Using Emacs as an IDE

Question

Currently my workflow with Emacs when I am coding in C or C++ involves three windows. The largest on the right contains the file I am working with. The left is split into

Answer 1

On documentation lookup: that depends on your programming language(s).

C libraries and system calls are typically documented in man pages. For that you can use M-x man. Some things may be documented better in info pages; use M-x info.

For elisp itself, use C-h f. For python, use >>> help() in the interpreter.

I find that most other languages offer documentation in html form. For that, try an embedded browser (I use w3m). Set your BROWSER environment variable to a wrapper script around emacsclient -e "(w3m-goto-url-new-session \"$@\")" (on *nix), in case something might open a browser and you want it opened inside emacs.