12 ms·

Ask HN: What code editor do you use?

• pook 16y ago
  Oy, a holy war is about to happen. I'll open the Emacs lobby with http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs and http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/the-emacs-problem http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/the-emacs-problem To give the illusion of fairness, here is a blogpost in which I praise Vim: http://zipwith.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-vim.html http://zipwith.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-vim.html
  • eob 16y ago
    Thanks for the links. I don't mean to start a holy war, though they are fun :) I'm looking more for a reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of different editing environments.
    • tjpick 16y ago
      > though they are fun not the fifty thousandth time.
      • Mathnerd314 16y ago
        Then where are the wars archived?
        • tjpick 16y ago
          not sure if that's an honest question or sarcasm or what? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war
          • deleted 16y ago
            [deleted]
      • _delirium 16y ago
        Boring for people who've already had the debate a hundred times, I agree, but I think it's not totally bad that some kinds of debates recur, as new people who haven't really participated in the debate before arrive somewhere. There's a sense in which debating an issue yourself, against someone else who's genuinely debating it, gets to understanding in a different way than just reading a writeup of a debate some other people had ten years ago.
• MattJ100 16y ago
  I somewhat suspect I'll be unique on this one here. I use nano full-time. I use it because it is simple, it gets the job done, and I don't find that I need anything more. It's true it's missing a couple of features commonly found in code editors. But when I start thinking code folding would be useful, I take it as a sign that this file is getting too large and would be better split. Nano also obeys the simple UI principle of having a non-modal interface. I haven't used an editor with bells and whistles for some years, and I'm liking it. Also contrary to popular belief, nano does support syntax highlighting - this just isn't enabled by default in most distros. Now, laugh.
  • frossie 16y ago
    Now, laugh Well, I'll admit that was... unexpected, but I am certainly not going to laugh. After all, the best code editor is the one you feel most productive in, and you seem to have a rational explanation for it so sure, knock yourself out :-)
  • jsdalton 16y ago
    > Also contrary to popular belief, nano does support syntax highlighting - this just isn't enabled by default in most distros. Did not know this! FYI, a bit of googling uncovered the following: http://code.google.com/p/nanosyntax/source/browse/trunk/syntax-nanorc/ http://code.google.com/p/nanosyntax/source/browse/trunk/synt...
  • TrevorBramble 16y ago
    I actually used Nano for a long time as well! I'd been using Pine since 1994 so it always felt quite natural. If Vim wasn't always available when Nano was, I'd still use it. ;^)
• mixmax 16y ago
  Notepad++ because it's relatively simple and gets the job done. I like unbloated minimalism.
  • geedee77 16y ago
    I use Notepad++ as well most of the time for this exact reason. It's minimalist enough but still has useful features such as colouring keywords which I miss when I use just notepad.
• DanielStraight 16y ago
  Sublime Text. It has the minimap. It has multiple cursors. It has macros. It has plugins. It has color schemes. It's simple. It's beautiful. It's actively developed. It's affordable. Downsides? It's Windows only.
  • pook 16y ago
    http://www.sublimetext.com/features http://www.sublimetext.com/features This looks like a great editor. It's proprietary, though. Damn. Why is it that, as with Opera, every now and then you find an amazing program which, even more amazingly, is closed-source? Emacs, however, offers minimap as well: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MiniMap http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MiniMap I wonder how well we did compared to Sublime.
    • bwr 16y ago
      MiniMap is an interesting feature. I'm a VIM user and it looks like we don't have it.
      • pook 16y ago
        http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2888 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2888 You guys have it too.
        • bwr 16y ago
          Ah, nice find. Windows only though.
    • jarin 16y ago
      These days, I'm actually more amazed when I find an amazing desktop program which is open-source. Maybe it's just because opinionated software appeals to me.
      • nailer 16y ago
        http://redcareditor.com/ http://redcareditor.com/ looks as if it will be decent. But yes, I agree.
