Tabs on top is horrible...one of the key reasons I dislike Google Chrome.

I have looked around. I've tried them all, pretty much, on both Windows and Linux. Only one I haven't tried is XCode on OS X, but I've heard good things about that. I've dearly wanted to find a single powerful IDE that I could use cross-platform, but none exists.

Of all the IDEs I've tried on various platforms, none come even close to VC++ Express. A huge amount of that rests in the debugger alone...gdb and IDEs that use gdb are hilariously underpowered compared to VC++'s integrated debugger.

So for all development and debugging, I use VC++. For profiling and sanity checking, I use gprof/gcov/valgrind. Best tools for their job.

I'd even say Visual Studio is the best, by a very long mile. There just isn't anything as powerful in a single cohesive package. It is one of the main reasons I develop primarily on Windows (the other being gaming). And don't let anyone fool you into thinking that VC++ is evil...it doesn't lock you into making Windows only programs; you have to lock yourself in, if that's your desire.

You could get similar results with cobbling together various tools, but why bother when VC++ Express already Just Works...

That said, the final pin to make VC++ Express perfect would be some Valgrind functionality.