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Light Table
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Inline evaluation
With LT's inline evaluation, you don't have to re-compile your whole source file. Each time you want to see an output, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the line you'd like to evaluate and press ctrl+enter; LT will evaluate that line of code for you.
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Pro
Your code runs live as you write it
The "Watches" feature lets you see your code running live as you type it. This means that you can debug your code live while writing it, which leads to considerably less programming errors.
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Pro
Plugin manager available
LT has a plugin manager built directly inside of it. This plugin manager connects to LT's own registry of plugins, so whenever you want assistance while writing your HTML, JS, or even Python, just open up the plugin manager, search for it, and click the little install button beside it's name. Your plugin will then be installed.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
License:
MIT
Integrated Debugger:
REPL
Collaborative editing:
No
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61
31
Textadept
All
7
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Has both GUI and TUI
Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to. Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file.
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Con
Community
Does not have an IRC channel or some kind of forum where a community of developers/plugin writers could evolve around. Has a mailing list which is said to be active but that does not feel that attractive.
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Pro
Cross-platform
It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
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Pro
Easily written plugins
You can write plugins pretty easily. Here is the API doc, quite compact. Here is a module which adds a support for ctags.
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Pro
Small and portable
Has very few dependencies, and very small footprint. Can be copied to a new system in a moment, unpacked and be at your service.
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Pro
Scriptable
Has a built-in lua engine.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD
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Experiences
Free
43
3
Kakoune
All
13
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Will be familiar to vim users
Kakoune first started as a rewrite from scratch of vim, but then ended up being another text editor altogether. So it's inspired in a lot of ways from vim.
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Con
Small community
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Pro
More modern than vim
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Con
No real Windows support
Will compile under CygWin.
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Pro
Good UNIX citizen
It follows the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing well (text editing) and interfaces nicely with other CLI tools.
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Top
Con
Default bindings do not play nice with OS X (Alt+???)
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Top
Pro
Text selection mechanism
Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around.
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Top
Con
Written in C++
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Pro
Very expressive
Kakoune provides a very expressive set of commands, including various objects selection (paragraph, blocks, words), alignment support, conditional selection filtering... This set of command is expressive enough to implement all the provided auto indentation logic.
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Pro
Actively developed and supported
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Pro
Self-documenting
A helper pops up when typing commands.
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Pro
Simpler and more consistent than Vim
Some keys select, other keys operate on the selections. Shift is used to extend the selection, alt is used for alternative behavior, e.g. reverse the search direction. No inconsistencies like Y which means yy and not y$ in Vim.
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux, macOS, Android
License:
Unlicense
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Experiences
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83
7
Spacemacs
All
31
Experiences
Pros
25
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Combines the best parts of Vi and Emacs
Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box.
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Con
Can be quite glitchy at times
Spacemacs combines many packages from many different authors that were never designed to work together. Sometimes they interact in unexpected ways, and things randomly break as one package interferes with another's features. This combined with frequent package updates and necessary customization by selection of layers and packages, can make these glitches hard to reproduce. It takes a lot of emacs know-how to fix these problems. Fortunately there is a very active community willing to help with these problems, but it might take a while.
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Top
Pro
Simple but powerful configuration architecture
At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages.
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Top
Con
Complex learning difficulty
You must be familiar with either Vim or Emacs. In addition, you should be familiar with the unique features of Spacemacs. The Layer concept of replacing Emacs settings is still difficult and abstract compared to modern editors.
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Pro
Community-driven configuration
Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit.
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Top
Con
Functionality layers of complicated configuration
To configure Spacemacs, settings for Emacs/Evil/Spacemacs may need editing. It's not always clear which need to be changed or how to change settings globally: sometimes hooks are needed, other times Spacemacs provides options.
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Pro
Above average documentation quality
Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format.
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Con
High CPU and unresponsive at times
There are occasions when Spacemacs would suddenly consume a LOT of CPU and then other times would become completely unresponsive. This instability took place only 6 months or so ago. Restarting Spacemacs can fix it for a while but perhaps this issue is already fixed in newer versions.
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Pro
Cross-platform
Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
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Con
Relative low startup time
Although configuration is heavily loaded, the starting time of Spacemacs is usually between two and five seconds. Emacs can be run as a daemon though which reduces the client's startup time to a few milliseconds. Still not as bad as other editors though, especially Electron based ones like VSCode or Atom.