• adrianscott 16y ago
  a) Fosdev ;) b) because I'm part of the team developing it, and it takes care of a lot of setup stuff, etc. c) plenty (almost everything) as it's a new, fresh product/project I'd love to hear more about how the projects have 1) a lot of files or 2) really big files... and how you navigate around the proj. should the really big files be broken into smaller files? etc...
• braindead_in 16y ago
  Vim of course.
• ten7 16y ago
  Dare I say Coda? Um, I guess I just did...
• cperciva 16y ago
  I use kwrite, unless I'm at a console, in which case I use nano. Easy to use, and no holy wars.
• jhawk28 16y ago
  Textmate on the mac, sublime text and scite on the PC, eclipse for Java
• madrik 16y ago
  Ye can gain mine Emacs when ye wrest it from mine chill, mortified fingers.
  • strait 16y ago
    O ye'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road And I'll be a editin afore ye For me and my emacsen will ne'er wont to gae On the Vim Vimmy scriptin o' productivitin'
    • madrik 16y ago
      Emacs be an organism. It be runnin' all the while. On the other hand, I'll admit to using vi from eshell.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• cowmixtoo 16y ago
  Komodo Edit works well on all platforms and support 'scp' for file access.
  • mbenjaminsmith 16y ago
    Komodo Edit (Mac) with the Vim bindings turned on. It's lightweight with some advanced features like code completion and basic project management (find & replace in project, etc).
    • jay_kyburz 16y ago
      I finally settled on Komodo as well.
      • chrischen 16y ago
        I got Komodo IDE but it was way too slow on Mac. Not sure why. I switched over to Netbeans 6.9.
  • jobenjo 16y ago
    After a long stint with Vim (and a brief one with eclipse), I too have been using Komodo Edit. The vim bindings are good. The app is OS X is fine. (Though I had to hack the source to make the "Go To file" not look in the history, which was bothering me with my many branches). Also removed anti-aliasing, which is awful for code IMHO. It crashes from time to time, but I think it's the best all around choice right now for good vi bindings, sensible auto-completion, multi-language support, etc. Plus I like that it's cross-browser and open source, in case I ever want to leave OS X for something better.
• davidedicillo 16y ago
  Coda, but I am just a designer/front-end guy, so I don't count
  • grinich 16y ago
    The Coda editor is actually just a version of SubEthaEdit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coda_(web_development_software)#Editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coda_(web_development_software)... http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/index.html http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/index.html
    • benreyes 16y ago
      I have to admit I use Coda too as a developer. I have tried other text editors but have found Coda to have a really nice UI.
• keefe 16y ago
  eclipse. Why? Default for java. Some pluses... nice plugin based architecture, stable code. Autocomplete, refactoring, source code generation, etc. are not optional things when you're trying to do too much all the time. It's nice working in something that is pretty standard and offers you the ability to share styles etc. Downsides.. IDE-ification of development. Slow startup time (wants SSD hybrid drive for this). Synchronizing plugin versions can be a pain in the ass. Fairly steep learning curve to advanced features.
• onceuponkauai 16y ago
  I use netbeans because it is on parity of sucking as bad as zend studio but it is free. I really like the "intellisense" as i went from C# asp.net stuff to php i really want to give jetbrains my money but they haven't put out anything for me...yet :)
• astrec 16y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA for clojure and groovy. TextMate for everything else.
  • Lewisham 16y ago
    IDEA is also the best Scala IDE IMHO.
• proee 16y ago
  jEdit is my third arm. Hypersearch is amazing and the beanshell rules.
• alain94040 16y ago
  vi, Xcode, Xemacs, Eclipse, textedit. That's a good start. Depends on what is handy. emacs wins for super-large files (>1GB).
  • hboon 16y ago
    Other than logs, do you handle text files > 1GB?
    • alain94040 16y ago
      Not logs. The gate-level EDIF of a full chip can be pretty big... Sometimes you need to check out exactly how two logic gates were generated by synthesis.
• technikhil 16y ago
  At work I use various flavors of Visual Studio (including VS.NET 2003 on Windows 7 http://technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-studio-2003-and-windows-7-can-get-along-really/ http://technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-studio-200...). For any quick editing and especially text manipulation it's notepad++ or emacs. I am trying to learn emacs but I am still not completely there yet - I use it for text editing mostly with some python editing.
