What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?

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

Top Pro

TypeScript integration

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

EOP Johnson's Experience

Its just so nice, and keeps getting better with each 4-6 week release. See More

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

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

Top Con

File search is extremely slow

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

Daniel Morgenstern's Experience

It looks beautiful and does a really good job. Fast & feature-rich. See More

Top Pro

Ready to use out of the box

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

Top Con

Project search limits results

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

gyan parkash's Experience

its awesome, lightning fast See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

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

Top Con

Very bad auto import

VigilantSuijin's Experience

I try to use fro connecting directly to my server via FTP. The FTP extension was a mess. It seems to me that the editor is not too simple to use. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

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

Top Con

Generalized

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

Vignesh Vaidyanathan's Experience

Quick and lightweight See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Con

Memory hog

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

DecorousHestia's Experience

Awesome and one stop shop for any development activity See More

Top Pro

Fast and powerful

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

Top Con

Poor error fix suggestions

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

Michael Sperber's Experience

uses a lot of resources See More

Top Pro

JavaScript IntelliSense support

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

Top Con

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

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

PerseveringNinurta's Experience

I don't like it. The feeling is not very good. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

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

Top Con

Slow launch time

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

FascinatingChloris's Experience

Scintillating free text editor See More

Top Pro

Updated frequently

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

Top Con

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

ConfidentTisiphone's Experience

Ease of use and extensibility through plugins See More

Top Pro

ESLint integration

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

Top Con

Have no good default js style analyzer

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

GregariousEurynome's Experience

Easy to work with and plenty of plugins for a lot of languages See More

Top Pro

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Con

.sass linting is terrible

KnowledgeableShullat's Experience

It is free and nice See More

Top Pro

Active development

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

Top Con

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

Vikram Hegde's Experience

Works great for any programming language. And a huge community and plugins is a plus See More

Top Pro

Integrated task runners

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

Yair Even Or's Experience

lightweight (depending on plugins), opens quickly, has tons of features and a ton of comunity support See More

Top Pro

It has gotten really good

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

WonderfulTonacacihuatl's Experience

I was good See More

Top Pro

Custom snippets support

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

MightyCheuksin's Experience

powerful See More

Top Pro

Huge community behind it

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

ReflectiveIstaran's Experience

So far the best IDE Because Its connectivity with Azure Integration with GIT Wide range of languages supported Wide range of plugins. Still doesnt slow down. See More

Top Pro

JS typechecking

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

Abe TRS's Experience

Great. Has built in debugging support. And the packages are very simple to install so you can customize the hell out of it. Also the npm package is great. While the IntelliSense isn't that great overall, with plugins it is a great text-editor. See More

Top Pro

Python support

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

Top Pro

Good support for new Emmet syntax

Top Pro

High fidelity C# plugin

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

Top Pro

Support RTL languages

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

Top Pro

Inline definition picking and usages finding

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

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

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

HumorousEbisu's Experience

I still remember the first time I migrated a web project to webstorm, waiting for a bunch of complications to arise but only to find that everything got automatically setup by its initial project scan. There's a view for pretty much every tool you can think of (grunt, npm,...,) and the global settings are pretty extensive, searchable but in a good simple way, as opposed to VSCode (another good editor, though). Been using VSCode lately, but sure miss my Webstorm See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

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 Pro

Code refactoring support

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

Adam Fields's Experience

I’m a huge fan of VS Code and have seen it and its extension ecosystem mature over the past couple years. That being said, WebStorm is still the king. WebStorm’s intelligent code completion is second to none. Your entire code base will be indexed, so finding anything will be instant. Refactoring is a click (convert an if statement to a ternary or vice versa). First class TypeScript support, as well as support for ESLint, TSLint, and Stylelint. My annual subscription is a no-brainer. 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

Not open source

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

sh4dow's Experience

Considering that the choice in the current web development ecosphere boils down to "some Electron-based IDE" and Webstorm and those Electron-based IDEs max out the RAM of my 16 GB machine very quickly, Webstorm really is the only way to go for me from this very simple, technical reason alone. Because I do prefer the look & feel of VS Code. Aside from being very lean in terms of memory usage, there isn't anything particularly important that I like better in Webstorm. Some things worth mentioning though: GIT integration is better - has made using Sourcetree unnecessary for me. Searching within files is way, way faster. Where VS Code may take a minute (obviously, that heavily depends) to search through node_modules (say you're looking for some method in some dependency but you're not sure where it is exactly), Webstorm works basically in realtime. It's really quite stunning. Remembers all projects that were open if you reboot your machine. 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