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Pro
Completely configured out of the box
Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box.
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Pro
Mnemonic and consistent keybindings
Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions.
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Top
Pro
Can be controlled fully with the keyboard
There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard.
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Top
Pro
Gradual learning curve
Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs.
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Pro
Remote file editing
Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely.
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Pro
Great note-taking and agenda mode built-in
Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with org, LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control.
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Pro
Offers a number of practical features
Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time.
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Pro
LaTeX support
LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more.
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Top
Pro
Manage many code bases easily
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Top
Pro
Daemon support
Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup.
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Top
Pro
Can work in terminal mode
Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something.
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Pro
Great CFEngine support
Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions.
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Pro
Great support from the community
The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions.
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Pro
Lowers the risk of RSI by using the spacebar as leader
Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI.
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Top
Pro
Fast-paced development
New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short.
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Top
Pro
Easily extended with community plugins
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Pro
Works well with Common Lisp
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Pro
Manage R files easily
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Pro
Great Clojure support
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Pro
Excellent support for Elixir programming language
Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
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Experiences
FREE
602
74
Yi
All
7
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
3
Top
Pro
Combines and improves upon the best text-editing features from your favorite editors
Yi has default configurations for Vim, Emacs, as well as CUA. It also makes several improvements that includes Sublime-like (multiple) cursors.
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Top
Con
Very few plugins available
Even though Yi is a general purpose text editor similar to Vim and Emacs, almost all of the plugins that have been written for Yi so far focus on supporting Haskell as a programming environment.
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Top
Pro
More performant than Vim
Vim can be rather slow due the age of its code base. In particular, running large macros in Vim can be rather painful. Since Yi is being built from scratch it has been engineered for performance and with the benefit of hindsight.
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Top
Con
No way to reuse your existing customizations and keybindings
If you have spent years crafting your .vimrc or .emacs, there's no way to reuse it in Yi. You have to start from scratch.
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Top
Pro
Extensible and modular editing features
As far as extensibility goes, Yi easily outstrips any other open-source text editor. Motions can be built from parser combinators, making them simultaneously flexible and modular - an open source hacker's dream.
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Top
Con
Requires Haskell to compile and configure
GHC + Haskell packages makes for a rather large installation, which is a big ask for a relatively obscure terminal editor.
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Top
Pro
Plugins work together
Packages work together because they compile together.
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Experiences
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24
6
Neovim
All
27
Experiences
Pros
18
Cons
8
Specs
Top
Pro
Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed
NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple.
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Top
Con
Poor feature discoverability
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Pro
Better integration with external tools
The core text editor is "headless", meaning it's detached from the user-interface so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous.
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Top
Con
High effort to customize
A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs.
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Top
Pro
Powerful plugin model
Vim plugins have always been useful, but tied to specific languages. Neovim's architecture provides better separation between plugins and the core product, so that plugins are completely flexible and can be written in any language.
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Con
Requires Brain Mode Switching
When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else.
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Top
Pro
Built-in terminal emulator
This avoids the user having to make any installations.
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Top
Con
Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic
Text editing in vim can be great once you've learned it, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing.
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Top
Pro
UI Agnostic
The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom.
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Top
Con
Ambiguity in extensive documentation
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Pro
Async plugin execution
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Con
Limited cross platform support
Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms
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Pro
Active development community
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Top
Con
Split the VIM community
Moolenaar to be blamed for. If he opened up the development for vim to other bright minds, no fork would have happened. As it is mostly compatible with vim, it is not such a big issue.
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Top
Pro
Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds
Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly.
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Top
Con
Poor support for external tooling
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Pro
Fast and light on memory usage
New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run.
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Pro
Easier to pick-up than ever
Don't believe it? Try typing vimtutor in your command line right now.
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Top
Pro
Work in TUI (Text User Interface)
Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh.
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Pro
Modern code base
As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its code base. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same code base that powers Node.js.
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Pro
Comes with some good configurations out of the box
Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim.
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Pro
Even more powerful since 2019, because of additions such as vim-coc, TabNine, fzf, skim
Vim gets stronger every time command-line tools get stronger. This isn't even it's the final form.
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Top
Pro
Config file is where it should be
I don't like having dotfiles or dotdirs in my homefolder unless they're needed. Configs should be in the .config dir in their respective folder.