• marilyn 16y ago
  SlickEdit has been a long time friend.
• vtail 16y ago
  > I've used Emacs in the past, but something about the way in which you can navigate code just makes me feel less than efficient in it. Have you ever tried IDO, http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings?
  • jrockway 16y ago
    Indeed. I don't even have to think about files anymore, thanks to eproject. If I want to edit my module Foo::Bar, I just say visit-project-file (C-c C-f), type in ::Ba or some other convenient substring, and hit enter. Now I'm there. And that's the worst case. If I want to see the definition of some function that the point is currently near, I just press M-. to visit it. And M-* to pop back to where I was before.
  • justinweiss 16y ago
    IDO is 100% necessary for decent code navigation in emacs, but it's also worth trying textmate.el (http://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el http://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el), PeepOpen (http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen), or my fuzzy-find-in-project (http://github.com/justinweiss/fuzzy-find-in-project http://github.com/justinweiss/fuzzy-find-in-project) for something like, but more flexible than, TextMate's command-T functionality.
• bwr 16y ago
  This is old but seems relevant: http://xkcd.com/378/ http://xkcd.com/378/
  • ez77 16y ago
    Thank you! This absolutely rocks!
• mitko 16y ago
  recently gedit is my favourite. Really fast and easy to setup. Also to move my settings from one computer to another I just need to copy 1 folder and install one package. That, in combination with command line is very powerful for me. I used to use different editor for every language but I am getting more and more comfy with gedit.
  • safetytrick 16y ago
    I've noticed that gedit is a little sluggish to start and somewhat buggy. All that same it's a great editor.
• andrewl 16y ago
  I used to use jEdit, which is still a very nice editor. And it ran on Mac/Unix/Windows, which was good because I moved among all three systems. But the last I looked (three or four years ago) development had stalled. And I got into a job where I periodically had to SSH to various Solaris boxes and edit on the console, in Vim. I knew just enough Vim to edit config files and simple shell scripts without too much pain. Then I'd come back out to jEdit and start putting :s and other Vim commands in my files. It was hard to shift gears. So I decided to pick an editor that I could stay with for a long time, maybe forever, because it did so many things and was so configurable. It had to run on my Mac at home, the Windows nd Unix machines at work, and also on the console. It came down to Emacs or Vim. My boss was an Emacs guy, and could do wonderful things with it. But I'd had a few RSS problems, and I'd read about what Emacs did to some users' hands. So I went with Vim, and I'm very happy with it. Really, the only downside is that I don't have Vim everywhere, so when I'm stuck somewhere that doesn't have it my hands do the wrong thing. (Like in our crappy email system. I write long messages in Vim and paste them in, but I do short ones in the mail client. And hit escape when I'm done. And then hit cancel to say that I'm not abandoning the message.) As far as I know, the only editor more configurable than Vim is Emacs. But Vim does do a lot. I use it for Ruby, shell scripts, HTML, CSS, XML, Perl, prose, looking around in log files, and more. It handles long files easily. You can script it with its built-in language (not as powerful as ELisp, of course) or other scripting languages. I sometimes meet people who don't know the difference between Vi and Vim. When I say I use Vim they ask how I can get by with such a limited editor that won't split windows and doesn't have tabs and so on. So when I say Vim, I mean Vim 7.2, available at vim.org. But Emacs and other tools are worth getting familiar with as well. It's good to not be too provincial.
  • johnswamps 16y ago
    I couldn't ever give up vi key-bindings but I liked the rest of emacs more, so I use emacs in viper-mode (comes built-in), which emulates vi. You can use emacs as a modal editor but still fall back on all the emacs functionality. For most of the time it works like the best of both worlds, but it's not perfect . You can't use viper-mode in every mode and it's obviously not full vi(m) emulation. Installing the vimpulse.el script (google it) adds a lot of missing vim functionality though.