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

Daniel Morgenstern's Experience

If you are out for rich features, this is simply the best choice. :) See More

Top Pro

Supports a wide range of plug-ins

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

TallBachue's Experience

Terrible performance. Slow to get new features. Then you have to pay annually. Its just not worth it. 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

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

FunMedusa's Experience

Too slow. 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

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

MeticulousNinimma's Experience

The best IDE See More

Top Pro

Supports many JavaScript frameworks

WebStorm includes support for Meteor, Angular, and React. 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

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

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

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 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

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 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

Built-in support for JavaScript task runners

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

Top Con

Newer versions are increasingly unstable

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

Support for all major VCS systems

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

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Top Pro

Really good configurable code formatting

This integrates with other community tools like ESLint and editorconfig. 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

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

Built-in web server

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

Compilers for compile-to-JavaScript languages

WebStorm has built-in support for CoffeeScript and Dart. 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 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

Server and client-side debugger

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

Top Pro

Auto sync settings across team / machines / platforms

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

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

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

Webpack support

Assists with configuration and understands module resolution. See More

Top Pro

Cordova support

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

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

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

Neovim

Top Pro

Better integration with external tools

Top Con

High effort to customize

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

VigorousCelaeno's Experience

Once you get used to Vim, it becomes your go-to tool for everything connected to programming. Learning curve is a lot to take, but it's worth the effort. See More

Specs

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

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

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

Modern codebase

As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its codebase. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same codebase that powers node.js. See More

Top Con

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms. See More

Top Pro

UI agnostic

The core functionality is handled outside of the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Top Pro

Fast and light on memory usage

New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run. See More

Top 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

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

Top Con

No graphical editor yet

At the time of writing this, no equivalents to gVim exist. See More

Top Pro

Config file is where it should be

I don't like having dotfiles or dotdirs in my homefolder unless they're needed. Configs should be in the .config dir in their respective folder. See More

Top Con

No stable release yet

Neovim is currently at a point of instability while it's still in development. There is no stable release, meaning that if you use Neovim at the moment, you should do so with caution as many features may change in the future. 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

Work in TUI (Text User Interface)

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

Active development community

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

Sublime Text is known for being extremely fast to start up and use. See More

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Blazing fast

Top Con

Not free

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure. Also, if the developer abandons it again, there will be no way for others to continue to update it. See More

Yonatan's Experience

I keep trying new and promising IDEs that come out and work well with JS (latest was VS Code which I did like and can also recommend but not after using Sublime for a while), but I always end up going back to Sublime. It's light, fast, has a great selection of plugins, it's one of the most customizable IDEs I've worked with and I just feel right at home when working with it. Only thing that could be better is JS code autocomplete. There are IDEs out there now that do a pretty good job with it (VS Code Intellisense for example) but Sublime doesn't offer that at all, the closest thing it has is manually entered snippets or you can get specific ones through plugins but it's not as useful as autocomplete. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:Proprietary

Sublime Text has significantly lower memory requirements than alternatives like Atom, Brackets, or Visual Studio Code which run in a webview (or whatever the correct terminology is). It can make a difference when working on a large project and/or when working on lots of files simultaneously. See More

Top Pro

Low memory requirements

Top Con

Few releases

Sublime Text 3 is in Beta since June 2013 but the latest Dev version of Sublime Text 3 was released in February 2016. See More

FunCopacati's Experience

Small and Fast! See More

Top Pro

Rich plug-in ecosystem

Better than Sublime itself is its community that create plug-ins for the user's every need. See More

Top Con

Not a full featured IDE

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors and column selection allow for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word. Each time the command is repeated, add 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. See More

Top Con

No way to print files

Although users have been requesting the feature for over five years, Sublime Text does not provide a way to print the file being edited. See More

Top Pro

No time wasted when re-opening the application

Sublime Text remembers the current state of the project and opens files, even when you close the application. See More

Top Con

Trial version nags for purchase

There is an unlimited trial version, however the nag window can quickly become a pain. 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, as well as 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

Not free for commercial use

No time limit on evaluation, but, "Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use." See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

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

Top Pro

Great vim support

There is better vim support in Sublime Text than most of its (modern) competitors. This makes for highly efficient text editing. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

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

Top 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 Pro

Consistent cross-platform

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

Atom was built from the ground up with the community in mind, and package management is a first class feature. See More

