What is the best alternative to&#x20;Textadept?

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. See More

2402 445

score 61 · Answer 2

Light Table

Top Pro

Inline evaluation

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:MIT

Integrated Debugger:REPL

Collaborative editing:No

Notepad++ has built-in support for syntax highlighting for a wide selection of programming languages. See More

61 31

score 579 · Answer 3

Notepad++

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting for a wide variety of languages

Top Con

Windows-only

While it can run in Wine, it is native only to Windows. Linux users will have to use Notepadqq instead. See More

Top Pro

Light and fast

Notepad++ is a very light program that starts almost instantly. This makes it a great text editor for users that want something that will start the second they open it. See More

Top Con

Settings confusingly scattered

Examples: try to change the tab size or used font. See More

Top Pro

Extendable via plugins

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained. See More

Top Con

Annoying update notifications upon start-up

Annoying update notifications tend to pop up upon start-up after not having used the app or machine for a few days. At the same time, they can be easily turned off. See More

Top Pro

Portable

You can get a portable version of N++ and put it on a flash drive or your dropbox account and have your editor, configured the way you like, at any computer that you are on. See More

Top Con

Outdated UI

Only the text area can be themed, and it doesn't have as many features as browser-based text areas. See More

Top Pro

Free under GPL

Notepad++ is licensed under GPL, which means it is free/open source software that you can use freely. See More

Top Con

Limited new syntax support for new languages

It may be hard to find good plugins for relatively new languages. See More

Top Pro

Regex replace in selection, active tab, or all tabs

In Notepad++, the user can utilise regular expressions to quickly modify text across multiple files. See More

Top Con

Session backups not enabled by default

Unsaved tabs will be lost when Npp crashes, unless you first enable the session backup option. See More

Top Pro

Persistent documents, even after exiting the application

If you close Notepad++ (npp), your documents remain even if you haven't saved. See More

Top Con

User defined language doesn't support triple quote strings

It also doesn't support triple hashed comments. Both styles are overridden by their single character single line version. See More

Top Pro

User defined language syntax support

You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) . See More

Top Pro

Easy to use and admin

Very easy to use and personalize. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line editing

While it is disabled by default, when enabled, it is possible to edit more than one line at a time. This is helpful in many situations. See More

Top Pro

Split screen

The user can open and edit files in multiple screens within the editor window. See More

Top Pro

Supports Markdown

If you have the Plugin Manager installed you can search for MarkdownViewer++ and install it via that plugin. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor. See More

579 161

score 148 · Answer 4

Kate

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

Top Con

Hard to install on Windows or OS X

Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners. On Linux or BSD, it can be easily installed from your distribution's repositories. See More

Top Pro

Project mode

Kate allows you to make projects to simplify the organisation of your code. This brings in additional organization of an IDE without the overhead. See More

Top Pro

Fast and minimaistic

Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed. See More

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting

Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh. See More

Top Pro

Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols

Kate uses KDE's input and output libraries to read and write files, allowing seamless integration with FTP, SMB, SFTP, and many other protocols. See More

Top Pro

Thriving plugin ecosystem

Lots of plugins allow Kate to expand or shrink based on your needs. It includes GDB integration, XML completion, and symbol viewing to speed up programming. See More

Top Pro

By far one of the best and lightest text editors.

Notepads alternative (for the Windows users). See More

Top Pro

Vi entry mode

Kate has a vi entry mode. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:LGPL-2.0-or-later, MIT

Collaborative editing:No

RTL:Yes

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. See More

148 19

score 846 · Answer 5

Emacs

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

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. See More

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). See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal or as a GUI application

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Self documenting

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Vi keybindings through Evil mode

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe. See More

Top Con

Hard customization

For customization, you need to learn Lisp. See More

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list. See More

Top Con

A lot of jokes in this serious software

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. See More

Top Pro

Mini buffer

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer. See More

Top Pro

Ubiquity

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files. See More

Top Pro

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. See More

Top Pro

Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984. See More

Top Pro

Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell. See More

Top 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... ). See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Excellent Lisp editing support

Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural. See More

Top Pro

Use-package and org-mode

Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ... See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality. See More

846 176

score 4160 · Answer 6

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Extendable through plug-ins

Top Con

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client. See More

Top Pro

TypeScript integration

There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript. See More

Top Con

The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm

Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features. See More

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More

Top Con

File search is extremely slow

It's absolutely not possible to use this tool with big projects given how long it takes to search for files. See More

Top Pro

Ready to use out of the box

You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered. See More

Top Con

Project search limits results

Because file search is so slow your results are limited in order to simulate a faster search. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal. See More