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Top
Pro
Built-in file-explorer and ability to make splits and edit multiple things simutaneously.
This makes editing multiple files at once, moving code around so easy.
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Pro
Treesitter and LSP
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Pro
Terminal mode is very convenient for testing code in a split window
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android
License:
Apache
Bracket Matching:
Yes
Error Markup:
Yes
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Experiences
Free
598
90
SlickEdit
All
16
Experiences
Pros
14
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Extensive support for programming languages
SlickEdit supports over 50 programming languages on nine platforms.
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Top
Con
No command line option
This is a visual only editor
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Top
Pro
Built-in beautifier
The beautifier formats code as you type to help improve readability and consistency.
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Top
Con
It's kinda slow
If you have a very large project or tag database, it can hang the UI.
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Pro
Compiler tools
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Pro
Scriptable
Write custom macro commands, functions, dialogs and tool windows.
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Pro
Over 13 emulations
Choose from fifteen keyboard emulations, containing the key bindings and behaviors necessary to emulate other editors (e.g., CUA, Vim, GNU Emacs, etc.)
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Top
Pro
Extensive configuration options
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Pro
Easy access to Visual Studio workspace
SlickEdit opens Visual Studio workspace with no conversions needed.
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Pro
Symbol analysis support
There are powerful symbol analysis features in SlickEdit, including context tagging and references.
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Pro
Integrated debuggers for multiple languages
Integrated debuggers for GNU C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.
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Pro
Multi-Platform
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86
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Pro
Portable mode
Possibility to set up a portable installation, to run on a USB drive for example.
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Pro
Easy access to XCode projects
SlickEdit opens XCode projects with no conversions needed.
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Pro
Third party tool integration
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Pro
Popular version control system
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Experiences
99$
63
17
nano
All
8
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
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Con
Limited feature set
While nano is fine for writing blog posts or doing quick modifications, it's probably not suitable for programmers or someone who needs to work on an editor for an extensive period of time.
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Top
Pro
Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts
Shortcuts for common commands are shown at the bottom of the editor.
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Con
Uncommon keybindings
Nano uses a strange set of default keybindings, which is totally different than Vim, Emacs, VSCode and Sublime.
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Pro
Available on almost every Linux system as default
Similar to vi (vim), you can find nano on most Unix-like systems (even on Cygwin).
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Pro
Most of the languages supported
Syntax coloring is available for most of the programming language.
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Pro
Lightweight and bug free
Very stable editor that never hangs / leaks or crashes.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, Cygwin
License:
GPL-3.0-only
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Experiences
FREE
65
18
Emacs
All
41
Experiences
Pros
30
Cons
10
Specs
Top
Pro
Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing
Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.
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Top
Con
Learning curve is long
While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
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Top
Pro
Total customizability
Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).
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Con
Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work
If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file.
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Pro
It's also an IDE
You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.
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Top
Con
Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users
For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange in the begging. However they can be changed easily.
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Pro
Works in terminal or as a GUI application
You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.
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Con
Documentation is not beginner-friendly
Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, I have after four years of Emacs as my primary editor not figured out how to actually make use of it, and rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help.
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Pro
Self documenting
Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.
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Con
User interface is terrible
I was using Emacs in the early 1980's, before there were GUIs. In fairness to Emacs, its original design was conceived in that context and is rather good at some things, like flexible ability to bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, it didn't keep up with the times and fails to take advantage of the entire world of GUI design that's revolutionized computer science since then. So Emacs does 5% or what an editor should do quite will, and is surprisingly under-powered and old fashioned at the other 95%. To this day, it lacks or struggles with very basic things, like interactive dialogs, toolbars, tabbed interface, file system navigation, etc., etc. The things I just mentioned, are all present in some limited and inept form, but falls far short of current standard of good user interface design. For this reason, I would not recommend Emacs to anyone who is under 50 year old, or who needs power user capabilities. For casual, unsophisticated applications by someone who grew up with green screen character based computers, it's probably OK.
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Pro
Free
Licensed under GNU GPL.
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Con
Emacs lisp is very poorly designed
The language that's used for user customization, extensions, and for much of the basic editor functionality, is Emacs lisp, or elisp for short. I actually like lisp in general, especially Scheme, but unfortunately, elisp is one of the worst versions of lisp ever created, barely meriting being called lisp. It's very slow, impoverished in features, inconsistent, and rather inelegant in design. Elisp needed to be overhauled 20 or 30 years ago, but the Emacs developers were not willing to do the work. I believe this is one of the major reasons Emacs is so buggy, lacking in features, development is so slow, and consequently almost nobody uses it (or should use it) anymore.
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Pro
Great documentation
With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.
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Con
Very poorly maintained
It's not clear to what extent Emacs is still supported. There's still some development taking place, but so slow that it's almost an abandoned project. There are numerous bugs in Emacs, many these days associated with start up and package management. When you search the Internet for solutions, you often find many posts, sometimes going back months or even years, with no clear fix.
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Pro
Vi keybindings through Evil mode
Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.
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Con
Hard customization
For customization, you need to learn Lisp.
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Pro
Provides org-mode
Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.
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Con
A lot of jokes in this serious software
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Pro
Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")
Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.
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Con
Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file
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Pro
Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.
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Pro
Integrates planning in your development process
You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.
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Pro
Versatile
Emacs is great for everything.
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Pro
Mini buffer
You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.
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Pro
Ubiquity
Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.
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Pro
Rectangular cut and paste
Emacs can select rectangularly.
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Pro
Lisp customizations
With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.
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Pro
Visual selection and text objects with Evil
Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.
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Pro
dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)
Dynamic word completion.
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Pro
Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style
Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.
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Pro
Has been widely used for a long time
The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984.
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Pro
Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs
Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.
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Pro
GTK+ widgets support
Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.
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Pro
Excelent tutorial to get you started
The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later.
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Pro
Interactive Shells
Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.
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Pro
Emacs provides magit, the best and most complete GIT interface
Complex git history editing become a breeze with very few keystrokes. And simple ones are quickly stashed in muscle memory. Git becomes an direct extension of your brain thanks to Magit. Cherrypicking, blaming, resetting, interactive rebasing, line level commit, spinoff branches... you name it, magit already has it and has typically all those 5 to 10 git CLI commands of higher-level patterns also tide to one simple shortcut (want to amend a commit three commits away ? forgot to branch out and you've got already N commits on master ? ... etc... ).
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Pro
Gnus
Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.
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Pro
Eshell is cross platform
You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking.
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Pro
Excellent Lisp editing support
Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural.
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Pro
Use-package and org-mode
Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ...
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Specs
Platforms:
Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
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Experiences
FREE
846
176
Vim
All
46
Experiences
Pros
30
Cons
15
Specs
Top
Pro
Lightweight and fast
When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs.
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Con
High effort to customize
A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs.
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Pro
Free and open-source software
Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware.
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Con
Difficult learning curve
You'll spend a lot of time learning all the commands and modes supported in Vim. You'll then spend more time tuning settings to your needs. Although once it's tuned to your needs, you can take your .vimrc to any machine you need and have the same experience across all your computers.
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Pro
Works in terminal over SSH
Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH.
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Con
Difficult to copy, paste, and delete
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Pro
Extremely portable
Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection.
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Con
Poor support for external tooling
Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling.
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Top
Pro
Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support
There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while.
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Con
Poor feature discoverability
Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well.
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Pro
Great productivity
Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making my ost of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches.
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Top
Con
No smooth scrolling
Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files.
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Top
Pro
Macros increase productivity
Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand.
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Top
Con
Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms
This can be worked around somewhat if you disable mouse for insert mode. You can then right-click your terminal and use paste like you would anywhere else in a terminal. But it still doesn't feel right when the rest of your system uses Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, and you have a system clipboard manager, and so forth.
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Top
Pro
Excellent performance
As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag.
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Top
Con
Outdated UI
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Top
Pro
Tons of plugins/add-ons
This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view.
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Top
Con
Requires Brain Mode Switching
When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else.
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Top
Pro
Everything is mnemonic
No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example.
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Top
Con
Slow when opening files with very long lines
A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file.
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Top
Pro
Vimtutor
Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete.
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Top
Con
Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic
Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing.
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Top
Pro
Amazing extensibility
Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more.
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Top
Con
Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box
A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY.
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Top
Pro
Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)
If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too.
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Top
Con
Unintuitive mode switching
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Top
Pro
Has been supported for a long time
And will be supported for many years to come.
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Top
Con
Extensibility isn't that great
While it has gotten better and some projects are slowly starting to build proper extension support, it still can't and by design never will achieve the extensibility of another editor like emacs.
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Top
Pro
Once learned, it's very hard to forget
Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes.