Atom

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Top Con

Relatively slow

Atom is not a native application. As such, performance is sub-par and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory. See More

Daniel Morgenstern's Experience

So far, the most beautiful UI in a code editor, but when it comes to the features, Atom unfortunately suffers very much. See More

Specs

Platforms:Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Auto Complete:Yes (plugin)

Atom will highlight folders, files, and lines that have any uncommitted edits made. It also integrates really well with GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Top Con

Unable to handle large files

Atom is unable to handle files greater than 2 MB in size. See More

VigilantSuijin's Experience

FTP not work and is the same as "visual studio code" . Disaster See More

Top Pro

Lots of packages

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages. Packages are written in CoffeeScript. See More

Top Con

Uncertain future

Atom is being officially discontinued. On December 15 of 2022, the repositories will be archived; presumably, this is when any official development or contribution will cease. Although community maintained forks might appear, this makes the long term viability of using Atom somewhat unclear. See More

Raghu Ranganathan's Experience

Overall, simply the best editor on this list. Great autocomplete and limitless extensibility for JavaScript. It also has a web browser package for easy javascript development. I've used Atom for many years in web development, and it has never disappointed. See More

Top Pro

Easily hackable

It's built on web technologies (JavaScript, HTML, and CSS), so hacking for JS devs feels natural. Themes can be written with just CSS. See More

Top Con

High memory usage

Atom has a relatively high memory usage, especially when compared to some other text editors not based on Electron. For those who develop on the go, this also tends to mean shorter battery life. See More

Top Pro

Extendable

Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like the one's taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, changed and replaced in the editor. The documentation for creating new plug-ins is in depth and thus it's easier for developers to jump in and create plug-ins for Atom. See More

Top Con

Slow

Atom is not a native application. As such performance is subpar and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory. See More

Top Pro

Fuzzy search

This allows for the location of Web pages that are likely to be relevant to a search argument, even when the argument does not exactly correspond to the desired information. See More

Top Con

Can be a resource hog

Uses a lot of CPU and RAM, even with relatively small-scale projects, which can be an issue on lower end hardware. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and edit

Multiple cursors and column selection allow for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it will add 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. See More

Top Con

Bad autocompletion support

There are plugins (and even a atom-ide) out there, but they are far away from the intellisense features of VSCode or Webstorm. See More

Top Pro

Highly modular from the start

Even the base Atom editor comes with a lot of plug-ins installed already. The most essential features are official plug-ins from the Atom team so you don't have to hunt them down. See More

Top Con

Has difficulty with large text files

Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor. See More

Top Pro

Command line integration out of the box

Installing Atom adds two command line commands - atom and apm. The first one runs the application itself and the second one is the Atom Package Manager that's used to add and remove various components from the package listing. While these features can be set up with other editors as well, Atom takes care of them out of the box. See More

Top Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it sacrifices responsiveness. See More

Top Pro

Free

Atom comes at no cost. See More

Top Con

No integrated debugging

Top Pro

Beginner friendly

One of the goals of Atom is to be a text editor for both experienced and beginner programmers. You can add keyboard shortcuts, change themes, install plug-ins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old-fashioned way. Atom also has the added advantage of being built using the same engine that powers Google Chrome, so actions like opening and closing tabs feel familiar even to new or non-programmers. See More

Top Con

Very slow startup time

Atom is very slow to startup, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to using it to make quick changes on your files. See More

Top Pro

Command Palette

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

Top Con

Packages sometimes conflict

Top Pro

Node.js integration

The editor is built on top of Node. As such, anything that can be done in Node can be done in the editor. See More

Top Con

Can't get intellisense for created object

Top Pro

Instant file switching

Ctrl or Command + T, in addition to using fuzzy search, allow you to look for a file in your project. See More

Top Con

Doesn't handle RTL (right-to-left text) well

Text can't be highlighted and manipulated properly, cursor isn't displayed visually according to where it is logically (you have to type to find out), and similar issues. See More

Top Pro

Fast and easy to use a project folder

Simply right click and select the folder to be opened as project folder in the editor. See More

Top Con

Needs customization

Top Pro

HiDPI support

Atom has built in HiDPI support with zero scaling issues. See More

Top Con

Missing additional touches

As Atom is still relatively new, it's missing nice little touches that other text editors have implemented over the years. From simple ease-of-use items like middle-mouse button multi-cursor select, to the ways pasted information from a spreadsheet is interpreted in multi-select situations. See More

