The author notes that he programmed back in the 1980's, but the article only focuses on the mid-90's IDEs.

I'd like to see a companion article about the IDEs from the 80's.

I remember 64FORTH had a multi-pane IDE, but I could only find this low-res picture of it: https://www.c64-wiki.de/images/thumb/2/24/Forth64-audiogenic...

There were others, though, including one I remember that was all text at the bottom half of the screen, and then graphic output at the top.

And, of course, the most famous one of all: the Atari 2600 BASIC Programming IDE which fit in just 4K.

Today's ragebait bloggers like to say how awful it was, but if you're patient and thoughtful, the way people were when it came out, you can do quite a lot.

An entire Pong game in six lines, from Wikipedia:

  1 Hor2←2+Key
  2 IfVer1>90ThenVer1←88
  3 IfHitThenVer1←9
  4 Ver1←Ver1+IfVer1Mod2Then8Else92
  5 Hor1←Hor1+7
  6 Goto1

I do want to point out that the 2600 was at it's heart a slightly generalized pong machine, to the degree that I don't find it surprising that you can make pong in 6 lines of 2600 basic.

The 2600 graphics were centered around 5 sprites dedicated to two players, two missiles, and a ball. Completely understandable, they were trying to make a toy computer affordable enough for everyone in 1975. but their design process was basically "what is the bare minimum video hardware required to make the games "combat" and "pong". Every single game found on the 2600 that is not a combat or pong clone is probably a masterwork example of making the hardware do something it was not intended for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Interface_Adaptor

Footnote: yes I know it was released in 1977, but it was designed in 1975.