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DevelopmentLinuxProductivityProgrammingText Editor

What are the best programming text editors?

104
Options 
Considered
5.9K
User 
Recs.
Mar 14, 2023
Last 
Updated
Things To Consider

A text editor is a program that is used for the purpose of editing plain text files. In the context of this question, a programming text editor is used for writing code and has features that help developers with their tasks, such as auto-indentation or automatic code formatting.
Text editors are often mixed up with Integrated Development Environments (IDE) so it’s important to make the distinction.

Wikipedia defines an IDE as:

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities tocomputer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a source code editor, build automation tools and a debugger. Most modern IDEs have intelligent code completion.

In other words, an IDE is a tool that is not only used for writing code. It can also compile and debug it. Usually IDEs are specialized in a single language or platform. For example, there can be IDEs for Python, PHP, JavaScript or even for Android Development.

On the other hand, a text editor has a broader approach, being able to edit any programming language instead of specializing only in one. Text editors are usually able to only write and edit codes but most of them have the ability to be extended by plugins which help developers with things from code completion, to debugging, to automatically formatting their code.

When choosing a text editor one should keep in mind the number of plugins available and their availability. This is important because good plugins increase productivity and development speed considerably.

Some text editors are very fast and minimalistic and portable but still extendable, others are larger, take more memory and are generally slower but have more features out-of-the-box.

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The Best 2 of 78 OptionsWhy?

Best programming text editorsPricePlatformsLicense
92
Vim
freeLinux, macOS, Windows, CygwinVim License
92
Neovim
FreeLinux, Windows, macOS, *nix, AndroidApache
89
Visual Studio Code
FreeWindows, macOS, LinuxMIT, Proprietary (official builds)
89
Geany
FreeWindows, Linux, MacGPL
87
Spacemacs
-Windows, MacOS, Linux-
See Full List
92
Excellent

Vim

My Recommendation for Vim

My Recommendation for Vim

Add Video or Image
All
74
Experiences
27
Pros
30
Cons
16
Specs
mccauls7
aditya joshi
Mario T. Lanza
Top Pro
•••

Lightweight and fast

When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs. See More
Rewaant Chhabra
Felix Blind
Top Con
•••

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More
Joan Pujol
Joan Pujol's Experience
I have learned vim by using it in most of my daily activities (writing email, coding, taking notes,...). Fast and versatile, I am still learning new tricks. See More
Specs
Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:Vim License
Extension language:Vim
mccauls7
The Eye Of Saruon
aditya joshi
Top Pro
•••

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More
mccauls7
Benjamin Leggett
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
Alois Mahdal
Alois Mahdal's Experience
I've been using Vim exclusively for over 5 years. Yes, the learning curve was steep, but it's not so steep: few weeks to get used to basics. Thinking of that as disadvantage is just ridiculous given that you will almost cetnainly never ever want to even talk about another editors. (I'm 100% serious on that.) And the power Vim gives you is unmatched on its own, and completely insane if you can combine it with things like GNU coreutils. Oh and at least on Linux distros it's everywhere; takes literally seconds to install. You have no excuses there. Disadvantages? Well ... 1. once you learn Vim, you will never ever have the experience of learning new editor. 2. once you get used to how Vim behaves, you will get angry with the rest of the world that does not behave like Vim. See? The only two "disadvantages* I know of are actually jokes! See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Owen Campbell-Moore
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
CalmDeimos
mccauls7
Benjamin Leggett
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
EnthusiasticConand
EnthusiasticConand's Experience
It really is only a text editor. I tried to develop some react code in it, and it was hard. Setting up a language server (to allow autocompletion, imports, etc) was a nightmare. I know it is fully customizable, but you have to put a tremendous effort in order to customize it. See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Slimothy
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
mccauls7
gilch
Endi Sukaj
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
Natta Wang
Natta Wang's Experience
It's very hard even you just want to exit the program. You will use effort too much to find a way to exit program, but even common menu command cannot help you anything. See More
Chloe Montanez
mccauls7
sicongliu
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
SomeCallMeTim
Laura Kyle
Slimothy
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
DependablePolemos
DependablePolemos's Experience
Vim is awesome! Sure it can be a challenge, but as any challenge its pretty good when we achieve it. For me, it makes writing code way more fun. For those who wanna learn, a quick intro could be: https://vim-adventures.com/ See More
SharpSuijin
mccauls7
QuietParticle
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 my ost of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More
Chloe Montanez
Michael white
Top Con
•••

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

See More
DashingAmphiaraus
DashingAmphiaraus's Experience
VIM has a steep learning curve that keeps most developers away. However, once you master the key bindings, your productivity will increase 10x over any GUI-based editor that encourages mouse usage. Imagine being able to perform copy paste, line and word cursor jumps, and macros like search/replace, all with the keyboard. The precision and speed can not be matched. See More
mccauls7
Andrés Araya
ideasman42
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
mYnDstrEAm
Top Con
•••

Outdated UI

See More
Stefan Papp
Stefan Papp's Experience
Once you are used to shortcuts, you do not want anything else See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Endi Sukaj
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
SomeCallMeTim
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
TranquilSusanoo
TranquilSusanoo's Experience
with high configurable feature See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Slimothy
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
Endi Sukaj
Superuser
Top Con
•••

Modal editing

Has a clean split between editing text (Insert Mode) and the other functions of the editor. See More
Elias Van Ootegem
Elias Van Ootegem's Experience
Vim is the daddy. Started using it as my main/only editor just over a year ago, can't imagine me ever going back to anything else See More
mccauls7
thermoplastics
Don Smith
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
mccauls7
NicolasRaoul
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
CreativeTisiphone
CreativeTisiphone's Experience
At first I hated it now I only use Vim and vi if Vim is not installed See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
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
mccauls7
jdmith
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
MeticulousNekhbet
MeticulousNekhbet's Experience
Muy rápido. Mejora productividad. Lo puedo usar en cualquier dispositivo See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Nitzan Mor-Sarid
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
Endi Sukaj
VersatileHypate
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
IntuitiveMacGreine
IntuitiveMacGreine's Experience
Years and years of productivity! See More
mccauls7
Enrico Carlesso
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
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Endi Sukaj
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
WiseCottyto
WiseCottyto's Experience
Very useful after the initial learning curve. See More
InfluentialLempo
Chloe Montanez
DevotedTaronhiawagon
Top Pro
•••