Top Con

Very bad auto import

Top Pro

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. See More

Top Con

Generalized

VS Code is a general code/scripting IDE built to be lightweight and for people familiar with their language of choice, not directly comparable to Visual Studio in power or scope. See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Con

Memory hog

Allegedly, VS Code is "lightweight". Yet, running multiple instances of it at once, you may get many "out of memory" messages from Windows despite 16 GB RAM. (While of course also running other things. The point is the comparison with some other IDEs/editors where running them alongside the same number of other applications doesn't cause Windows to run out of memory) See More

Top Pro

Fast and powerful

VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created. See More

Top Con

Poor error fix suggestions

Error detection and suggestions/fixes are poor compared to IntelliJ platforms See More

Top Pro

JavaScript IntelliSense support

JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code. See More

Top Con

A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone

Other IDEs specific to a language often offer better tools for deep programming. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows. See More

Top Con

Slow launch time

Slower than it's competitors, e.g. Sublime Text. See More

Top Pro

Updated frequently

There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily. See More

Top Con

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

Top Pro

ESLint integration

ESLint integrates great. You can define your rules trough .eslintrc.* as usual and vs code will autofix your code on save. So your code is always in style. See More

Top Con

Have no good default js style analyzer

In WebStorm there is analyzer that checks for warnings and highlight this in yellow, here you cannot find or add it even with plugins. It is possible to have it as errors with linter but while you are actively changing file that's not very nice. See More

Top Pro

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Con

.sass linting is terrible

Top Pro

Active development

It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes. See More

Top Con

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

Top Pro

Integrated task runners

Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse. See More

Top Pro

It has gotten really good

All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need. See More

Top Pro

Custom snippets support

Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable. See More

Top Pro

Huge community behind it

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows. See More

Top Pro

JS typechecking

It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option. See More

Top Pro

Python support

Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension. See More

Top Pro

Good support for new Emmet syntax

Top Pro

High fidelity C# plugin

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support. See More

Top Pro

Support RTL languages

It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it. See More

Top Pro

Inline definition picking and usages finding

These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed. See More

Specs

License:MIT, Proprietary (official builds)

You don't need the mouse to use Howl. Everything can be accomplished with commands and shortcuts. See More

4160 832

score 23 · Answer 7

Howl

Top Pro

Keyboard driven

Top Con

Lack of Lua examples

Although Howl can be extended in both Lua and MoonScript, almost all bundles are written in MoonScript. This means that it is a bit harder to find examples if you'd rather write your bundle in Lua. MoonScript can be compiled to Lua but the code won't be as clean and understandable as if it would've been written in Lua by hand. See More

Top Pro

Fast startup

It's extremely lightweight, making it start up pretty quickly. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Howl is very intuitive and easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Easy to extend

Plugins (bundles) can be written in Lua or MoonScript. See More

Top Pro

UI Focused on editting

Non distracted icons, toolbars, pannels, extra spacing, etc. See More

Top Pro

Language tooling

Has built-in functionality for completion, inline documentation and linting so IDE-like features can be added easily. See More

Top Pro

Command line palette

Search for your commands in an easy way and see in the list which key-strokes are mapped to which commands See More

Top Pro

Open source

Howl is an open source project and is actively developed on GitHub(howl-editor/howl). It has a MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Works on OpenBSD

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:MIT

UltraEdit has small memory usage and allows for fast parsing/searching when handling large files. See More

23 5

score 58 · Answer 8

UltraEdit

Top Pro

Handles large files (>1GB) extremely well

Top Con

Proprietary

It's not free and a license costs $79.99. See More

Top Pro

Works perfectly with remote files

Supports several protocols for accessing remote files and working on them with the same ease as local files. Files can be integrated in the projects as normal files. See More

Top Con

The themes introduced in version 20 regressed certain aspects of syntax coloring

The themes simplified the syntax highlighting which lost the capacity to have as many colors as one wanted to define. Now it is limited to around 20 different colors. In general it's not a problem but in certain cases it broke coloring. For some reason, the classic theme is the only one that is totally pleasant for readability well with syntax highlighting. See More

Top Pro

Probably the most versatile general editor in existence.

