What is the best alternative to&#x20;Visual Studio Code?

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. See More

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score 1675 · Answer 2

Vim

Top Pro

Lightweight and fast

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

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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 most of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

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. See More

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. 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

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. See More

Top Con

User must remember commands instead of point at them in a menu

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left

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. See More

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. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Con

Outdated UI

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. See More

Top Pro

By default in Linux

All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient! See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Has been supported for a long time and will be supported for many years to come

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows

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

1675 353

score 541 · Answer 3

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

Hard customization

For customization, you need to learn Lisp See More

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. 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

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

Chorded keyboard combinations can be baffling

For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange. But don't worry, you can change it. 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

A lot of jokes in this serious software

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

Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file

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

Provides org-mode

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

Cross-platform

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

Top Pro

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

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. See More

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

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

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

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

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

Top Pro

eshell is cross platform

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

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, Windows

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

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score 1269 · Answer 4

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

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

Lightweight

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

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

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

Inadequate language support

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

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

Consistent cross-platform

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

Top Con

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. 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

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

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

Annoying whitespace management

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

Top Pro

Offers Command Palette

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

Regex commands

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

Top Con

Not a full IDE

It does not necessarily function on a project level 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 printing of files

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

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

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

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 Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Top Pro

Installable package manager

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

Top Pro

Customizable keymapping

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

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

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

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. 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

Multiple languages are supported

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Pro

Functionalities

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:Proprietary

Has built-in support for the most popular revision control systems See More

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score 382 · Answer 5

NetBeans

Top Pro

Multiple revision control system integration

Top Con

Slows down occasionally

The Netbeans IDE is known to take a large memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available on the market. Slowdowns can decrease productivity and cause frustration. See More

Top Pro

Frameworks support

Supports Symfony1, Symfony2,Yii2 & Zend frameworks. See More

Top Con

Multilanguaje code completion fails

I example, sometimes code completion won't help you with html marks (or scripts) inside php echo (or print) sentences, and vice-versa. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source, and cross-platform

NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. Being open source means that developers can contribute changes to the code to have the IDE better serve them. See More

Top Con

Default website code format is too strict

Sometimes you need to write allowed code that IDE hasn't spected, and it will annoy you filling all your code with suggestions. See More

Top Pro

PHPUnit support

PHPUnit is a testing framework. You can create test classes, run and see the code coverage directly from IDE interface. See More

Top Con

Development has stalled dramatically

It went down from two releases a year with minor bug-fix releases to one release and no fixes. There seem to be fewer features added per release as well. There is no activity in the plugin community. See More

Top Pro

Composer commands inside IDE

The most used composer commands can be done directly from IDE. See More

Top Con

Tries to do everything for you and gets it wrong too many times

Top Pro

Best for PHP, HTML5 Apps Developemt

Top Con

Linux version lacks HDPI support

Top Pro

FTP/SFTP synchronization

Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP. See More

Top Pro

Supports community plugins

NetBeans can be extended beyond the basic tool that you get out of the box through community made custom plugins. See More

Top Pro

Accelerated HTML5 development support

Top Pro

Less and Sass Compiler support

Top Pro

Linux terminal inside IDE

You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Supports Twig templates

NetBeans provides code completion and documentation for all Twig elements. See More

Top Pro

ApiGen and PHPDoc support

Supports documentation generation through ApiGen and PHPDoc. See More

Top Pro

Powerful debugging and performance optimization

Netbeans not only debugs your code, and points out errors but also gives you hints on which sections of your code could be further optimized. See More

Top Pro

You can access source code history

There's a built-in local history that lets you compare code changes and revert to a specific revision. Helpful when source code file accidentally overwritten. See More

Top Pro

PHPstan support

Supports static code analysis with phpstan See More

Top Pro

ApiGen support

ApiGen allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments. It's easy to use, supports traits, allows fuzzy searching for classes and highlighting docblocks using Markdown. See More

Top Pro

Bower support

Top Pro

Supports Smarty

Supports Smarty Template Engine right out of the box. See More

Top Pro

JMeter benchmarking tool support

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Auto Complete:Yes

IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages. These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates. See More