By default in Linux

All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient! See More
Jake Gage
Top Con
•••

Unintuitive mode switching

See More
Aaron Goshine
Aaron Goshine's Experience
Great so far and limitless in terms of what you can achieve using simple text-editor See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Bennett Hoffman
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
Monika
HonestNephthys
Top Con
•••

Extensibility isn't that great

While it has gotten better and some projects are slowly starting to build proper extension support, it still can't and by design never will achieve the extensibility of another editor like emacs. See More
DaringOccopirmus
DaringOccopirmus's Experience
Any serious programmer I know and all my university profs all program in vim See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
BenjaminRH
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
Endi Sukaj
Stuart Kearney
Top Con
•••

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

See More
BraveCaelus
BraveCaelus's Experience
Fast, lightweight, portable See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
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
LoveableTuireann
LoveableTuireann's Experience
I've been using it since 1999 See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Eric Mrak
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
Raghu Ranganathan
Raghu Ranganathan's Experience
Old, fast, versatile and simple. Unlike most modern editors, vim will not bther you with its GUI. Instead it has a weath of commands and shortcuts to help you finish whatever you want, and quickly. Due to it's simple nature, it's also highly extensible, and works on anything. Vim is an editor which trains you to be good at it. Every good text editor takes inspiration from vim. All major editors have vim keybindings. The more you use it, the more efficient you become at using it for programming. There are many plugins and extensions which can turn vim into a powerful tool, that is indispensable for you as a programmer. The only problem is that it's hard to learn for those that are new to using a purely CLI environment. I had a lot of difficulty trying to use vim initially, but it grows on you due to its inherent complexity. See More
teadan
Endi Sukaj
tekgruv
Top Pro
•••

Has been supported for a long time

And will be supported for many years to come. See More
cosmo
cosmo's Experience
It's the most popular text editor in history for a reason. Learning Vim will make you many times more productive whether it's for computer programming or creative writing. See More
mccauls7
thermoplastics
Chad Perrin
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
FascinatingIrpa
FascinatingIrpa's Experience
it's a timeless classic See More
walderich
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
Zhou Tianyou
Zhou Tianyou's Experience
Hard to get started. See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
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
SupportiveErimon
SupportiveErimon's Experience
Simply the best. See More
mccauls7
Jonathan
Chad Perrin
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
lemoncode
lemoncode's Experience
Some really handy and useful functions and shortcuts that I haven't seen in another texts editors. See More
Chloe Montanez
Seän Shepherd
Top Pro
•••

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

See More
SomeCallMeTim
SomeCallMeTim's Experience
I use vim only when I'm forced to -- i.e., I'm editing a file on a remote server. This is becoming less and less common, though, with Docker and Kubernetes workflows resulting in 99% of the work being done locally, so the entire strength of vim is being rendered useless. With vim you have to change from the common keys available in EVERY OTHER APP on your system. Unless you only use vim and a shell (with vim-modified keys), you're forever mode switching. And almost all of vim's advantages have been adopted, with BETTER UI, in modern text editors. Sublime, VS Code, See More
CreativeTisiphone
Top Pro
•••

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

See More
Djenah
Djenah's Experience
Stood the test of time See More
muzikers
Top Pro
•••

Can set up keymapping

See More
max necro
max necro's Experience
Steep learning curve, but infinitely configurable, stable as a rock and found on most any *nix box you need to ssh into (or vi). Learning all the keyboard commands could take years to master, but you can get by with a managable subset. Once you've committed the commands to muscle memory there's no going back. Aside from its robustness as development environment it's also the only editor I use to edit config files as the differentiation between insert- and command-mode prevents me from fat fingering sensitive config options. I took a look at vimscript to better understand certain notation in .vimrc and while powerful it is cryptic. See More
Lugarius Reloaded
Top Pro
•••

Works on Android

See More
stylizh
stylizh's Experience
All time best editor. See More
Chloe Montanez
Aaron Goshine
Top Pro
•••

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More
Vitaly Zdanevich
Top Pro
•••

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More
MerryPicus
Top Pro
•••

Status Booster

Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex. See More
HideSee All
92
Excellent

Neovim

My Recommendation for Neovim

My Recommendation for Neovim

Add Video or Image
All
37
Experiences
10
Pros
18
Cons
8
Specs
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Henry John Kupty
Top Pro
•••

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple. See More
Laura Kyle
Top Con
•••

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

See More
Rempas
Rempas's Experience
Vim but modern and more powerful! I'm using it as my editor of choice for almost 2 and a half years! See More
Specs
Platforms:Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android
License:Apache
Cross Platform:Yes
Bracket Matching:Yes
See All Specs
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Michael Mahemoff
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
ConvivialUastyrdzhi
Valentin “Querdenker 9” Ang.
mccauls7
Top Con
•••

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms See More
InquisitiveEcne
InquisitiveEcne's Experience
I think that Neovim is blazing fast. See More
Michael Mahemoff
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
SomeCallMeTim
Top Con
•••

Poor feature discoverability

See More
MeticulousAlabandus
MeticulousAlabandus's Experience
Helps me be productive, runs fast. See More
mccauls7
Александр Цыганков
Top Pro
•••

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. See More
SomeCallMeTim
Top Con
•••

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More
ComposedTelete
ComposedTelete's Experience
Faster and more stable than vim See More
mccauls7
Henry John Kupty
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
Monika
David Siller
Marc Telesha
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
LogicalPaidia
LogicalPaidia's Experience
you need to try. See More
Don Smith
Top Pro
•••

Async plugin execution

See More
SomeCallMeTim
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
HumorousWepwawet
HumorousWepwawet's Experience
Kaboom!!! :D Fast and Can be a IDE with just a few plugins See More
Don Smith
Top Pro
•••

Active development community

See More
SomeCallMeTim
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
SensibleGenann
SensibleGenann's Experience
2+ years See More
Mantas Zimnickas
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
SomeCallMeTim
Top Con
•••

Poor support for external tooling

See More
CapableHel
CapableHel's Experience
hackable for beginning programmers, fast, tons of features See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Laura Kyle
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
cosmo
cosmo's Experience
It's everything great about Vim, only better! Neovim cuts out a lot of the cruft that Vim has accumulated over the decades and adds all sorts of functionality including the ability to write plugins in languages other than Vimscript! If you're looking for a Vim-like experience, use Neovim. See More
kleberng
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
ElatedPannychis
ElatedPannychis's Experience
Awesome Code editor See More
paweldudev
Top Pro
•••