Top Pro

No need to restart Atom after a new plug-in install

You don't have to restart Atom after you install a new plug-in in order to activate it as the plug-in will automatically start working. However, you will have to restart Atom each time you update any of your packages. See More

Top Con

Open nature can make it buggy

Installation of packages can introduce bugs in the software. In addition, it doesn't always play well with Linux and Mac permissions systems which can lead to having to impliment very hacky workarounds. See More

Top Pro

No need for text-based configuration

The configuration is done through the GUI and the preferences menu. There's no need to edit a text file with configuration options like other text editors. See More

Top Con

Does not have normal support of Pug

Top Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking. See More

Top Con

No drag and drop of code out of the box

Atom does not support a drag and drop feature for code out of the box. However, it is available as a third party plug-in. See More

Top Pro

Could also used as an IDE

Atom qualifies to be a good IDE because of the packages like linters, atom browser, and hydrogen. See More

Top Con

Depends on old software

Depends on Python 2, which died out. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Atom is free, open source, and written in C++, LESS, and CoffeeScript. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform

Atom can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Very solid vim support with vim-mode-plus

The vim-mode-plus package provides a surprising amount of vim functionality. For typical coding, it almost feels the same as native vim unless you need super advanced features like macros, command mode, etc. See More

Top Pro

Modern feel and very customizable and extendable

Top Pro

Teletype

This official package adds instant pair programming (shared session) support. See More

Top Pro

Best support for Arduino with Platformio

Arduino is the most important platform for developing embedded systems. See More

Top Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

Top Pro

Could also be used as an IDE

Atom qualifies to be a good IDE because of the packages like linters, atom browser and hydrogen. See More

Vim is 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

Vim

Top Pro

Fast and lightweight

Top Con

Difficult for beginners

Vim has an extremely steep learning curve, making it difficult to learn. It can also be weird to use and has become the butt of numerous jokes. See More

FunHorus's Experience

Once you get past the learning curve, everything else is horrible to use. I do everything I can in Vim. Aside from being my main development editor, I debug my PHP APIs and scripts with vdebug and write all of my sql queries & updates and run them on the database with dbext....all without ever leaving Vim. Along with ctags and good tab completion plugin, it is a full-blown IDE with many, many extras. One of the custom scripts I wrote for my environment allows me to simply type <space>so "ServiceName" (that's four characters...'space bar', 's', 'o', and 'enter' after typing the service name) and it will open all of the files related to the named service in a specific order and configuration. Some of our services have 15-20 associated files, ranging from request and response scripts, service scripts & helpers, database gateways, and interfaces & traits. They're opened in a predetermined manner across several tabs and in various windows...making opening and editing the file/files I need a quick breeze. And that's only one of the custom scripts I've written for my environment. I would love to figure out a way to use vim for any and all text entry I encounter...from instant messages to emails....heck even typing into this textbox feels confined & restrictive outside of vim. If you spend your day editing any type of text file, do yourself a favor and learn Vim! See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Extension language:Vim

Price:0

Top Pro

Powerful capabilities

If you ever wonder what Vim is capable of, the question is not "Can Vim do this?" The question is "How can I configure Vim to do this?" 99% of the time Vim can do it, and you are just a google search away from making Vim meet your needs. 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

VigorousCelaeno's Experience

Once you get used to Vim, it becomes your go-to tool for everything connected to programming. Learning curve is a lot to take, but it's worth the effort. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

Everything in Vim is programmable, e.g, a plethora of configuration settings, the color scheme, recursive key mappings, custom functions, custom commands, and macros. 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

A plethora of plugins

Top Con

Not an IDE

Top Pro

Stable

There's no need to update Vim every certain amount of days/weeks like with some of the other contenders. See More

Top Con

Unpleasant default interface

When you open it, your eyes can get lost because of an interface that is very 70's styled. In order to make it appear more modern, setting up 256 color or 24-bit color, a better color scheme, etc. may be more work than one wants to put in. See More

Top Pro

Macros

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

Store configuration in version control

Top Con

Horrible keyboard shortcuts

In a regular text editor, you type and text shows up. In vim, to insert text, you need to... wait for it, there's a Google search autosuggest for "How do I insert text in vim": i - insert before the cursor. I - insert at the beginning of the line. a - insert (append) after the cursor. A - insert (append) at the end of the line. o - append (open) a new line below the current line. O - append (open) a new line above the current line. WTF! 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 Pro

Free and open-source software

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

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 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 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 Pro