382 97

score 517 · Answer 6

IntelliJ IDEA

Top Pro

Smart refactorings

Top Con

Somewhat expensive

IntelliJ IDEA is fairly expensive, with a pricetag of $149/year. However there is a free community edition available. See More

Top Pro

Fast and smart contextual assistance

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions). On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization. See More

Top Con

Uses a lot of RAM

Top Pro

Android support, JavaEE support, etc

A very complete development environment support. See More

Top Con

Slow startup

Startup can be slow deepending on system configuration See More

Top Pro

Support for many languages

IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc. See More

Top Con

Standard hotkeys behave differently

Seems like hotkeys assignment in Idea has no logical consistency. Like «F3» is usually next match, «Ctrl+W» - close tab, etc — they map to some different action by default. There is a good effort in making the IDE friendly for immigrants from other products: there are options to use hotkeys from Eclipse, and even emacs. But these mappings are very incomplete. And help pages do not take this remapping into account, rather mentioning the standard hotkeys. So, people coming from other IDEs/editors are doomed to using mouse and context menus (which are rather big and complex). See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Many plugins are available for almost any task a developer may need to cover. Plugins are developed by Jetbrains themselves or by 3rd parties through the SDK available for writing them. See More

Top Con

Bugs are not solved as often as they should

They are more interested in adding new features or issuing new versions than solving bugs. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive and slick UI

IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme). See More

Top Con

Cannot open multiple projects in the same window

Top Pro

Stable and robust

IntelliJ IDEA hardly ever crashes or has any issues that plague other Java IDEs like file corruption or slowness. See More

Top Con

Built with closed source components

The version with full features is not opensource. Parts of the code are under apache licence though. See More

Top Pro

Clear and detailed documentation

The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate, and clearly worded. See More

Top Con

Lack of plugins

IntelliJ supports a very small amount of plugins. Although these are 'quality approved', many features are missing and can't be implemented because of that. See More

Top Pro

Free version available

There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here. The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account. See More

Top Pro

Very powerful debugger

With ability to step into a certain part of a large method invocation (Shift+F7), drop frame, executing code snippets, showing method return values, etc. See More

Top Pro

Many convenient features

These simplify the daily work, e.g. copy/cut a whole line without the need to select it. See More

Top Pro

Gradle support

Top Pro

Buit-in Git support

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

517 92

score 134 · Answer 7

Geany

Top Pro

Light and fast

Top Con

Not very advanced

Similar to Notepad or Gedit. 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

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

Simple project management

Top Con

Windows installer not digitally signed

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 Open Source

Which usually means it will remain free of charge. See More

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 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

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

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

134 28

score 394 · Answer 8

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. 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

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

Extendable via plugins

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Split screen

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

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

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

Auto Complete:Yes

Brackets will automatically refresh the browser and load the latest saved version of a file open in the browser. This works with php as well. Editing a css will even highlight the tag that's currently being worked on. However, it only works with Chrome. See More

394 129

score 220 · Answer 9

Brackets

Top Pro

Built-in browser live-updating

Top Con

Still missing some elementary text editor commands

Some gaps have to be filled by plugins, while these features should be built in. For example: Jump to matching brace (bracket / parenthesis); Gutter selection of lines; Recall previous searches / replacements; Autofill of search field with text under caret (text has to be selected); Show whitespace / end of lines / indentation guides / right margin; Selection to upper / lower case; and some more. See More

Top Pro

Built-in extension manager

The functionality of Brackets can be extended via a simple-to-use extension manager. The extension manager also has a considerable number of extensions and themes. See More

Top Con

Problematic updater

Though the website says there is an update available, the updater in Brackets may give you an error, resulting in you having to download updates manually. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

Brackets is entirely free and open source. See More

Top Con

Slow

Top Pro

Can style a tag without switching over to the stylesheet

A feature called "Quick Edit" allows the user to select a tag in (a html file, for example) and edit the associated style without switching over to the css document. It also supports SASS and LESS pre-processors. See More

Top Con

Supports only web languages by default <but>

Brackets is built for web development and that's where it excels at out of the box. Other languages that have a CodeMirror mode can be added as well. <and language support plugins can be added> See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