Easier to pick-up than ever

Don't believe it? Try typing vimtutor in your command line right now. See More
Seth Petersen
Marcel Härri
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
Quentin Fan-Chiang
Mantas Zimnickas
Top Pro
•••

Work in TUI (Text User Interface)

Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh. See More
paweldudev
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
MeticulousAlabandus
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
MeticulousAlabandus
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
InventivePanacea
Top Pro
•••

Treesitter and LSP

See More
Paolo
Steve Robertson
Top Pro
•••

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

See More
HideSee All

76 Other Options Considered

89

Visual Studio Code

My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

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All
125
Experiences
47
Pros
52
Cons
25
Specs
mccauls7
thermoplastics
Amir Shiri
Top Pro
•••

Extension support

There's a growing number of extensions in Visual Studio Code, including a marketplace. See More
HonestNephthys
Andrew Truex
Yoshiyuki
Top Con
•••

Slow launch time

Slower than its competitors, e.g. Sublime Text, Vim, Emacs, Spacemacs. Extensions also don't load quickly on startup. See More
pizzamonkey
pizzamonkey's Experience
A nice tradeoff between the editing speed and customization of vim, and the ease of use of notepad++ or sublime. See More
Specs
Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux
License:MIT, Proprietary (official builds)
Cross Platform:Yes
Bracket Matching:Yes
See All Specs
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Slimothy
Top Pro
•••

Integrated debugging tools

Visual Studio Code has built-in debugging tools for Node, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More
Yoshiyuki
Maxime Sidibe-Ballegeer
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
Rempas
Rempas's Experience
Slow, bloated and heavy. Not recommended See More
Laura Kyle
Jim Frenette
Top Pro
•••

Markdown edit live preview

Open any Markdown file and press Ctrl+Shift+V in the editor for a preview of the Markdown file. You can view the preview side-by-side with the file you are editing and see changes reflected in real-time as you edit. See More
mccauls7
Inside System
Top Con
•••

Still bad performance like all Electron-based editors

If you have I5-6500 or better CPU, as well as fast SSD, there is nothing to worry about. But if your hardware is a little different and somewhat worse, editing will be made difficult by freezes, lags, and slow issues. Performance of VSCode is much better in comparison to that of Atom; but still VSCode is very slow and not usable for large files and for slow PC's. Another con related to performance is it's very high resource consumption usage. Electron is a Node and Chrome app combination. As such, every time you are running Google Chrome (several tabs) and an extra server for it, you can imagine how much memory and CPU is eaten by VSCode. In any case, Microsoft is doing a lot of work for optimizations and hopefully one day this app will be much faster than it is now. See More
Natta Wang
Natta Wang's Experience
I happy with this editor, even though you said I depends on GUI too much but it will help you save your brain space for remember the CLI base like Vim for every commands to do what you want, but it can recognize immediately if you see in the screen with GUI base. See More
Endi Sukaj
Konstantin Pečaļka
Top Pro
•••

Open source

Visual Studio Code is open source and released under the MIT license. See More
HonestNephthys
Top Con
•••

Electron Based

It is built on the electron framework, effectively making it a web browser that is somehow editing code. This is why it uses a massive amount of RAM and why it can be slow on almost all non-super-high-end machines. Even if it wasn't for performance reasons, it is quite an odd choice to use a web browser to base your IDE on, very questionable software quality. See More
Ray
Ray's Experience
VS Code can be easily molded into a lightweight IDE for nearly any language, thanks to the rich ecosystem of extensions. I've found that whatever language, syntax, or tools that I need, it's always there. It probably took me less than a few hours to set-up everything from scratch to exactly what I need. I'm usually most productive with VS Code when working on decently sized projects. The extensions allow for IDE-like features that can be a pain to achieve in other editors. It also comes with an integrated Terminal that I can switch to with a hotkey, and there are vim keybindings available through an extension. This enables me to move fast and I almost never have to use my mouse. While I wouldn't call the performance blazing fast, it's reasonable for my old machine. My only gripe is the long start-up time, which isn't much of an issue once it's up and running. Overall, it's a solid editor that can be easily shaped into what you want. See More
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Isaac Andrade
Top Pro
•••

Integrated terminal

Interacting with your full terminal inside of the editor is a great productivity boost. Further to this, it's very convenient during development. See More
Monika
Eric Waters
Top Con
•••

Telemetry

Microsoft isn't a big respector of privacy, and VS Code, despite being open source on a very liberal license is no exception. Use VS Codium instead to avoid telemetry and Microsoft branding - it's the exact same thing, stripped of the bad stuff and recompiled. See More
LikableChantico
LikableChantico's Experience
Microshaft sucks See More
DaringErnmas
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Relatively fast

Visual Studio Code has a faster startup time than virtually all other Electron-based editors. The plugin model is also more restrictive than other text editors to prevent issues with bad plugins causing slowdown that plagues editors like Atom. See More
Alcides Lemos
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
Alfredo Martel Revuelta
Alfredo Martel Revuelta's Experience
I've been using it in the last few months and it's definitely the best thing Microsoft has done in time See More
Ho Wing Yip
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has built-in git support. The GUI has all the basic features for Git repository management, and if you need some of the advanced features, well, you could always use the terminal. See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
thermoplastics
Top Con
•••

Partial Git support

Git is supported in VSC, but not fully embraced. Git usage is over-simplified: you can push, "sync", checkout, etc., but there is no support for scripts, tasks, or advanced operations. See More
Anton Peck
Anton Peck's Experience
Although this is so similar to Atom, I feel like there are just subtle differences that fit my cross-platform workflow a little nicer. Hotkey terminal pane, as well as integrated Git are quite nice to have out of the box. See More
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Xaver Hellauer
Top Pro
•••

Intellisense

Visual Studio Code has the best code completion in comparison to other editors. See More
Andre
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
Maxime Sidibe-Ballegeer
Maxime Sidibe-Ballegeer's Experience
Faster than Atom and easier than Vim. For once, well played Microsoft! See More
mccauls7
Israel Gilyadov
Top Pro
•••

Great extension handling

Visual Studio Code is able to handle large amounts of extensions, unlike Atom which will just crash or freeze instead. See More
Laura Kyle
Nauman Umer
Top Con
•••

Can't open binary files

Visual studio can not open binary files instead it show an error message that either file is binary or in unsupported file format. See More
MethodicalGanymede
MethodicalGanymede's Experience
I replaced my IDE completely with VSCode See More
Martin Valgur
Top Pro
•••

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors and column selection allows for versatile ways of editing. E.g. shift + alt + left mouse for box select. See More
Ilias Deros
Top Con
•••

Slower than a text editor and less features than an IDE.

