I am very new to Unity only been using it for 4 days - the free version. So please be gentle :).
Anyways, I bought a book on Unity and been going through it and have been doing a little scripting in MonoDevelop, but, when I save the scripts even with deliberate mistakes nothing happens within MonoDevelop it does not nofity me of an error until I try and either Build or Play the scene within Unity. Then I have to look at the status line for where the error is and traverse there manually. I say error because it will only do one error at a time that way.
Using “Build all” within MonoDevelop either causes MonoDevelop to stop functioning or Unity to hang.
I am used to using programs that catch syntax errors before building and pointing out where the error is and highlighting the line. Can MonoDevelop do anything like this?
Well … the Unity course that I am interested in doing later this year, website, recommended downloading Visual Studio as one of the suite of programs to use with Unity.
I guess I do that without thinking about it. It only takes a moment to start the game up and as you do more programming, you will make fewer syntax errors. The other runtime errors, there is no other way than to run it. Visual Studio can’t change that.
You don’t build in MonoDevelop. It’s used as a text editor only. A fancy one with helpful tools (and… unhelpful issues), but that’s all.
The status line only shows the first line of the latest console entry. If you open the Console it’ll give you a list of entries, and each one has more detail. Additionally, double clicking a Console entry which arose from a compile error will take you to the relevant line if your IDE supports it, which MonoDevelop does… usually.
If you’re able to, I do agree with switching to Visual Studio 13 CE and UnityVS, though. All of the above still applies, but it’s a generally more powerful and polished toolset.