• daeken 16y ago
  I use http://www.e-texteditor.com/ http://www.e-texteditor.com/ on Windows. It's a clone of Textmate, supporting its bundles and all that; works very, very well.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • amk 16y ago
    big fan of e text editor. I have been desperately trying to compile the new source code releases for ubuntu but not too successful. (Not to familiar with linux programming/building). It works on wine though.
    • safetytrick 16y ago
      Does it work seamlessly through wine? I've been missing textmate snippets lately but it's frustrating to work around little problems?
      • amk 16y ago
        I didn't use it for a long time. It works, but it still needs cygwin to be install for some snippets. That's a little ironic. installing cygwin on wine.. but I guess that's the only way to get a text-mate like editor on linux. Or you could try something called Red Car Editor (http://redcareditor.com http://redcareditor.com) which proclaims to be an editor specially made for ruby/rails programmers. It looks pretty impressive, but again I couldn't get it installed properly. (I think the latest version runs on jRuby platform) EDIT: I got inspired to try Red Car again after posting this comment. Uninstalled Ruby completely from Windows 7, installed jRUby 1.5. Red car gem installation went perfectly, but the editor is shockingly slow and unresponsive. I don't know if the same applies to linux platform, or if there is something wrong with my system (its a 2 year old laptop, and its been a long while since I have reinstalled the Windows OS)
• christo16 16y ago
  Xcode, only tool available for iPhone/iPad dev
• kacy 16y ago
  I'll throw my vote in here. I use a good mix of vim and textmate. Nothing too special. :-P
  • ahlatimer 16y ago
    I also use vim and textmate. I use textmate far more than vim, though.
• Vitaly 16y ago
  I used TextMate for a couple of years but lately switched back to vim. This time I invested in a good vim setup with plugins to fill in places where it wasl lacking compared to TextMate. the config can be found at http://github.com/astrails/dotvim http://github.com/astrails/dotvim There is a (rather long) README with explanations of what is there and short instructions of basic use.
  • weaksauce 16y ago
    That is a great vim setup you have there. Thanks for sharing that!
  • eob 16y ago
    Thanks a lot for sharing Vitaly. I think one of the hardest things about moving to the emacs/vim world is the fact that, in addition to learning the editor, you also have to find a good .emacs/.vim file to start yourself out with.
• strait 16y ago
  On Linux, Geany or SciTE. Both are scriptable with Lua.
  • safetytrick 16y ago
    SciTE seems really solid but it's missing some features I like in other editors.
• jb55 16y ago
  Vim is like a virus that plants itself directly into your brain. Using it has crippled my ability to use "normal" text editors. No longer am I satisfied with default application navigation controls. I can't use a browser without Vimperator installed. How can this madness be stopped!?
  • madrik 16y ago
    Madness? This is VIM!
  • ivanzhao 16y ago
    it's not madness. humans are capable of so much if we put a bit devotion into it (e.g. hard-waring finger movement X with vim procedure Y, or even touch typing) this makes me wondering the limit of human interfaces. how far can we transform into cyborgs through just "practicing"?
  • Schmidt 16y ago
    There is no way, just give in! Soon you will be sitting in Awesome or xmonad or wmii, using vimperator for browsing and vim for everything else ;)
  • mapleoin 16y ago
    learn emacs. Yeah, I know what that sounds like. You don't have to also use it forever, just for, say, 6 months. Then you use both at the same time. You're brain will have rewired a pretty sturdy understanding of different ways to edit and you'll be able to switch painlessly between emacs, vim and non-editors (like the HN textbox). Well anyway, it worked for me. I have no trouble switching between the 3 editing modes while I program, edit configs and write email (thunderbird for now).
• hsmyers 16y ago
  EditPlus because it does what I need and very little more. Has add-ons for just about any language I've every needed to program in, but still simple for all that.
  • harisenbon 16y ago
    Herehere! I love me some edit plus. I've been using it since college. I usually use EditPlus for my notepad replacement as well as any regex functions or searches I need to do. For any system-based programming, I do everything in Eclipse because it automatically interfaces with my SVN and deploy servers.