Sublime Text, VIM or Notepad++ will always run faster but VSCode is very close in terms of performance, while offering many more features like debugger, terminal & git. See More
CoherentApsat
CoherentApsat's Experience
Love that is is so very easy to configure See More
HonestNephthys
JM80
Joshua Jolley
Top Pro
•••

Good customisation

It is easy to install add-ons and customise many aspects of the editor. See More
Monika
TrustworthyYumKaax
Top Con
•••

5,000+ open issues on Github

Seems like they don't know about free software. See More
IceClad
IceClad's Experience
I used to code exclusively in vim, but the vim extension for this is amazing. You get the benefits of vim + the benefits of an IDE, amazing. Also it's lightweight. See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Small size

VSC is only 40 MB in size. This means that it can be downloaded and installed in seconds. See More
Daniel Menelkir
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
SuccinctWatiKutjara
SuccinctWatiKutjara's Experience
It is so easy to use and I love the IntelliSense See More
Sergiy Kyrylkov
Top Pro
•••

New functionality in regular monthly releases

See More
HonestNephthys
FascinatingAgdistis
Top Con
•••

It is made by Microsoft

Microsoft has been known in the tech community for disrespecting users and falsely suing free (as in freedom) software projects. It's only recently that they switched to "support" open source (open source is not free-as-in-freedom software) but that seems to be a PR move as most of their products are still proprietary. See More
ExpertIdyia
ExpertIdyia's Experience
Very easy to use, and very quickly you can become a power user with all the shortcuts available. Simple yet so powerful. See More
DreamerPeklenc
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
kaznovac
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
Alex Babichev
Alex Babichev's Experience
Dest editor or even small IDE for Software developing. Intellisense is really cool feature. Love it. See More
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. See More
pukka studios
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
Chuck N.
Chuck N.'s Experience
Low startup time, most likely due to Electorn See More
Rūdis
Harrison Ekpobimi
Top Pro
•••

Language support

It supports most programming languages. See More
Federico C
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
FascinatingBenzaiten
FascinatingBenzaiten's Experience
Buggy and slow. Too much bloat. See More
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

Huge community behind it

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows. See More
Daniel Menelkir
Top Con
•••

Very bad auto import

See More
DeliberateMacha
DeliberateMacha's Experience
I use the Visual Studio Code for 2-3 years. Visual Studio Code is a very nice text editor/IDE. Because of the features and plugins that Visual Studio Code provides for users to use. Also, Visual Studio Code is free software and it's also cross-platform. I really like Visual Studio Code and I use it as my daily tool in programming and note-taking too sometimes. See More
DreamerPeklenc
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
Endi Sukaj
Wei Lin
Top Con
•••

Extensibility is poor

Plugin creation is rather restricted in order to control the quality of the plugins themselves so that they don't slow down the editor. But this also restricts the overall power and what the plugins themselves can do. See More
Gray Pandora
Gray Pandora's Experience
easy to use, ton's of plugins See More
Dave Jensen
Top Pro
•••

Cross platform built on Electron

It basically works the same on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It's built using Electron. See More
teadan
ElatedPan
Top Con
•••

Cannot fold docstrings on Python

There is currently no way to fold docstring documentation inside functions. For bigger projects with very detailed docstrings it becomes an annoyance to scroll all the way down. See More
AffableZelus
AffableZelus's Experience
Featurefull! I just love using it. See More
GenerousBelobog
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
VersatileAnput
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
DecisiveEidothea
DecisiveEidothea's Experience
Love it. See More
HonestNephthys
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

Open source

Released under the MIT License. See More
teadan
VersatileAnput
Top Con
•••

Poor error fix suggestions

Error detection and suggestions/fixes are poor compared to IntelliJ platforms. See More
Lewis Crichton
Lewis Crichton's Experience
This is my daily driver for code editing. I use it for JavaScript, Python, and sometimes C# if I need to make a quick edit without rebuilding. See More
DreamerPeklenc
Top Pro
•••

Extendable through plugins

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plugins available to extend its functionality. See More
Matthew
kaznovac
Top Con
•••

It's not an IDE, it's a text editor

See More
ResourcefulGelos
ResourcefulGelos's Experience
It was great, very powerful, fast, many extensions and more. See More
Paolo
Abe TRS
Top Pro
•••

Just the best text editor

Atom was the first to break the formula for a perfect text editor. Mix the customizability and versatility and community of vim and emacs with the simple UI of Sublime. But Atom was really slow and the UI still didn't mix with its great eco-system. That is where VS Code does it best. It simplifies Atom to create the best text editor. Yeah there are problems here and there. But mostly the editor is the best for coding. Especially if you want to do things with Javascript. The whole text-editor was mainly built for JS. See More
Alejandro Arciniegas
ElatedPan
Top Con
•••

Intellisense being outsourced to Open source projects

Python hinting is outsourced to Jedi, which is fine but lacks in many areas. For example Google docstrings, and functions which are decorated, are not being properly displayed. See More
Whipppingdot
Whipppingdot's Experience
This text editor is simply amazing. It is very nice as you can customize it to your liking. It is very useful and I love it. See More
DreamerPeklenc
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
RationalChalchiuhtotolin
Top Con
•••

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

See More
royenthusiast
royenthusiast's Experience
As per my experience, Visual Studio Code is my recommendation. Fast, Lightweight and mainly Git Control. See More
Jurij Albegger
Top Pro
•••

Auto-saving files/tabs

If you close it without saving your open tabs, the tabs will be restored after reopening. Just like Notepad++. See More
Monika
Andrew Truex
Top Con
•••

Has 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
RationalClio
RationalClio's Experience
so cool See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Gil Druart
Top Pro
•••