If you need a general editor, UltraEdit is the way to go. If you were writing C/C++ all day, then this would be your editor. If you need to slog through large files then this is your go to editor. If you need to go through XML files, then this is your editor. If you need to sort data, then this your my editor. See More

Top Pro

Fast, stable, easy to use

It loads with a short delay, but once loaded it's snappy and rock-solid. Anyone accustomed to using Windows text editors will feel at home in its interface, and those that prefer alternate keybindings can easily change them. See More

Top Pro

Search and replace capabilities

From Ultraedit to Perl to Unix regex engines, the search and replace can accomplish just about anything. See More

Top Pro

Responsive company

Whether for feature requests, technical support or license questions, IDM is always quick to respond. See More

Top Pro

Nice hex display & edit

There's a handful of other features like this that make UltraEdit indispensable. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable GUI editor

UltraEdit offer the best of both worlds. it has a full on GUI along with all the shortcut commands you need. There's no need for the user to suffer 80 char limitations of a terminal editor. See More

Top Pro

Highly flexible

UltraEdit allows you to handle groups of files as a project. See More

Specs

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. See More

58 11

score 602 · Answer 9

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vi and Emacs

Top 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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Above average documentation quality

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Completely configured out of the box

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Offers a number of practical features

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time. See More

Top Pro

LaTeX support

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more. See More

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

Daemon support

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup. See More

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something. See More

Top Pro

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short. See More

Top Pro

Easily extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

Top Pro

Manage R files easily

Top Pro

Great Clojure support

Top Pro

Excellent support for Elixir programming language

Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

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. See More

602 74

score 598 · Answer 10

Neovim

Top Pro

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Top 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. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Con

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

Top Con

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms See More

Top Pro

Active development community

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. See More

Top Pro

Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds

Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Easier to pick-up than ever

Don't believe it? Try typing vimtutor in your command line right now. See More

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Text User Interface)

Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Comes with some good configurations out of the box

Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Treesitter and LSP

Top Pro

Terminal mode is very convenient for testing code in a split window

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android

598 90

score 325 · Answer 11

Geany

Top Pro

Light and fast

Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features. See More

Top Con

Not very advanced

Although it has some IDE features, it is not as advanced as some other text editors that can be extended to contain IDE functionality. See More

Top Pro

Built-in plugin manager

Geany has a built-in plugin manager which can be used to install plugins and add new powerful features to the editor. See More

Top Con

Windows installer not digitally signed

Top Pro

Quick search on large files

In Geany you technically search once for a whole search query, unlike Gedit, where once you start typing, the file is searched for in accordance with each substring of what you're typing, all the while leading to terribly annoying lag. See More

Top Con

Not many third-party plugins

Geany is not as popular as some other text editors with plugin support. As such it's understandable that it's missing lots of powerful plugins available in other editors. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows. See More

Top Pro

Build in terminal

Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software

This software respects your freedom. See More

Top Pro

Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)

Hence it is capable of showing the methods and inner classes of, e.g., a Java source file. See More

Top Pro

Simple project management

Top Pro

Native

It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. This means it runs great and doesn't extraordinary amounts of RAM. See More

Top Pro

Options in the menu are easy to find

For example, there is an easy way to change the font and theme in the View menu. No need to search through several syntax styles like in Notepad++ just to be able to change the used font. See More

Specs

License:GPL-2.0-only

Sublime Text is very lightweight by default. Customization occurs on the fly thanks to Package Control. See More

325 63

score 1514 · Answer 12

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Paid

Although paying for something good is far from a Con, having the competition this editor has and still have to pay for it is definitely a Con. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

Sublime Text has a minimap on the side that provides a top-down view of the file and keyboard shortcuts for most actions. It also supports a large number of languages and general text editing features out of the box. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Sublime Text protects and copyrights its code and is thus not the freedom-ware some would like it to be. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors and column selection allows for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also permits selecting vertically. ctrl + shift + l will place a cursor on every highlighted line. See More

Top Con

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be easily extended

Sublime Text uses TextMate's syntax declaration files to support new languages, it has all its menus and keybindings generated from JSON files, and it can be scripted to add new features using Python. If Sublime Text doesn't support a desired language or feature, it's usually not long before someone implements it themselves - examples include the plugin package manager and the 'open in browser' command. See More

Top Con

No printing of files

Sublime Texts offers no way of printing the files it edits. See More

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

When you start using Sublime Text, it doesn't drown you in keyboard shortcuts or non-intuitive use-concepts. However, high-level functionality can still be easily accessed when the need for it arises. See More

Top Con

Not a full IDE

It does not necessarily function on a project level. See More

Top Pro

Consistent cross-platform

Sublime Text looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Annoying whitespace management

All too often it does the wrong thing with indentation on otherwise blank lines. See More