• noodle 16y ago
  on windows, e-texteditor, a textmate clone (i love it), and notepad++. on linux, i use nano.
• mx12 16y ago
  Eclispe for java. I could not imagine writing java without an IDE. TextWrangler/BBEdit, for most other files. I like the built in support for sftp, so I can work remotely in a gui. For the quick edits from the command line I use the old standby, vi.
  • bilban 16y ago
    I'm not a Java programmer, why do you say this?
• kentosi 16y ago
  Your question's made me realise something I completely wasn't aware of! In my many years of coding I always seem to have 2 separate editors open: one for coding and one for editing. Currently at work, it's eclipse for Java development, and Textpad for all quick editing, regular expressions, mass find/replace across files, large files, etc.
  • eob 16y ago
    That's an interesting observation. Before going back to school, I worked at a place where Eclipse was the gospel. And Eclipse is a wonderful tool when you're a Java coder, but I often found myself doing exactly the same thing (except with TextMate for the mac) -- when I needed to hack up a file to make changes, I'd copy everything into TextMate, run a bunch of RegEx search and replace jobs, and then paste it back into Eclipse.
• metamemetics 16y ago
  Notepad++ for html\css\javascript\python all at once. The dynamic highlighting based on the context of the cursor position is clutch for web work. Makes it easier to take care of all the cascading changes in your templates and stylesheets. WingIDE hands down if its just python or a ton of python. Emacs for servers and CygWin.
• Ixiaus 16y ago
  Emacs! I'm a pious follower of the Church of Emacs...
• tremendo 16y ago
  on Windows, Textpad does well both with 1) a lot of files or 2) really big files. Ok, I've only opened files of about 125Mb on it. Takes a few seconds to load it, but once up, it flies. If you have a lot of files open, the tabbed UI doesn't really help, so you can F11 for the Document Selector sidebar. These days while on Windows I often have gVim, Sublimetext and Texpad open simultaneously. The minimap is cute, but have never found it useful, still Sublime is almost as snappy as TP.
• tgittos 16y ago
  I don't use a single editor. Currently I'm using Visual Studio for all .NET related things, because it's a nice, overall IDE. I'm also getting into C++, for which I use vim in Ubuntu (although I am far, far from being a decent vim user). I couldn't stand the way it tried to handle everything by default and felt like it was interfering with my understanding of C++ dev. I also didn't like the way the VS solution layout doesn't match the disk layout. I wanted to get more down and dirty with my compiler, and possibly learn make. I also interchangably use Notepad++, Textmate and e-texteditor depending on what's available on the machine I'm on.
• WesleyJohnson 16y ago
  I always hesitate to post on these types of questions: everyone seems to be Java, Ruby, Python, etc and I feel like the Microsoft stack outcast! Visual Studio 2010 at home and 2008 at work. We're primarily .NET so the two just kind of go hand in hand. I'm also spoiled by intellisense. I also use Eclipse at work since we've been doing a lot with GWT on the client side (thought still using .NET on the backend). Finally, I'll often use notepad++ for anything JavaScript simply because it takes far too long to load up VS when I want to do something small/edit a file/etc.
  • henrikschroder 16y ago
    If you like Eclipse and miss some of its features in Visual Studio I can really recommend Studio Tools: http://submain.com/products/studiotools.aspx http://submain.com/products/studiotools.aspx I used to run Resharper when I used Visual Studio 2005, but with 2008 there's much less need for it.
    • henrikschroder 16y ago
      There's one thing I lack for Visual Studio though, and that is the ability to highlight a searchterm in a file. Anyone knows of a simple way of getting that?
      • pook 16y ago
        In vim, it's :set hlsearch http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_matches http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_match... Emacs has many ways of highlighting search terms: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/385661/emacs-highlight-all-occurences-of-a-word http://stackoverflow.com/questions/385661/emacs-highlight-al...
        • henrikschroder 16y ago
          That's nice, but totally not what I was asking for. :-) After some more googling it appears Visual Studio 2010 has the feature, almost, and a simple plugin gives the exact functionality I want. Dunno if I want to upgrade to 2010 yet though. Hm...
• kabdib 16y ago
  Epsilon (a good Emacs clone that has excellent Windows integration).
• TrevorBramble 16y ago
  For my day job, Eclipse + PDT due to a number of quirks in the dev environment. Otherwise I'm using Vim exclusively, and hope to someday be pretty good with it. ;^) When I was on Windows I used EditPlus and still advocate it for Windows users. Fast, capable, customizable, and the developer was always very responsive to my questions and requests.
• kprobst 16y ago
  Visual Studio 2008/2010 for C# stuff, vim for everything else. TextPad is my general-purpose text manipulation tool. along with the Win32 ports of the *nix toolchain.
• thisisnotmyname 16y ago
  I use gvim whenever possible and vim otherwise.
• prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Eclipse is a terrible editor (200 million cycles per keystroke isn't enough to keep up!?) but a good Java browser with svn support (which we haven't migrated off of quite yet), so I mostly live in that. Someday I hope to work on a codebase that's DRY and clean enough that I can go back to Emacs. I don't understand all the love for Visual Studio. Everyone I met a few years back at Microsoft ignored it and used gvim and their own make clone, in spite of devdiv's pleas for feedback.
  • robryan 16y ago
    Any overriding reason why it was ignored? In terms of doing .NET development at least, if you were including that.
• michaelneale 16y ago
  IDEA, emacs (various types), vim, vi if on a server.
• pkghost 16y ago
  emacs. first job out of college, got put on a team that used emacs, so i learned emacs. things i love: non-modal interface (used vim in college, found myself frequently cursing its modes: "do what i think, not what i type!"); lives on every system i work on; does not require smelling salts after encounters with large files; insanely flexible and powerful things i hate: insanely flexible and powerful (i.e., large investment required to capitalize on flexibility and power); i'm not a pianist (abundance of control and alt prefixes to key commands make rachmaninov cry from his grave); this is 2010 -- where is my anti-aliasing, dammit; after a year, i still have regular arguments with tabs/spaces/indentation to address your concern about navigating code efficiently, i sympathize. i felt that way when i started out (even after realizing i could select text with my mouse), but i'm in a phase where i spend more time thinking about writing code than actually writing it, so i worry less about how fast i can copy and paste an awkward selection from one file to another than i do about how well my editor fits with my work environment and personal habits.
  • stratospark 16y ago
    Emacs 23 has anti-aliasing. http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/01/emacs-23.html http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/01/emacs-23.html
  • leif 16y ago
    > i still have regular arguments with tabs/spaces/indentation Clearly, you should end your files with ".py". > navigating code efficiently Use xcscope, if your language is supported. Obvious, and you've probably tried it (and now, probably don't care), but worth mention, for others at least.
    • madrik 16y ago
      What if his files end with ".hs"?
      • deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      • 16y ago
• thinkbohemian 16y ago
  Mac = Textmate Windows = Notepad++ Color me crazy but the majority of "fancy" stuff that most IDE's have is counter productive. Unfortunately i'm still a newb at VI and emacs to truly appreciate either.
  • robryan 16y ago
    Yeah I'm mostly still a visual/ mouse based guy using Textmate and Notepad++. Used some vim at uni but defiantly didn't get into it enough to learn to navigate code properly just from the keyboard.
  • jamie_ca 16y ago
    Same here - I'm mostly on a mac so I use Textmate (and just gEdit on linux lately), but I can't recall the last time I used a snippet or anything. Decent editing functionality, syntax highlighting, the concept of opening a project directory (which gEdit doesn't do well), and open file by pattern match is 95% of my use cases.
• thunk 16y ago
  The editor I chose x years ago for no reason is way better than the editor you chose y years ago for no reason.
• spektom 16y ago
  Writing plug-ins for Eclipse is only possible using Eclipse itself. But I use it for other Java projects as well. What I like: code assist, quick fix, code generation, refactoring, code navigation. The only thing I dislike is buggy SVN integration plug-ins :)
• postfuturist 16y ago
  NetBeans with jVi plugin (vim style editing) for projects and vim for one-offs. Netbeans has good support for PHP and Python auto-complete, etc. jVi plugin faithfully recreates vim experience. Downside is that NetBeans can be slow and crashes about once per day. It is worth it for fast searching, switching files, jumping to function/class definitions, etc.
• svnv 16y ago
  We do most of our stuff in C# and JavaScript, so I use Visual Studio 2008 with Resharper and Viemu plugins. Reshaper really does make visual studio a whole lot better, it's definitively worth a try if you code in C#. Viemu is a set of vi-bindings for visual studio. Worst part about using VS2008 is the intellisense for JavaScript, it's so bad it is actually a slight annoyance. Supposedly the JavaScript intellisense for Visual Studio 2010 is a lot better.
• btilly 16y ago
  On a work email list I wound up writing something that answers the question fairly clearly: vi I use to write my code for work, It's modal and quite light, so quick to type I'm glad to use it for the great big perk That it lives up quite nicely to its hype But emacs I do not so choose for me, I fear the chords would sorely hurt my hands And carpal tunnel is so bad you see That misery makes it for me be banned. I know this is not good according to The cult of emacs users that I find Would tell me to not speak until I knew Why theirs was the best editor for mind But I cannot agree with them and so vi I use and now will say no mo!
• jarin 16y ago
  I use TextMate for most things, Espresso for working on HTML mailers and (some) static sites, XCode for iPhone/iPad, and Eclipse for my most hated projects (Adobe Flex/AIR mostly. I don't hate Flex, I just hate Eclipse). I use Inconsolata font at 14pt and a modified Monokai theme (with darker background) whenever possible. About once a year or so I decide I'm going to switch to vim. I spend about a week getting my vimrc and plugins set up and use it for a couple more weeks, before I eventually get sick of keyboard navigation and NERDTree and go back to TextMate. I know that with MacVim I get things like scrollwheel support and mouse navigation, but if I'm using those anyway I might as well use them in TextMate and get back my tab triggers and other shortcuts. It's always good to brush up on vim once in a while though, since it often comes in handy when you need to edit config files on a server or when you are collaborating with a developer who uses vim exclusively. I also wish TextMate had split panes and some of the keyboard shortcuts (o, O, I, and A come to mind), but overall my productivity is better with TextMate.
  • bilban 16y ago
    Maybe you just need to bin the mouse for a week. That is the thing that gets in the way for me, and when it's present, I start using the damn thing. The one thing it feels good for is copy and paste, a necessity when copying outside vim.
• mceachen 16y ago
  I'm finding RubyMine to be great for rails webapp development. Hopping through a project to method or class or migration definitions, the "view model dependency diagram", and good git integration make for a pretty nice IDE. The main good thing about vi is that it's ubiquitous. You really should know how to use it, at least cursorily. You can certainly use emacs over ssh (and you know about ssh's X11 forwarding, which let's you run a remote pointy-clicky editor rendered locally?). Depending on your network and the files you're playing with, sshfs might be a relevant tool to view the files "locally". If the files are really big, man the "split" command.
• iamelgringo 16y ago
  I develop on WAMP: Windows 7, Python/Django, Apache, Postgres. For editing code I use e. It's great. It does hang on large files, however. I spend the vast majority of my time inside of the iPython command line, and when I finally work out what I'm trying to do, copying the result back in to the text file in e.
• shiloa 16y ago
  I do most of my coding at work (rails, python, ruby, js, html, css), where we have ubuntu machines - I LOVE gedit and simply can't do without it. It has a powerful plugins system, and there's a good repo at github.com/lexrupy/gmate that contains some of the best. There's a port for it on a mac, but I tend to stick to TextMate when on OSX (my home computer). Some of my can't-do-without features are: delete line, duplicate line, shift-line (up/down), select word, multi-edit (on gedit), word complete (circle through options bash style) and snippets. If I had to pick between gedit and TextMate, I'd probably go with gedit, but only because I spend a lot more time on it on a daily basis. I'm sure if I had TM at work, I'd probably understand what all the hype is about.. :)
  • jjanzer 16y ago
    If you like gedit you should give geany a try.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
• gurraman 16y ago
  I've been using vim for about ten years now. A few of my favorite things about the editor: it features the best application navigation that I've ever been exposed to (I also use vi-like navigation in readline, Firefox and mutt); it can open large files without breaking a sweat; it has a great many useful features for quickly modifying text (q, =, gq, cit, ci(, ci' etc) -- something I spend about 50 % of my time at work doing; it's almost always available, I merely download my settings and it feels like home; it features a great ui and I love how close the editor lives to the shell. The only thing I do not like about vim is that auto-indentation and syntax highlighting feel a bit "shaky". I find many of the editors mentioned here more consistent in that regard.
• talleyrand 16y ago
  Geany, my absolute favorite. It does everything and it does it efficiently.
• keeptrying 16y ago
  Emacs. I do everything within emacs.
• JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Whatever is already installed. I also use the default email tool. And file explorer. ANd web browser. Because, see, I have a life and it doesn't include redecorating every room I enter to suit my peccadillos. And yes I write code every day, all day, on 3 different platforms at the moment.
• balding_n_tired 16y ago
  emacs (including xemacs), Visual Studio if I'm doing C#, vi now and then.
• jimmysanchez 16y ago
  UltraEdit for me! Works great for large files and all my day-to-day editing. http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultraedit.html http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultraedit.html If you work with large files a lot, you may want to check this out: http://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutorials_power_tips/ultraedit/large_file_handling.html http://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutorials_power_tips/ultrae... I also LOVE the scripting. I've written a lot of custom scripts to automate repetitive tasks. The only downside, it's not free like many of the other editors listed here; however, it is well worth the money.
• mark_l_watson 16y ago
  Hmmm. The editors that other people use is basically as un-interesting as someone's religion or politics. I'll not bore you with my views on politics or spirituality, only editing text: Any Lisp: Gambit-C Scheme, Clojure, Common Lisp: Emacs with either Slime or custom support. (I also like the IntelliJ support for Clojure.) Ruby: mostly TextMate or GEdit, sometimes RubyMine. Java, Scala: IntelliJ. Nothing else even comes close. Latex: TeXShop on the mac, GEdit on Linux
• rianjs 16y ago
  I bought EditPlus (www.editplus.com) way back when I was in high school (NT4 days), and the license is still good for newer versions. I've lost the license twice, don't have the CC or email address it was registered to, and Sangil has been very responsive about getting me my license info even without that stuff. Since I bought it, they've added code folding, which is really nice. It's really just a plain jane text editor with pluggable syntax highlighting. The ability to save to a remote server is really nice, too, especially if you're doing remote dev work. I just wish it had SFTP support instead of just FTP. Or SCP. Whatever. Something more secure. It's incredibly fast and lightweight, and I've never felt a need to use anything else. I've also been known to use jEdit, nedit, and vim, depending on what type of environment I'm working in/through.
• giozdemir 16y ago
  gedit with gmate (http://github.com/gmate/gmate http://github.com/gmate/gmate)
• jmulder 16y ago
  Doing primarily CSS, HTML or Javascript in my editor, my requirements are less about code navigation and more about just being quick and simple. On OSX I use TextMate, but on Windows I use Intype -- www.intype.info Intype is a very, very useful text editor similar to TextMate in that it supports three key points: 1. Bundles / snippets 2. Intelligent selections and editing (multiple, rectangle, etc.) 3. Fuzzy search in quick open Anyone using TextMate knows how important bundles are to one's work flow. By far the biggest downside of Intype is its pace of development. It's incredibly slow and right now the best version they have is an 'unstable' release: http://intype.info/download/download.php?intype-0.3.1.734.exe http://intype.info/download/download.php?intype-0.3.1.734.ex... It's still a very basic editor. As such, they're looking really good project management tools, file watching (refresh on external changes), integration with source control systems, etc. They have been working on 0.3.5 for such a long time and I doubt we'll see a release of it before the end of the year. Nonetheless, the upsides outdo the downsides by far for me personally.