Brackets is being actively maintained and developed. See More

Top Pro

Popup previews

Hovering over colors hex codes or image paths will pop up previews of corresponding colors and images. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Brackets is easy on memory usage and it starts up quickly. See More

Top Pro

Drag and drop support

Brackets supports drag and drop of text, as well as multi / rectangular selection. See More

Top Pro

Can be hacked by any front-end developer

The editor is built using html, css, and javascript, making it extendable by any front-end developer. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line (multi-query) editing

You can have your cursor independently on multiple lines and so creating templates and/or editing multiple things at once is really fast and easy. See More

Top Pro

Vim mode

Vim-style editing is already built in the text editor. See More

Top Pro

Support for Adobe PSD content

A default extension allows for the extraction of PSD resources, such as images and styles. There's good integration for placing extracted resources into source. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:No

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in)

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

220 95

score 472 · Answer 10

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 delayed auto-loading of packages in unpredictable order, different modes for different file types, 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

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

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

Slow 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. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

LaTeX support

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

Top Pro

Great note-taking and agenda "app" built-in

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control. See More

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

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

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

Top Pro

Daemon support

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

Top Pro

Easily extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More

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

License:GPLv3

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

472 62

score 39 · Answer 11

Kakoune

Top Pro

Good UNIX citizen

Top Con

Small community

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. See More

Top Con

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

Top Pro

More modern than vim

Top Con

No real Windows support

Will compile under CygWin. See More

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

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

Top Pro

Self-documenting

A helper pops up when typing commands. See More

WebStorm integrates with Node.js to allow for running, debugging, and unit testing of Node.js apps. See More

39 2

score 773 · Answer 12

WebStorm

Top Pro

Node.js integration

Top Con

Occasional slow performance

WebStorm can sometimes choke all cores of the CPU. There are numerous reports of high CPU usage. See More

Top Pro

Code refactoring support

To make sure your code can be easily maintained, you must first be sure to make it clean and tidy. This is the part where WebStorm really helps you. It automatically refactors your code by performing functions on it, such as extraction of variables, moving files, inline variable extraction, etc. See More

Top Con

Not free for commercial use

A paid license is required to use WebStorm for commercial use. The license terms changed in November 2015 and currently require a subscription (per year: $59 personal, $129 for companies). Students can obtain a free non-commercial, educational license good for one year. There is also an option to pay on a monthly basis in addition to perks, such as a fallback commercial license that can be used for free. See More

Top Pro

Integrated code quality tools

WebStorm comes bundled with JSHint and JSLint. JSCS, ESLint, and Closure Linter can be installed via npm. They register as inspections and are customizable through IDE settings. They run automatically and will highlight potential issues. Pressing alt+enter on an issue will allow the user to view suggested fixes. See More

Top Con

Plug-in ecosystem isn't robust

Every framework or extension with any popularity whatsoever will have a plugin for VS Code. Sometimes they'll still support Atom. Only one in twenty will have native support for WebStorm. If you want support for the latest libraries, you won't get it in WebStorm. See More

Top Pro

Intelligent code completion

WebStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion. Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of JavaScript objects, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion. Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go. See More

Top Con

Non-native filesystem causes issues

The Java wrapper around the filesystem doesn't actively watch for file changes (by, for example, using the fsevents api on OS X), and as a result can become easily desynchronised from the actual filesystem. If you have an external tool acting on your project (such as a gulp task or a third-party Git client), what you see in the file browser or in open tabs becomes out-of-date. There's a feature in the context-menu for manually synchronising directories with their real filesystem equivalent, but this shouldn't be necessary and is annoying to do. You usually remember to do that anyway after you've been trying to track down a bug on a line of JavaScript that Webstorm says doesn't exist for the last two hours. It should be noted though that this is easily remedied by going to File/Settings/System Settings and checking the "Synchronize Files on frame or editor tab activation" option. It's also recommended to more explicitly represent your workflow within WebStorm itself. Most external tools/tasks can be handled with WebStorm. And if it's not in a plug-in, then you can handle it with the File Watchers. See More