Vim encourages discipline

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

Works on Android

Top Pro

By default in Linux

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 Pro

Not an IDE

Top Pro

YouCompleteMe with tern.vim

With the help of these two easy-to-install plugins, Vim becomes a full-blown IDE with semantic autocompletion and error detection. (This is not a PRO, YCM is a horrible plugin). 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 Pro

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

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

Does one thing well

Top Pro

Simple

IDEA places an emphasis on safe refactoring and offers a lot 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

IntelliJ IDEA

Top Pro

Smart refactoring

Top Con

Requires a lot of memory

IntelliJ requires much more memory than Sublime Text or Atom. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Even better as full-stack

If you work on both backend in Java and frontend JavaScript, this single IDE handles both very well. See More

Top Con

Slow

IntelliJ can be slow sometimes, especially when indexing. See More

Top Pro

Excellent support when working with databases

Top Con

Requires a license for its use

The commercial-use license is a hefty price of $500 USD, while the personal-use license is $150 USD. There is, however, a 30-day free trial period available. See More

Top Pro

JS code context-awareness

This warns you when you forget to declare "var" (duplicate declarations). Variable name refactors occur within the function scope and IntelliJ warns you when you use a variable that hasn't been defined. It also has integration with JS linter plugins (like JSHint) for additional static code analysis. 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

Lots of plugins

If you use For, Karma, Gulp, or Grunt, there are plugins that can bring their functionalities into your IntelliJ and display them in a nice UI. See More

Top Con

Cannot open multiple projects in the same window

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 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

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 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

VCS support

There's very good VCS (Version Control System) integration (git, svn, etc.) in IntelliJ, which is useful for keeping track of changes to a file or set of files over a period of time. See More

Top Con

Uses a lot of RAM

Top Pro

Great support from developers

Top Con

Slow startup

Startup can be slow depending on system configuration. See More

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 Con

Needs restart for every update

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

The interface is clean and free of clutter. In many ways, it is akin to a simple text editor. It's easy to manage multiple projects, files, and folders. See More

Brackets

Top Pro

Clean and practical UI

Top Con

No significant developer mindshare

The ecosystem support has dropped precipitously. If you are using something new, expect to find it to have a VS Code plug-in, and maybe an Atom plug-in. Brackets used to be one of the top three; at this point it's not even an afterthought. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:No

Extension language:JavaScript

Live preview in Brackets gives you the same functionality as if you were running your code in an online service such as http://plnkr.co/. Everything you do in your editor will be updated instantly in your live browser view. See More

Top Pro

Live preview

Top Con

Slowing down after installing more than 20 extensions

Top Pro

Inline editor

Brackets has an inline editor that revolutionizes your workflow. For example, from your .html file, you can activate the inline editor for any tag/class. From within the HTML document, you can create or make modifications to your CSS file, without actually having to open the CSS file and search for the selector. See More

Top Con

Lack of functionality, static core analysis and other IDE functions

Top Pro

Lots of extensions

Brackets has a large repository of extensions. See More

Top Con

Plugins are quite buggy

Lots of plugins can't even be automatically installed using Brackets. Instead you have to download every .zip file manually and put them in the appropriate directory. Some plugins that are installed this way may not even execute. 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 Con

Only one folder can be open at a time

Brackets only allows you to have one folder/project open at a time. Opening another folder will close the previous one. However, you can open another project in another window (Debug > New Brackets Window). See More

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

Brackets is entirely free and open source. See More

Top Con

Keyboard menu controls lacking

Can't access the menus from the keyboard in a Windows-standard way. See More

Top Pro

Fast project switching

Brackets has a useful combo-box to reopen recent projects and last opened files. See More

Top Con

Too slow

very slower than other web based editors See More

Top Pro

Fast searching and function finding

The latest version of Brackets has an amazing instant search feature which can search across all project files in realtime as you type; nothing else comes close to it. Furthermore, there's an awesome feature for large projects and you can also jump to or inline edit any function by doing ctrl-e over the function. You will then get an inline source view of where that function is defined. See More

Top Con

No live preview

Top Pro

Drag and drop support

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

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 browser live-updating

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

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Pro

Extract from Photoshop

It's easy to extract assets from a PSD and integrate with the tool. These assets include exact color codes, copy and paste texts, fonts, etc. See More

Top Pro

Fast startup

The startup time is less than many others, and feels responsive immediately. See More

Top Pro

Native TernJS support

Code intelligence is assisted by TernJS, including suggestions for parameters. See More

Top Pro

Handy file peek

The file peek feature is extremely useful and even allows for inline editing. See More

