not used by experienced programmers outside of academic environments.