Top Pro

Built-in web server

WebStorm has a built-in webserver that allows you to run projects from http://localhost:63342/ProjectName. See More

Top Con

Not open source

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted for security. See More

Top Pro

Maintains a local history

The local history feature in Webstorm tracks all your local changes in the source code that you are making. You can use it to view changes that you've made to your code and roll back whenever necessary. See More

Top Con

Can't open multiple projects in a single instance

The only way to open multiple projects is to run a new instance of WebStorm which is not ideal. WebStorm can use up to 1-1.5 GB of memory. See More

Top Pro

Typescript support

WebStorm offers typescript support for building typed JavaScript applications which improves refactoring and code completion, as well as helping to find bugs. See More

Top Con

You may have to fiddle with the JVM memory settings in configuration files

To get it to run properly, you have to edit the JVM memory settings when you use Node.js. Node.js makes the small JS project you have into a "large" project that requires more memory. See More

Top Pro

Supports a wide range of plug-ins

Top Con

Bad default options compared to the competition

Examples are an unreasonably low number of undo steps and automatic saving (which causes webpack dev server to bundle VERY frequently). See More

Top Pro

Supports many JavaScript frameworks

WebStorm includes support for Meteor, Angular, and React. See More

Top Con

Proprietary file dialogs

Webstorm doesn't use the native Windows and OSX file dialogs, which makes it more of a hassle to open projects. For instance, you don't have access to your favorite folders on the left-hand side in their custom file dialogs. See More

Top Pro

Compilers for compile-to-JavaScript languages

WebStorm has built-in support for CoffeeScript and Dart. See More

Top Con

Poor usability on option and menu navigation

You need to press a combination of keys or navigate through different menu levels to carry out the two most common things a developer does. For example, to run your code, the default is Shift+F10. To go to definition, you need to click on "Navigation" first. There is no sense to this: being forced to press a combination of keys hundreds of times or navigating through different menus can be a waste of time. See More

Top Pro

Support for Karma test runner

Karma allows you to execute unit tests and monitor code coverage. You can read more about using Karma with WebStorm here. See More

Top Con

Constantly trailing behind on support for its main features

The Jetbrains team do an admirable job attempting to keep up with support for the features they wrap, but they are running an un-winnable race. For example, WebStorm 11.0.2 hangs when trying to debug NodeJS 5.0+ projects (30+ seconds before hitting breakpoint). By the time they fix it, 5.1 will be out and something else will break. See More

Top Pro

Reduces the amount of repetitive code that has to be written with code snippets

WebStorm includes a feature called Live Templates. Live Templates are predefined code snippets that can include variables. They're intended to increase productivity by reducing the amount of repetitive code that has to be written. See More

Top Con

Newer versions are increasingly unstable

This only happens when it's not a major version. See More

Top Pro

Ability to base hot keys on previously used IDEs

When you install WebStorm, it allows you to choose from other IDE's for it to base it's hot keys on. So if you are switching from another IDE, it makes it a very easy transition and productivity is not adversely affected by having to learn new hot keys. See More

Top Pro

Powerful git and GitHub integration

WebStorm has a powerful visual git tool, allowing for easy commits, visual diffing, merging, push/pull, rebasing, and inspecting the VCS history of a project. GitHub is supported natively - you can check out a project directly from GitHub. See More

Top Pro

CSS pre-processor support

WebStorm has built-in support for Sass which is one of the most stable and powerful CSS extension languages. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal/run tools

WebStorm (and really all of the IntelliJ IDEs) support the plugins throughout their plugin ecosystem which leaves you with 100s of tools to handle your automation tasks. There is a wide range of build-related plugins that help you by having pre-defined commands to execute with the click of a button. Out of any other IDE, WebStorm has by far the most coverage when it comes to tools for your development workflow. See More

Top Pro

Theme support / tweaking

The theme is very easy to customize to your liking. You can change font-size, colors, highlighting colors, and more. See More

Top Pro

Built-in support for JavaScript task runners

WebStorm has support for Grunt and Gulp task runners. See More

Top Pro

Server and client-side debugger

WebStorm has a powerful debugger, with support for conditional breakpoints. See More

Top Pro

Support for all major VCS systems

Webstorm supports not just Git and Mercurial, but Subversion, CVS, and Perforce as well. See More

Top Pro

Powerful Code Templates

Code Templates are powered by Apache VTL (Velocity Template Language) and allow for includes, custom variables, conditional blocks, iterators, and live templates. See More

Top Pro

Really good configurable code formatting

This integrates with other community tools like ESLint and editorconfig. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Top Pro

Free for open-source development, students, and teacher

Non-commercial open source projects, and students and teachers (including classroom licenses) may qualify for a free license. There is a 50% off license for startups (under 3 years old). You can read more about it here. See More

Top Pro

Has a built-in terminal

The IDE comes with a built-in terminal, a feature lacking in some lighter editors. See More

Top Pro

Special icons for most filetypes in project list

Webstorm comes with icons for many filetypes which makes it easier to find what you're looking for in the project list. See More

Top Pro

Cordova support

Cordova allows for building native mobile applications via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Webpack support

Assists with configuration and understands module resolution. See More

Top Pro

Dart language support

Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting, refactoring, and pub integration for Dart are supported in WebStorm. See More

Top Pro

Coffeescript support

Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting. See More

Top Pro

Low memory use

It may seem like a complex IDE and it does have a lot of functionality, yet it uses way less RAM than barebones-looking, Electron-based IDEs. See More

Top Pro

Gulp support

Top Pro

Auto sync settings across team / machines / platforms

With the settings repository, you can easily enforce your development standards. See More

Top Pro

Different configurations for different projects

It is able to specify for example node versions, which will be used to run task for current project. See More

Top Pro

Interactive theme (color scheme) editor

Makes adjusting an existing or creating new themes a breeze. Especially due to things like inheritance, as well as easily exporting/distributing/importing the color settings which really only store where on deviates from the defaults (thus the resulting files are very small and relatively human-readable). See More

Top Pro

Efficient and effective

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

File Size:10 PB

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

773 208

score 347 · Answer 13

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

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

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

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms 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 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

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

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

Built-in terminal emulator

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

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

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

Active development community

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

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

Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds

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

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

Work in TUI (Tex User Interface)

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

Easier to pick-up than ever

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

Top Pro

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

Specs

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

347 66

score 144 · Answer 14

Eclipse

Top Pro

Fast compiler

Eclipse uses a custom compiler (which can also be used outside of Eclipse), which is often faster than the normal Java Compiler, especially for incremental compilation. See More

Top Con

Poor language support via plugins

Eclipse supports other languages with a huge amount of plugins. Many languages have their own distribution, but multi-language is hard to exist in one project. Like Scala, there is no official support from Eclipse for this language. If Eclipse gets an update, languages such as these will not. See More

Top Pro

Large selection of plugins

Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins. See More

Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources. See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable. See More

Top Con

Newer versions are getting less stable

Eclipse 4 Neon randomly hangs. For example, during installing new software. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=513218 See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Eclipse is an open source project and free to use. See More

Top Con

UI can be confusing

There's an overly abundant presence of menus, this forces you to constantly click around the different menu structures; foreign ideas, like Views and Perspectives; strange menu choices, like configure settings located in Windows menu->Preferences. See More

Top Pro

Good refactoring tools

Top Con

Some old bugs don't get fixed

E.g. change a parameter name to the same as a field - the field will not be prefixed with "this." like in IDEA. See More

Top Pro

Good font rendering

Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal. See More

Top Con

Lack of plugins with good user interfaces

Many Eclipse plugins are extremely confusing, with UIs that are even less consistent than Eclipse itself. See More

Top Pro

Multiple languages - one IDE

Top Con

Tends to be slow and lags a lot

Top Pro

Gives good perspectives on your project

The concept of perspectives is outstanding. It puts right tools at your fingertips, keeping the tools you currently don't need out from the workbench. For example, in VCS perspective it's all about versions and branches. In debug perspective it's all about state. In java ee project it can show http endpoints in a very accessible manner. See More

Top Pro

Great debugger

Shows threads, concurrency locks, and conditional breakpoints. See More