Integrated task runners

Visual Studio Code comprises a workflow to suit every individual user. See More
AssertiveProteus
AssertiveProteus's Experience
Love it See More
Devesh Bhati
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
ThoroughWerethekau
ThoroughWerethekau's Experience
Very easy to learn and has lots of plugins to add features such as vim See More
Christian Griggs
Top Pro
•••

Typescript Definition support for Javascript

See More
Andrew Truex
Andrew Truex's Experience
The GOAT text editor 🐐🐐🐐. I was a diehard sublime text users for about 3 years but once Microsoft dropped vscode I was sold within minutes. It's everything I want from a fully feature editor and is customizable enough to make it exactly how I prefer See More
HappyBoinayel
Top Pro
•••

Privacy-centric version exists: VSCodium

For those of you who don't want it calling home to Microsoft, check out VSCodium. See More
MeticulousAlabandus
MeticulousAlabandus's Experience
Bloated, slow startup, electron app. Do I need say more? See More
LogicalDelbaeth
Top Pro
•••

Amazing Python support

Just install the Python module and get the best Python editor of all times. See More
Ilias Deros
Ilias Deros's Experience
Took me a while to switch to VSCode from sublime, and there's no going back. Sacrificing the speed of a native application in favor of a built-in debugger is a fair trade-off for any sort of development. See More
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

It has gotten really good

All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need. See More
CompetentLaima
CompetentLaima's Experience
Visual studio Code is the best text editor I ever used... its less text text editor but have a lot more than a usual editors and after its extentions experience becomes so strong See More
ToughOkuninushi
Top Pro
•••

IDE

It's a really good Integrated Development Environment designed for software development, not just a really good text editor, like many of the other options listed here. See More
Mohammad H. Sattarian
Mohammad H. Sattarian's Experience
Fully featured, regularly updated, perfectly built Editor with tones of plugins and features and settings. just the BEST! See More
ResoluteEnkimdu
Top Pro
•••

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More
HappyBoinayel
HappyBoinayel's Experience
Love it, much lighter weight than Jetbrain's IDEs. Couldn't get launch and debug working exactly as I had liked. See More
Endi Sukaj
Febrianto Nugroho
Top Pro
•••

Dark theme by default

Comfortable for the eyes. See More
Amit
Amit's Experience
I use it for everything - it's awesome. I haven't seen another lightweight IDE that compares. See More
mccauls7
Tom Diethe
Top Pro
•••

C# mono support using xbuild

You can easily create and compile C# console apps on non-Windows platforms. See More
ConscientiousPerkunas
ConscientiousPerkunas's Experience
Excellent See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Portable version available

You can download the portable version of VSC and keep it on a USB drive to use it wherever you want. See More
ReverentEleos
ReverentEleos's Experience
Great See More
Devesh Bhati
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
Zhou Tianyou
Zhou Tianyou's Experience
Faster and more powerful than it's competers e.g. atom See More
Devesh Bhati
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
Yuriy Kazmirchuk
Yuriy Kazmirchuk's Experience
Totally my favorite. Fast, cristalizable, robust, solid, stable, great and active community, auto completion, intuitive interface, a ton of useful extensions, excellent. Considered Atom and Sublime, which are also great, but VS Code is awesome. See More
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

Integrated debugging 

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More
TrustworthyYumKaax
TrustworthyYumKaax's Experience
Lots of open issues on Github See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Internationalization

Visual Studio Code officially ships and supports nine different languages (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish). See More
PopularPazuzu
PopularPazuzu's Experience
The new remote development extension is a killer extension. Very powerful and very easy to set up! Highly recommend! See More
Devesh Bhati
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
PerfectNohochacyum
PerfectNohochacyum's Experience
fhdgtrfg See More
Paolo
Adrian Lopez
Top Pro
•••

Golang support is great

Despite the debugging which relies on Delve , Golang extensions for VS Code make this editor a really good option to write Go. See More
EfficientHanwasuit
EfficientHanwasuit's Experience
Really fast, really simple, had a rich plug in library. Best thing I've used since Notepad++ See More
teadan
Andrew Truex
Top Pro
•••

Recently introduced a Remote SSH feature

Users can secure shell into just the editor itself. This opens up a wide range of new uses for the editor. See More
SincereEleos
SincereEleos's Experience
Quick & Powerful See More
Jared McAteer
Top Pro
•••

(Neo)Vim integration

Of all the IDEs VSCode has one of the best implementations of a Vim mode. See More
Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa's Experience
I like vim, but those keys always get in the way when I am focused on programming. Visual Studio Code is an emacs wannabe, but it very easy to use and access all options. I have replaced vim with vscode because of this reason. See More
PopularPazuzu
Top Pro
•••

Remote Development

The new remote development extension is a killer extension. Very powerful and very easy to set up! Highly recommend! See More
Thinker Pal
Thinker Pal's Experience
Much more efficient to use (code, test, then git) for me See More
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More
LoyalIsis
LoyalIsis's Experience
Vim-plugin + all niceties of modern text editors = perfect See More
JollyQuangeio
Top Pro
•••

Good support for new Emmet syntax

See More
OrganizedCoronus
OrganizedCoronus's Experience
Web developer/designer and lecturer for 15+ years. See More
JollyQuangeio
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
fifn2
Top Pro
•••

Zen Mode

A beautiful zen mode to help you concentrate. See More
Devesh Bhati
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
Devesh Bhati
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
Devesh Bhati
Top Pro
•••

High fidelity C# plugin

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support. See More
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89

Geany

My Recommendation for Geany

My Recommendation for Geany

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All
20
Experiences
6
Pros
10
Cons
3
Specs
Laura Kyle
Juan Manuel Zúñiga Arias
Top Pro
•••

Light and fast

Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features. See More
HonestNephthys
Monika
Lugarius Reloaded
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
FriendlyTethra
FriendlyTethra's Experience
I've used Geany to hand-code websites for years... perfect for my needs. See More
Specs
Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac
License:GPL
Cross Platform:Yes
Bracket Matching:Yes
See All Specs
Juan Manuel Zúñiga Arias
Top Pro
•••

Simple project management

See More
meikl
Top Con
•••

Windows installer not digitally signed

See More
SuccessfulDemeter
SuccessfulDemeter's Experience
user-friendly See More
Endi Sukaj
Juan Manuel Zúñiga Arias
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
Endi Sukaj
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
AmbitiousTonacacihuatl
AmbitiousTonacacihuatl's Experience
It has very few external dependencies, so it's easy to make it portable (e.g., convert it into an AppImage). See More
PositivePhilomelus
Top Pro
•••