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Top
Con
Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left
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Pro
Can never outgrow it
The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh.
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Pro
Flexible feature-set
Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way.
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Top
Pro
Has multiple distinct editing modes
Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim.
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Pro
By default in Linux
All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient!
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Pro
Vim encourages discipline
If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient.
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Pro
Useful undo features
Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again.
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Pro
Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland
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Top
Pro
Built-in package management
Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type.
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Top
Pro
If you can use Vim you can also use vi
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Top
Pro
Works on Android
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Top
Pro
Productivity enhancing modal paradigm
As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm.
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Pro
Asynchronous I/O support
Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze.
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Top
Pro
Can set up keymapping
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Pro
Multiple clipboards
It is called "registers".
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Top
Pro
Status Booster
Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex.
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:
Vim License
Price:
0
Extension language:
Vim
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Experiences
free
2402
445
qemacs (for quick emacs)
All
8
Experiences
Pros
8
Top
Pro
Input methods for most (human) languages
Including e.g. Chinese.
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Top
Pro
Terminal and graphics mode
Supports the terminal mode with 'qemacs -nw' and a graphics mode.
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Top
Pro
Good documentation and help
Context sensitive shortcut help on F1. Good online documentation.
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Top
Pro
Comfortable file browser
Easy to open and manage files (dired-mode).
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Top
Pro
Supports many editing modes besides text
Hex HTML / CSS Image Audio/video (maybe not the most sought after mode in a text editor, but, well, it's there)
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Top
Pro
Full UTF-8 support
Including bi-directional writing.
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Pro
Super lightweight and fast
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Pro
Emacs like key-bindings
Use your muscle memory if you know Emacs already.
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Experiences
Free
2
1
Slap
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
Requires node.js
Slap is written in JavaScript and it requires something to interpret it in a local machine. That something is node.js, but for people who don't need node, it would be a hindrance and an overkill to install node just to use a simple text editor. Furthermore, it can only be used remotely if the remote machine has node installed.
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Top
Pro
First-class mouse support
Slap supports mouse keybindings even though it works inside the terminal and also through SSH.
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Top
Con
CLI only
Slap only runs through the terminal.
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Top
Pro
Uses desktop-like keybindings
Slap features configurable keybindings (Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z, etc).
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Top
Pro
Great terminal interface
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows; OSX; Linux
License:
MIT
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Get it
here
14
11
Textpad
All
9
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Highly efficient
Textpad can handle large text files very quickly.
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Top
Con
Macros are not editable
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Top
Pro
Fast and features macros
Text Pad is fast and supports macros for easy handling of repetitive tasks.
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Top
Con
No bold/italics
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Top
Pro
Large number of syntax highlighting add-ons
It's easy to add a new syntax highlighted language to TextPad.
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Top
Con
Disappointing keyboard shortcuts
The keyboard shortcuts in Textpad are a little dated.
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Top
Pro
Search and Replace
Excellent regex functions to manipulate data in large text based (csv, php, etc) files.
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Top
Pro
Easy to get started, especially for Java
When you require a minimal learning curve and a quick start to writing code, TextPad is one of the best choices. Especially for small Java projects, TextPad is the go-to editor.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Shareware
Bracket Matching:
Yes
Preview:
Download and use for free for 30 days
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Experiences
$3
10
0
pyvim
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Fast development of new features
Pyvim is written in Python. It's a great language that allows for fast development of features and quick bugfixing. It also relies on existing Python plugins to add even more functionality.
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Top
Con
CLI only
Pyvim runs through the terminal only.
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Top
Pro
Vim-like editor
Pyvim has some of Vim's features and shortcuts, as well as some custom improvements that are already built-in.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows; OSX; *nix
License:
Apache
Hide
Get it
here
4
4
sublimious
All
3
Experiences
Pros
3
Top
Pro
Pre-configured with layers
Whenever you need to work on a new language that you don't have plugins for yet, you can choose to check if sublimious has a layer for that language. If it does, all you need to do is activate it and sublimious will automatically download all plugins you need for that language, add keybindings for efficient usage and set the optimal settings for these plugins.
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Top
Pro
VIM centric
This plugin is perfect for VIM fanatics. It tries to add VIM keybindings to everything, even to where you didn't know it was possible like the sublime text overlay or the sidebar
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Top
Pro
Ergonomic shortcuts
sublimious adds shortcuts that actually make sense. "p f" for example searches files in the current project. "g s" executes "git status" and so on, you get the idea. It even comes with a helper that shows you what shortcuts are available.