Top Pro

Fully customizable

Sublime Text allows for all sorts of customization to help users change almost everything in the editor: Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions, and many more. Essentially, just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files. This system gives the user flexibility as settings can be specified on a per-file type and per-project basis. See More

Top Con

Loading big files on Windows is slow

Here's a rough comparison: a 70 MB file takes about 2 seconds to load in Notepad++, whereas the same file in ST3 takes over 10 seconds to load. See More

Top Pro

Very fast

Sublime is quick to start and never slows down. The UI is always responsive and you know what is happening in the background. See More

Top Con

No toolbar

Sublime Text is more focused on keyboard users, meaning it doesn't come with a tool bar. Even plugins can't toggle bookmarks using the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Top Con

Slow development

While development has yet to stop on Sublime Text, it is significantly slower than its competitors Atom, VSCode, and others. See More

Top Pro

Installable package manager

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom. See More

Top Con

Inadequate language support

Sublime Text offers poor support for Far-East languages in Linux. See More

Top Pro

IDE features without the cruft

Sublime Text, while being lighter-weight than an IDE, still supports many IDE features. Text from the current file is used to provide autocomplete. Project Support (folder browsing, scoped history, build-system declarations). Refactoring support is emulated through multi-select, project-wide find and replace, and regular expression search. Syntax-aware selection and GoTo for quickly jumping to locations in the project. Snippets and Macros. A Python console for everything else. See More

Top Con

No RTL Support

Although it is a "text" editor, Sublime Text does not support rendering text written in Arabic or other right to left languages. The developers seems unwilling to fix this issue any time soon. See More

Top Pro

Offers Command Palette

Command Palette allows for fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Con

Often crashes due to poor quality plugins

Some plugins are quite buggy, meaning that installing many can become quite a problem regarding stability. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

All you need to do when starting up is to install a package manager and modify user configuration. See More

Top Pro

Regex commands

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keymapping

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything. See More

Top Pro

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

Top Pro

Distraction free editing mode

Distraction free editing takes over your screen and removes every UI element so you can focus on code. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic Build System

Choose from many build systems or craft your own. See More

Top Pro

Freemium

A Sublime license can be bought but it can still be used for free. However, a pop-up appears when you save multiple times. See More

Top Pro

Permits instant file switching

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and by using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing. See More

Top Pro

Multiple languages are supported

Top Pro

Haxe and OpenFL integration via plugin

Both of these programming interfaces are cross-platform, open source, and easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Pro

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

Top Pro

Allows for Vim-style editing

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor. See More

Top Pro

Support for TextMate themes and window decoration themes

Sublime Text compatibility with Textmate bundles is good, but excludes commands, which are incompatible. In general, Sublime Text syntax definitions are compatible with Textmate language files (.tmLanguage extension). See More

Top Pro

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More

Top Pro

Functionalities

With lot of functionalities, where other editor even not think to provide. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

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. See More

1514 325

score 83 · Answer 13

Kakoune

Top Pro

Will be familiar to vim users

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

More modern than vim

Top Con

No real Windows support

Will compile under CygWin. See More

Top Pro

Good UNIX citizen

It follows the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing well (text editing) and interfaces nicely with other CLI tools. See More

Top Con

Default bindings do not play nice with OS X (Alt+???)

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. See More

Top Con

Written in C++

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed and supported

Top Pro

Self-documenting

A helper pops up when typing commands. See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Android

License:Unlicense

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. See More

83 7

score 14 · Answer 14

Slap

Top Con

Requires node.js

Top Pro

First-class mouse support

Slap supports mouse keybindings even though it works inside the terminal and also through SSH. See More

Top Con

CLI only

Slap only runs through the terminal. See More

Top Pro

Uses desktop-like keybindings

Slap features configurable keybindings (Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z, etc). See More

Top Pro

Great terminal interface

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

License:MIT

14 11

score 57 · Answer 15

BBEdit

Top Pro

Stable development, been around for decades

BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992. See More

Top Con

Featureless

Top Pro

Can open very large files

Top Con

Expensive

It's US$49.99 a single user license. See More

Top Pro

Just about every feature is already built in

No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work. See More

Top Pro

Great customer support

The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions. See More

Top Pro

Native application

Follows platform standards. See More

Top Pro

Built-in FTP/SFTP browser

BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol). See More

Top Pro

Great JAMStack environment

You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful. See More

Specs

Platforms:Mac

License:Proprietary

Collaborative editing:No

Supported remote file editing protocols:Yes

Textpad can handle large text files very quickly. See More

57 9

score 10 · Answer 16

Textpad

Top Pro

Highly efficient

Top Con

Macros are not editable

Top Pro

Fast and features macros

Text Pad is fast and supports macros for easy handling of repetitive tasks. See More