Cross platform

Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows. See More
TolerantPicus
TolerantPicus's Experience
Simple and lightweight by default, quite powerful and extensible when needed. It supports ctags, custom compilation with make, auto-complete with snippets, and it is very customizable. See More
HonestNephthys
HumorousAgdistis
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
Zhou Tianyou
Zhou Tianyou's Experience
Lightweight and fast, easy to use See More
mccauls7
mar77i
thermoplastics
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
ComposedCleta
ComposedCleta's Experience
The best code editor for C/C++ ....offer really a friendly-user interface and built-in terminal is awesome which is really helpful in competitive programming... Secondly about VS Code, It's good but extension take some time to load on startup. See More
HonestNephthys
meikl
Top Pro
•••

Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software

This software respects your freedom. See More
meikl
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
Monika
GenuineAernus
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Build in terminal

Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows. See More
meikl
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
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87

Spacemacs

My Recommendation for Spacemacs

My Recommendation for Spacemacs

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43
Experiences
11
Pros
25
Cons
6
Specs
gilch
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Combines the best parts of Vi and Emacs

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box. See More
HonestNephthys
gilch
Endi Sukaj
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
CapableKondole
CapableKondole's Experience
Although there are times that Spacemacs will give you headaches the number of features available and ways you can edit other developers packages to give your own spin and create your own custom packages and so on make Spacemacs a free open source development suite, work environment, organisational tool, and almost an entire operating system in itself. See More
Specs
Platforms:Windows, MacOS, Linux
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Laura Kyle
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
anonslant
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
ThriftyAinina
ThriftyAinina's Experience
I have been using Emacs for about 3 years now. But when I switched Spacemacs, it was game changing. Everything worked from day one. The most used layers were included but commented in the dotfile which was very handy for me to just uncomment and get going. And if something was missing I could just go through the documentation available both online and offline to switch on some cool new layers. I would say that Emacs would be a notepad to a beginner while Spacemacs is an IDE out of the box. See More
Sylvain Benner
Top Pro
•••

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. See More
Severen Redwood
anonslant
Top Con
•••

Requires prior experience in Vim or Emacs

They have a very poor guide to new users who are not familiar with this type of editor. You should have experience using Vi(-m) or Emacs. Spacemacs is distributed based on Emacs, so you should learn the basic of Emacs. This is not a means to learn from the Emacs's original distribution(GNU Emacs) rather than Spacemacs. Although the advantages of Spacemacs can offset the fundamental difficulty of Emacs, it means that you have to learn another new features and modes beyond the Emacs. See More
TruthfulAequitas
TruthfulAequitas's Experience
Very nice support for exotic languages, amazing amount of working modes for every possible task. Works out of the box. See More
Endi Sukaj
Christian Johansson
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
mccauls7
ideasman42
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
EagerSors
EagerSors's Experience
simplifies your emacs config See More
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Sylvain Benner
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
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Don Smith
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
MerryUgallu
MerryUgallu's Experience
I've been using lots of IDE and editor ( also Vim ). For the last 3 years i've been using spacemacs with lot of joy productivity :) See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Sylvain Benner
Top Pro
•••

Cross-platform

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. See More
HonestNephthys
mccauls7
Peter Nagy
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
PreciseKuraokami
PreciseKuraokami's Experience
I never dreamed an editor could be so powerful and intuitive. Have you ever been hacking away and thought "man, wouldn't it be nice if I could <perform very complicated, rare, niche action> with a couple key presses?" With Spacemacs the answer is almost always yes you can, and with Vim's elegance too, and it's very nice indeed. I've all too often been on the verge of tears in frustration with the editors of my past. Spacemacs has induced me to cry tears of joy, more than once. See More
mccauls7
B Lucas
Sylvain Benner
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
Taku Tekato
Taku Tekato's Experience
Featureful See More
mccauls7
Endi Sukaj
Laura Kyle
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
MeticulousBonaDea
MeticulousBonaDea's Experience
I was working a lot with netbeans before and also had my fair share of vim and vanilla emacs. After a short warm up phase and discovering the fantastic project wide search mechanisms I never looked back. See More
HonestNephthys
Endi Sukaj
Sergio Díaz Nila
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
SupportiveEmpusa
SupportiveEmpusa's Experience
Well designed emacs configuration, with a batteries included, get-to-work mindset. I have been using it for 4 years now on linux and windows. My lazy colleagues drool when they see me hacking. It is elegant, fast (when run in daemon mode), and stays out of the way when necessary. See More
mccauls7
Rob Donnelly
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
ResoluteKratos
ResoluteKratos's Experience
From Earth to Space for a smoother Emacs experience. See More
Endi Sukaj
Chanchana Sornsoontorn (Off)
Josh Waller
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
Kajika
Kajika's Experience
Spacemacs is a life-saver to introduce people to emacs/vim power (spacevim too) and for people that needs/wants to be productive without having to spent hours is setting emacs correctly. The space menu is the best mix of auto-discovery (for newcomers) and speed (for veterans) I have experienced so far. The colour scheme is perfect and very welcome compared to the ageing default emacs. It is far for competing for speed but it has all expected features and beyond (emacs tramp mode, best regex substitute ever with highlights, etc). See More
gilch
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
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
Endi Sukaj
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
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
mccauls7
Sylvain Benner
Top Pro
•••

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short. See More
gilch
mccauls7
Rob Donnelly
Top Pro
•••

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More
JM80
ProductiveRosmerta
Top Pro
•••

Easily extended with community plugins

See More
Juan Caicedo
Top Pro
•••

Manage many code bases easily

See More
HardwareHero
Rob Donnelly
Top Pro
•••

LaTeX support

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more. See More
Endi Sukaj
mccauls7
Марк Сафронов
Top Pro
•••

Works well with Common Lisp

See More
gilch
Top Pro
•••

Can work in terminal mode

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something. See More
Ray
Keldwik Chaldain
Top Pro
•••

Daemon support

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup. See More
Yoshiyuki
Nick Anderson
Top Pro
•••

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More
Rafael Miranda-Esquivel
Top Pro
•••

Manage R files easily

See More
Daniel Fitzpatrick
Top Pro
•••

Great Clojure support

See More
PracticalPerseus
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
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86

