What is your favorite editor?

Community
1

I am a software developer. I spend my days writing code. That means the most important tool I have is my code editor.
There seems to be a lot of strong, emotional, zeal over the choice of application to use for editing code (in the general development community (and particularly the world of Open Source software).

Recently, I have forced myself to improve my skills with Vi. There seems to be a cultural stigma that a developer’s capability with the Vi editor (and, perhaps ability to use Regular Expressions) is a direct indication of technical prowess. I would not [yet] list Vi as my favorite editor.

Disregarding the various IDEs, which include many features for debugging and source control, what is your Editor of Choice? If you are a writer (not necessarily a “code banger”) indicate your favorite text editor.

Be sure to defend your choice by explaining WHY or describing your favorite feature of the tool.

2

For which platform? vi is a UNIX command line standard, so are you particularly interested in UNIX based editors, or are you asking about Linux, Windows or Mac GUI editors, too?

3

I can’t say I have a favorite. Using Windows OS plain old notepad was fine for many years.

I’ve since switched to Notepad++ and use that for coding, using notepad only as a clipboard.

I like the way
it can do search/find/replace
it highlights different languages
it can be customized to some extent when need be.

It has features I never use, but then I used notepad for years without any available advanced features with no problems.

4

I tried VI along with other editors years ago and settled on Notepad++.

I use it for the same reasons as Mittineague has listed and it has loads of features I have not tried. I remember one of the first things I did with it was finding a hidden character that was causing problems on a webpage I was working on after cutting and pasting some code. I also found another use for it the other day and that was sorting a long list of websites alphabeticaly with the TextFX plugin.

5

I use CSE HTML Validator which provides all sorts of useful features such as autocompletion of tags whenever I type </ , colour coding of content, as well as built in validation of HTML, JavaScript etc inside the editor itself.

6

I used MultiEdit for a long time, followed by UltraEdit but now use Sublime.

I like the syntax highlight, find across files, find and replace, ability to easily switch projects, split screen (only use two screens instead of four because of monitor size), search and replace, marking columns, the list goes on and on. It seems to get better with usage.
UltraEdit has an alphabetic sort feature that I miss but it is very rare sorting is required.
It is not free and has a nag to update after about a month.
It appears to be the new favourite amongst other programmers.

7

I did not intend to influence the discussion to a particular OS. What is YOUR favorite editor (in whatever Operating System you use)?

I [must] switch between Windows (various versions) and *nix (including OSX and Linux). I really like Sublime Text but have learned to do just about anything I need with Notepad (and, sometimes, a little DOS Batch scripting for things like search/replace among files).

I guess you can call me a Polyglot and my quest to improve my Vi skills is based on

8

I use either Sublime text or PHPStorm just depending on what I am editing.

9

Be sure to defend your choice by explaining WHY or describing your favorite feature of the tool.

Would you like to expand on why you prefer those two editors dh42 as suggested by the OP?

Otherwise the thread is going to degenerate into a list of code editors without any benefit.

10

I skim. This doesn’t seem the friendly place I though it might be. But to further answer the original question.

I use Sublime because I prefer the features it has compared to Notepad++. I think it has a better search function, I can split the editor into two files so I can edit a live version and a git version of a file at the same time, plus I like the dark themes.

PHPStorm, the only editor I used before it was eclipse. I found it to be clunky and slow. Plus packages were a pain to install in it. Albeit I admit I did not use it for as long as a I should. But I like the general work flow of PHPStorm, and they way you can step into methods and functions.

Oh, was there another post I left something out of?

11

To be honest, I tried various text editors including Sublime, TextPad, Vi and VIM (the windows version of VI) and… well, the list can go on forever. But I always ended up with Notepad++

Most text editors share similar features and most of the time we don’t even use a 10% of what the text editor can do.

What I like from notepad is the extensions that I can use. Is it the only text editor that has them? No. Some of these extensions are available even for Dreamweaver! :lol:

Do I use all those extensions? No. I don’t even use the built-in FTP and use Filezilla instead.

But for some reason, even I wouldn’t say that it is my favourite, I always use it… Maybe I’m so familiar with it and too lazy to see if there’s anything really better… because you have to dig a bit too much to find the differences

12

I’m still a noob and haven’t had much experience with many IDEs, but from the few that I have tried I’ve gotta say sublime looks really nice but I just have’t gotten used to it just yet. I’m still in the early stages of learning my first language (java), and I think eclipse is really ergonomic which is why I’ve been sticking to it. Then again… I’m still inexperienced, so I still need time to developed a solid opinion.

Despite being a noob, I think people shouldn’t be closed minded when it comes to their IDE. In music, it’s nice when you fall in love with the nuances of a particular instrument. However this can have negative effects. I’ve met people who have only ever played on fender guitars, and when given a guitar with foreign traits, their playing is audibly hindered.

tl;dr I think it’s good to get comfortable with an IDE, but not to the point where the though of using another IDE becomes an unthinkable task.

13

My favorite Windows text editor is EditPad Pro published by Just Great Software http://www.editpadpro.com/ . The users manual is available online at http://www.editpadpro.com/manual.html or as a .pdf at http://www.editpadpro.com/manual/EditPadPro.pdf. It’s not free, but it is well worth the asking price to me.

EPP is a full featured programmer’s text editor with the ability to interact with other software via user configured “tools”. Much of the interface and most of the features are configurable; however, it is perfectly usable right out of the box without configuring anything.

Some features are: customizable menus, bracket matching, configurations by file type, horizontal or vertical split window or detached 2nd window, bookmarks within files, macros, several handy conversions including line breaks, tabs to/from spaces, text encoding, sorting, and a modest file comparison command. The Search box accepts regular expressions.

Support for EPP is the best I’ve ever experienced for any product. It has an active, well supported support forum which is internal to the product, not web based. Questions are answered by knowledgable users and often by the developer. Bugs that can be replicated are fixed promptly.

I’ve been an EPP user for 13 years. I’ve tried a few other text editors over the years because of some unique feature or simply someone’s rave review, but I have always returned to EPP in short order. Familiarity probably, but first class support most definitely. Updates within a major version are free.

According to their web site, the only feature missing in the free trial version is the spell checker and configurable print headers.

The developer of EPP is also the author of the O’Reilly “Regular Expressions Cookbook” and sells a couple of RegEx utilities, one of which I own but use infrequently as my RegEx needs nowadays are very simple.

14

Ahh, the old editor question!

I’m primarily a Windows user so, for me, it’s still Notepad++. I’ve been using it for the best part of a decade and still come back to it. It’s fast, stable and does almost everything I need. (Incidentally, dh42, NP++ has split editing and dark themes. Sublime is good, though).

Other than that, I also use SciTE for quick editing.

15

Notepad++ is light and free. It detects all languages and easy to trace block of codes. Dreamweaver is more robust especially writing HTML/CSS/Javascript codes. Multiscreen views, embedded Boilerplate, Phone Gap and support for many languages. I’ll go with Dreamweaver.

16

Welcome to the forum, @rascojet;. I am very pleased you began your time here by visiting this discussion.

Dreamweaver has been mentioned a few times in this discussion. Technically, that is more of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and not strictly an editor.
But I will concede that its code-editing capabilities are excellent.

My original intent, here, was to focus on general Editors and NOT IDEs (as I mentioned in the original post).

17

[FONT=Georgia]Another Sublime Text user here, and I love it!

Also use Aptana, which is more trouble than it’s worth at times, but I still like it a lot. I like how it manages all of my websites from one place.

When I was on Mac, I used a paid software called Coda. What a fantastic application it was too! I like it better than Aptana, but Sublime Text is still my all-time favourite so far.

And, of course, good old Notepad.[/FONT]

18

Does anyone know if you can get Coda for a trail run, thx

19

[ot]

I’ve never used it but here: https://panic.com/coda/buy.html it says

Demo expires after 7 days of actual use. Purchase to unlock full functionality.
Any help?[/ot]

20

[ot]

A cross country editor :p[/ot]