Top Con

No bold/italics

Top Pro

Large number of syntax highlighting add-ons

It's easy to add a new syntax highlighted language to TextPad. See More

Top Con

Disappointing keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts in Textpad are a little dated. See More

Top Pro

Search and Replace

Excellent regex functions to manipulate data in large text based (csv, php, etc) files. See More

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. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:Shareware

Bracket Matching:Yes

Preview:Download and use for free for 30 days

Yi has default configurations for Vim, Emacs, as well as CUA. It also makes several improvements that includes Sublime-like (multiple) cursors. See More

10 0

score 24 · Answer 17

Yi

Top Pro

Combines and improves upon the best text-editing features from your favorite editors

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Plugins work together

Packages work together because they compile together. See More

It's property files allow for fine tweaks of its behavior, at a global or per language / project level. These textual settings might be confusing for those used to preference dialogs, but prove to be powerful, flexible, and fine grained. See More

24 6

score 38 · Answer 18

SciTE

Top Pro

Flexible

Top Con

Hard to config

The configuration is mainly a file-based config, which can be unintuitive and difficult to use for new users. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

With less than 2 MB of binary on Windows, SciTE starts instantly. Plus, if you don't need all the config, syntax files, blah, there's a 678k standalone .exe version. Nothing is going to beat that for lightweight and start-up times. Stick it in a folder that is already on your PATH. See More

Top Con

Missing file browser

SciTE's greatest weakness is perhaps the file browser. It does not really have one, just a poor substitute which works a little bit like a terminal window with ls or dir commands to show the files in a directory. See More

Top Pro

Powerful

Based on the Scintilla source code editor, SciTE has some advanced features like rectangular editing, simple regular expression search and replace, code folding, etc. It allows the user to launch a compiler or interpreter, and it can also interpret the error messages, jumping at the location they point to. Lua scripting is key to SciTE's power and flexibility. The Lua scripting language can be used to perform complex text transformations. It's relatively simple syntax and its large user-base makes it a great choice for a scripting feature. See More

Top Con

Customization

No extensions, Themes. See More

Top Pro

Built-in shell

The console window can show the result of ran commands (like build current file, reporting warnings, and errors), but also accept interactive shell commands. See More

Top Pro

Portable

SciTE works on Windows and Linux, and it also has a commercial port on MacOS. See More

Top Pro

Powerful syntax highlighting for numerous languages

Lexers providing folding and syntax highlighting are based on code, not on regular expressions. They support context, nesting, special rules, etc. See More

Top Pro

Free (except on Mac) and open source

SciTE is written in C++, with lot of contributors, both to the core and to the numerous lexers. See More

Top Pro

GUI

Has a simple graphical user interface See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:HPND

Supported remote file editing protocols:None

Synwrite is only available for Windows and it's not cross-platform. See More

38 12

score 5 · Answer 19

Synwrite

Top Con

Windows only

Top Pro

Clean interface

Synwrite has a clean and beautiful UI. See More

Top Pro

Small size and portable

Synwrite's small size makes it very portable and usable even from a USB flash drive. See More

Top Pro

Built-in FTP support

Built-in support for FTP allows the user to transfer and exchange files between different computers and accounts. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:MPL

5 2

score 69 · Answer 20

Gedit

Top Con

Last line bug

Sometimes the last line of text is not visible. See More

Top Pro

Plugins allow for added functionality and customization

There are tons of plugins for productivity available in many different workflows, such as a dictation plugin, an encryption add-on, a whitespace remover, and more. See More

Top Con

Confusing interface

For example, finding anything in the settings menu is hard. Most other text editors use Edit->Preferences for managing settings but this is not the case for Gedit. See More

Top Pro

Great UI

The UI is lean and minimal. Everything feels quite fast and it is easy to add custom shortcuts for doing things like compiling, deploying, or testing. See More

Top Con

Faster than Atom but Slower than Geany

Not bad editor. Very similar to Geany, but Geany works faster and has more features. See More

Top Pro

Available on all systems that use Gnome

Gedit is the official text editor for Gnome and it's available wherever any version of Gnome is installed. With thousands of people using it daily and not even realizing it. See More

Top Con

Not a lot of features

Gedit is a text editor. Though it's simple and fast, it misses a lot of features, most notably auto-complete for several languages. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:GPL

Collaborative editing:plug-in

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV