Microsoft surprised everyone a few years ago with a good, modern cross-platform editor (Windows, Mac and Linux) called VSCode [0]. Its source was open to boot.

Microsoft surprised everyone a few years ago with a good, modern cross-platform editor (Windows, Mac and Linux) called VSCode [0]. Its source was open to boot. It's GUI-based and looks spiffy It has a large ecosystem of plug-ins for different languages etc. Lots of people use it -- it's the #1 tool in Stack Overflow's 2019 Developers Survey [1] But VSCode phones home (Microsoft is known to be obsessed with telemetry) and some folks are not happy that the binaries are licensed as freeware [2]. A solution to these issues was devised: VSCodium [3], a project that creates downloadable binaries from Microsoft's source code that do not have the licensing or telemetry issues that VSCode does. (This is discussed in more detail on the project's home page [3]). So, VSCode/VSCodium might be worth looking at for your students. Note that, despite being GUI-based, it will still take a bit of time to learn and configure with plug-ins, etc. But it will be easier for most than learning vim or emacs. [0] https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://code.visualstudio.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code#Reception [2] https://dev.to/twitmyreview/issues-with-vscode-license-you-should-worry-1li4 https://dev.to/twitmyreview/issues-with-vscode-license-you-s... [3] https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/