Kate

My Recommendation for Kate

My Recommendation for Kate

Add Video or Image
All
29
Experiences
6
Pros
21
Cons
1
Specs
Simona
RickZeeland
Laura Kyle
Top Pro
•••

Syntax highlighting

Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 300 languages, from Assembler to Zsh. See More
meikl
Top Con
•••

Not available as portable Windows application

If an installation is required, the risk is higher that uninstalling does not uninstall everything. See More
DreamerLibitina
DreamerLibitina's Experience
Great default keyboard shortcuts, great for working with multiple files, has a rich set of features while still being a text editor and not an IDE (for better or for worse, depending on one's individual taste and needs). See More
Specs
Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD
License:GPL
Collaborative editing:No
RTL:Yes
mccauls7
HardwareHero
Laura Kyle
Top Pro
•••

Integrated terminal

Kate has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program or commands quickly, all without leaving the editor. See More
JoyfulJulunggul
JoyfulJulunggul's Experience
very useful and productive See More
Sylvain Benner
Laura Kyle
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro
•••

Fast and minimalistic

Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed. See More
I-Ta Hsieh
I-Ta Hsieh's Experience
A simple and powerful linux-native editor See More
Laura Kyle
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
Justus Sagemüller
Justus Sagemüller's Experience
Good compromise for beginners: quite powerful, in a way that can easily be discovered from the GUI, yet not as heavyweight as full IDEs. For experts, Vim, Emacs, or else such an IDE are however the better tools. See More
Cochise César
Top Pro
•••

Load big files very fast

Can load files of several MB in instants. See More
CaringHuitaca
CaringHuitaca's Experience
I was used to Notepad++ and thought that it was the best editor in the world. But once I got the hang of working with Kate it turned out to be much more efficient. I can open as much documents at the same time as I like. Session management allows me to switch quickly between tasks. It is lightning fast and quite stable. And it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that come with some editors that are more like an IDE. And, having ditched Windows after struggling with it from Windows 3, I like that it runs on the only tolerable OS: Linux. Kate isn't well-known, and maybe my needs, being a programmer for 45 years, are a bit off-average. But it really suits me well. I had to get used a little bit to the philosophy behind it, especially in opening and managing many files at once. But this is really a tool you'll start to love more and more. See More
Laura Kyle
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
OrganizedWaramurungundi
OrganizedWaramurungundi's Experience
Kate, at first glance, looks very minimalistic and even simplistic, but it is very rich in features (just to mention some of them: block editing, multiple cursors, sorting, text statistics, regular expression search and replace, syntax highlighting for over a hundred languages, spellchecking, auto-complete, split screen, tabs, document map, terminal within the editor itself, project organization, sessions, editing over SSH and FTP...), it is customizable (almost any aspect of it can be tweaked), it is user-friendly and has a rather gentle learning curve. It opens huge files. Kate's only downside, in my opinion, is that it takes 2-3 seconds to load, so it's not the fastest text editor there is. See More
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

Modern, self explanatory GUI

See More
CredibleCinteotl
Top Pro
•••

Simple, yet feature-rich

See More
Waqar Ahmed
Top Pro
•••

Multiple cursors support

See More
Waqar Ahmed
Top Pro
•••

Language server protocol support

See More
DreamerLibitina
Top Pro
•••

Files with the same name, when opened simultaneously, are easily distinguishable

When several files with the same name (but from different directories) are open at the same time, Kate displays the name or their respective directory with them, so that you can effortlessly see which file is which. See More
DreamerLibitina
Top Pro
•••

Great keyboard shortcuts

Kate has very sensible default shortcuts and an even greater set of optional shortcuts with which text editing becomes extremely fast and intuitive. See More
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

Runs flawlessly and natively on Linux

See More
Laura Kyle
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
Simona
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

As many panes as you wish, in any desired layout

See More
thermoplastics
Andrea Allais
Top Pro
•••

Excellent build plugin

Build plugin with excellent parsing of compiler output, allows to jump to all source lines involved in the compile error, across the call stack. See More
Laura Kyle
thermoplastics
The Eye Of Saruon
Top Pro
•••

Vi entry mode

Kate has a vi entry mode. See More
Svjatoslavs Krasnikovs
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

As many panes as you wish, in any layout

See More
Svjatoslavs Krasnikovs
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

Sessions are great, you can switch quickly between tasks

See More
Simona
Svjatoslavs Krasnikovs
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

By far one of the best and lightest text editors

Notepads alternative (for Windows users). See More
Simona
CaringHuitaca
Top Pro
•••

Very handy switching between files in each pane, when you've gotten used to it

See More
HideSee All
86

Sublime Text

My Recommendation for Sublime Text

My Recommendation for Sublime Text

Add Video or Image
All
52
Experiences
10
Pros
28
Cons
13
Specs
mccauls7
Slimothy
Stuart Kearney
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
Francisco
Rachel Krupnick
Bryan
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
CooperativeHapantali
CooperativeHapantali's Experience
It’s a memory hugger but its the best editor out of the box for me. Sure, it’s proprietary but a man has got to make a buck, i’m ok with that. Lots of plugins and uses python to extend. See More
Specs
Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux
License:Proprietary
Cross Platform:Yes
Collaborative editing:No
See All Specs
mccauls7
trailblazer
Top Pro
•••

Lightweight

Sublime Text is very lightweight by default. Customization occurs on the fly thanks to Package Control. See More
Slimothy
Mukund Aggarwal
Ming Chris Luo
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
WorthyPhraPhrom
WorthyPhraPhrom's Experience
As a designer I’ve found sublime text to be the most usable editor. I use it to edit html, css and JavaScript files and have loved it’s helpful formatting features. Also love how it can open a whole folder for easy access. See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Stuart Kearney
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
Emma
Top Con
•••

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. See More
Matti Hyttinen
Matti Hyttinen's Experience
Very powerful yet as light as a common text editor. Has clean, minimalistic interface. See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
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
mccauls7
Snarky McSnarkSnark
Top Con
•••

No printing of files

Sublime Texts offers no way of printing the files it edits. See More
Pash237
Pash237's Experience
Obviously, best text editor. Use for for tasks from viewing source code files to taking notes See More
mccauls7
Tim Etler
Slimothy
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
teadan
Bianca T
Top Con
•••

Not a full IDE

It does not necessarily function on a project level. See More
ThoughtfulPrometheus
ThoughtfulPrometheus's Experience
good See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Top Pro
•••