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Get it
here
8
0
Visual Studio Emulator for Android
All
5
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Easy to set up and use
Install devices in two clicks, very intuitive interface for simulations.
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Top
Con
Only runs on Hyper-V capable machines
Has to be Win8+ pro edition or higher. No Mac or Linux support yet.
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Top
Pro
Simulates many scenarios
Location/GPS (including live journeying), Camera (using webcam or image file from PC), Accelerometer, Networking (bandwidth and signal strength), etc.
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Top
Pro
Free
All features are free.
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Top
Pro
Fast
Runs using Hyper-V, the built-in virtualization technology in Windows, so it's very fast (like a real device).
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here
6
0
CodeRunner
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
Working with very very large projects
Code runner is fantastic for shorter projects, although it can handle very large projects. It stops code completion when the program gets to be several thousands of lines long.
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Top
Pro
Fast and efficient
You can have multiple tabs open with multiple languages in at the same time and Code Runner still performs excellently. Searching through code is always instant and executing code is fast.
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Top
Pro
Supports many different languages
Code Runner comes preinstalled with over 20 languages built in, and it's super easy to run simple programs.
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Specs
Platforms:
Mac
Hide
$14,99
21
1
Codiad
All
10
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Open source
You can run Codiad on your server to allow you and your team to edit files. Simplest to run may be using a Docker image like linuxserver/codiad.
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Top
Con
Terminal runs as same user for everyone
No matter who is the logged in user, the Terminal plugin runs commands as the PHP user. This also affects the Git plugin in that there is a single SSH key for all users using your Codiad instance.
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Top
Pro
Easy to self-host: Only requires PHP
It only requires PHP 5+ and Nginx or Apache. No database is required. This makes it really easy to install on many servers include shared hosting.
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Top
Con
Full of small bugs
There are plenty of various issues and bug that may either be due to your setup and the UI will not report them, or due to bugs in the code; I'm including common plugins here as well (just naming a few: search files and in files may report nothing if it had an error, commands stderr not printed, marketplace not showing items, search in market place showing no results, Git escaping ( by \( in the commit message for no good reason...). Those are generally small but together it makes the product feel flawed.
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Top
Pro
Multi-line edit
Allows to edit multiple things are once by having multiple cursors like Sublime Text.
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Top
Con
Currently no search and replace in multiple files
There is a search in multiple files, and search & replace in current file, but not something to perform a search & replace in multiple files.
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Top
Pro
Has many easily installable plugins
Many plugins exist, from Terminal, Git to Collaboration and Emmet... Plugins can be installed by using the web interface, or by manually extracting files to the right directory.
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Top
Con
Terminal doesn't TTY
The terminal plugin for Codiad allows users to type some commands and see the outputs, but not interactive input is supported (i.e. stdin is closed). Meaning you cannot run Vim, Tmux or anything requiring user inputs.
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Top
Pro
Simple and easily managable GUI
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Top
Con
Demo only lasts 30min
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Experiences
Get it
here
4
0
neovim-gtk
All
3
Experiences
Pros
3
Top
Pro
Light UI stays out of the way but does provide all expected widgets
The overall UI is very trim and doesn't take up screen space for no reason, but all the expected bits like tabs and popups and even the command line have native widgets.
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Top
Pro
Full GTK3 integration
The UI is fully GTK3 compatable, so it themes to match your desktop and the functions are all in expected locations.
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Top
Pro
Support for ligatures
Fonts with ligatures can be used to render code.
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here
2
0
PSPad
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Free
PSPad is completely free to download and use.
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Top
Con
Windows only
It's only available for Windows.
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Top
Pro
Simple and small
PSPad is simple, small, and lightweight. It's also quite fast.
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Top
Con
No code folding
Does not support code folding.
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Top
Pro
Code highlighting for many languages
PSPad supports code highlighting for several languages.
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Top
Con
No content assist
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Top
Pro
Portable version
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Top
Pro
Column mode
Editing in column mode.
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Top
Pro
Integrated HEX editor
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Top
Pro
Accented words
In PSPad, the user can add accents to words.
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Top
Pro
Integrated FTP client
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Freeware
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
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Experiences
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here
18
3
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