Consistent cross-platform

Sublime Text looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X, and Linux. See More
Slimothy
PhiLho
Top Con
•••

Shareware

Many users tend to forget it, but it is a shareware, with a nag prompt reminding the user should pay for this software. It is not a problem (the company must have a source of income), but it is something to consider when most of the alternatives are free. See More
Tim Etler
Tim Etler's Experience
Sublime Text manages to find the perfect balance between a nimble and lightweight text editor, and a featureful IDE. With a text editor I don't have any tolerance for slowness, and I haven't found any GUI text editor that's as fast as Sublime Text and the versatile plugin API has allowed for a massive plugin community which fills in most of the advanced features you expect from an IDE without compromising on speed. See More
mccauls7
Ramón García-Pérez (TITO)
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
mccauls7
thermoplastics
Chad Perrin
Top Con
•••

Annoying whitespace management

All too often it does the wrong thing with indentation on otherwise blank lines. See More
User Deleted
User Deleted's Experience
After getting Package Control installed, (seriously, that's the only even-remotely tricky part) Sublime is a breeze to work with - and with a huge community of package contributors, just about any functionality you could wish for is only a few keystrokes away. See More
Israel Gilyadov
Top Pro
•••

Has tons of plugins available

See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
stijn
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
ColorfulCoyolxauhqui
ColorfulCoyolxauhqui's Experience
Its snappy and smooth and clean. There is auto completion and people familiar with key bindings can rule it easily See More
Endi Sukaj
Mihaly Vizhanyo
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
mccauls7
Cees Timmerman
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
PioneeringMorrigan
PioneeringMorrigan's Experience
Very simple and easy to work with. See More
Chloe Montanez
Mike Kormendy
Top Pro
•••

Installable package manager

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom. See More
Ashley Luna D.
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
NeighborlyMorpheus
NeighborlyMorpheus's Experience
Unbelievably fast and lightweight. I now use this for everything - coding, email, first draft document writing, scratchpad, text clipboard (because it saves sessions reliably without ever having to save files). It has become an indispensable tool I use daily. See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Stuart Kearney
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
mccauls7
Slimothy
tianshuo
Top Con
•••

Inadequate language support

Sublime Text offers poor support for Far-East languages in Linux. See More
mccauls7
Laura Kyle
Slimothy
Top Pro
•••

Offers Command Palette

Command Palette allows for fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc. See More
sabo3
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
mccauls7
Slimothy
Miroslav Bartoš
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
mccauls7
pirmin
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
mccauls7
Oras
Top Pro
•••

Regex commands

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text. See More
Chloe Montanez
Mike Kormendy
Top Pro
•••

Customizable keymapping

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything. See More
Chloe Montanez
Mike Kormendy
Top Pro
•••

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More
Slimothy
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
Mike Kormendy
Top Pro
•••

Dynamic Build System

Choose from many build systems or craft your own. See More
Chloe Montanez
CaringApheleia
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
mccauls7
Slimothy
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
Abhishek Gupta
Chloe Montanez
Emma
Top Pro
•••

Multiple languages are supported

See More
mccauls7
Tom Rhodes
Top Pro
•••

Haxe and OpenFL integration via plugin

Both of these programming interfaces are cross-platform, open source, and easy to use. See More
Chloe Montanez
Michael white
Top Pro
•••

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More
thermoplastics
Enkia
Top Pro
•••

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

See More
mccauls7
Slimothy
Top Pro
•••

Allows for Vim-style editing

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor. See More
mccauls7
mike walker
Slimothy
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
Chloe Montanez
Mike Kormendy
Top Pro
•••

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More
Emma
Top Pro
•••

Functionalities

With lot of functionalities, where other editor even not think to provide. See More
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85

micro

My Recommendation for micro

My Recommendation for micro

Add Video or Image
All
20
Experiences
3
Pros
11
Cons
5
Specs
Chloe Montanez
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Lightweight

See More
Andrew Truex
Top Con
•••

Not quite as customizable as I'd want

But it lives in the terminal so it's not like it can have all the features of a standalone editor like vscode or ST3 See More
DetailedPan
DetailedPan's Experience
Lightweight, easily config and debug key binding See More
Specs
Platforms:Linux, macOS, BSD, Windows
License:MIT
Cross Platform:Yes
Collaborative editing:No
See All Specs
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Beginner friendly console editor

See More
KindheartedSlaineMacDela
Top Con
•••

Hard to discover features

See More
Semi
Semi's Experience
Micro is fantastic. It's very lightweight, easy to use, and is in the console. My only issue is that it just doesn't have a super large community. See More
Semi
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Mouse support

Probably the best mouse support in a terminal text editor right now. See More
Semi
Top Con
•••

Small community

Micro will not have as many plugins as competitors like Vim and Emacs due to its vastly small community in comparison. See More
Andrew Truex
Andrew Truex's Experience
Amazing little text editor that lets me quickly change things in the terminal with no confusion or unnecessary keybindings See More
Andrew Truex
ThoroughIntercidona
Top Pro
•••

Runs in terminal

Huge plus See More
KindheartedSlaineMacDela
Top Con
•••

Console based

See More
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Easy to install, one binary, no dependencies

See More
Alex
PoliteNemetona
Top Con
•••

It's not installed by default on old systems

And that's the reason most of the people won't use it. See More
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Easily extendable with plugins

See More
Yoshiyuki
schlaumeier
Top Pro
•••

Flexible colour schemes

Easy to change colour schemes in base package. See More
schlaumeier
Top Pro
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Flexible split screen functions

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Yoshiyuki
Chloe Montanez
schlaumeier
Top Pro
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Sane default settings but heavily customizable

Common key bindings as used from Windows, macOS or linux desctop environments, but can be changed to personal needs. See More
Yoshiyuki
Paolo
schlaumeier
Top Pro
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Built-in plugin manager

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Yoshiyuki
schlaumeier
Top Pro
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Snippet support

Snippet support is available as a plugin. See More
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Emacs

My Recommendation for Emacs

My Recommendation for Emacs

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55
Experiences
12
Pros
31
Cons
11
Specs
Endi Sukaj
Slimothy
Stuart Kearney
Top Pro
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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
HonestNephthys
VigorousPolyphemus
Endi Sukaj
Top Con
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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