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

Emacs

Top Pro

Self documenting

Top Con

Learning curve is steep

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. As such, you'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard, making for highly simplified mouse-free editing. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused

Top Con

Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file

Top Pro

Works in terminal

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

Top Con

Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work

init.el is the ultimate time sink. 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

The least intuitive UI ever designed for use by humans

The Emacs interface predates the mainstream adoption of the graphical user interface by more than a decade and it shows terribly in the unusual conventions Emacs adopts for navigating buffers, manipulating the kill ring, undo and redo, and other behaviors. For those of us who grew up on Windows and/or Macintosh, the differences can be jarring and that only serves to lengthen the already quite lengthy learning curve. Emacs is profoundly unintuitive and I find myself shaping my thoughts to be more in line with Emacs, not the other way around. (Protip for newbies: Meta (M-whatever) is really Alt on your PC keyboard, and Option on your Mac. (Mac users can set it to be the Command key instead.)) See More

Top Pro

Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")

Emacs can be programmed to do a variety of things including multimedia playback (EMMS), typesetting (with the LaTeX language and AUCTeX), viewing images, working in the filesystem (dired), running a terminal emulator (ansi-term), IRC, email and newsgroups (Gnus), and much, MUCH more. Because Emacs is so portable, you can take you environment with you wherever you go, no matter the OS, and work the same way regardless. See More

Top Pro

Can work with remote files over SSH

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 Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Available for Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, Solaris, and others. Your init.el and other Elisp libraries are also portable cross-platform, giving you the same (or nearly so) environment no matter what kind of computer you run. 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 Pro

Provides org-mode

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

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top Pro

Backed by Lisp

Lisp is one of the most popular programming languages to date and is highly practical for carrying out software/application development. See More

Top Pro

Language support

Top Pro

Integrates well with lots of external tools

Shells, emulators, version control, navigation, web browsing, etc. See More

Top Pro

Constantly evolving

Top Pro

Ubiquity

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

Top Pro

Total customizability

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect. A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include those that are practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the more sublime (chess, Eliza). See More

Configurations do not conflict. Unlike other text editors where different packages do not care about other packages' keybindings and replace each other recklessly. See More

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Crowd-configured

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Top Pro

Mouse is unneccessary

As a programmer, you would like text to be accessible everywhere with shortcuts, and Spacemacs provides that by using Vi keybindings. 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

Programmable

You can change literally everything with elisp. 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

Community-driven configuration

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

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

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

Top Pro

Great Clojure support

Top Pro

Manage R files easily

Top Pro

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More

Top Pro

Easily extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Daemon support

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

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

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

Top Pro

LaTeX support

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

Great note-taking and agenda mode built-in

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

Top Pro

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

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

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

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

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

Cross-platform

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

Organize in org-mode

You can organize in org-mode. See More

PhpStorm

Not just for PHP, HTML and JavaScript, but especially good is SQL inspection and auto-completion of tables and fields. You can see at a glance, that your DB structure is in sync with your code. See More

Top Pro

Inspections of all kinds

Specs

Quickly rename classes, methods, and variables used across multiple files in the project. See More

Top Pro

Responsive core developers

Top Pro

Code Refactoring

Top Pro

Has built-in console and SSH clients

This allows execution of needed commands without switching to other windows. It also keeps track of what's happening right in the IDE, which is especially good with Vagrant, because you can connect to a VM in a single click. See More

Top Pro

Integrated Git GUI support

Allows users to manage their repositories directly from the IDE with a GUI which lets you do all Git commands. See More

Top Pro

Database view

The database tab, while not perfect, provides all the tools you need for daily usage. You always have your DB overview on the side (you can hide it when not needed). See More

Top Pro

Intelligent code completion

PhpStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion. Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of PHP, 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

The Netbeans IDE supports a large number of programming languages. The supported list includes the famous PHP, JS, C/C++, Python, and a lot of other languages as well. See More

NetBeans

Top Pro

Support for multiple programming languages

Top Con

Not soport for Vue or React

Actually it doesn't have support for Vue and React See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Code auto-completion is very helpful in agile development environments, where you're pumping out a new version as quickly as possible. In such environments, you need your IDE to be "as fast as you code"; hence Netbeans being of great assistance in such situations. The IDE will auto-complete your code (variable names / function references / library functions / classes / ids) wherever possible, so you can code at speed. See More

Top Pro

Autocompletes your code

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

Free, open source, and cross-platform

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

Top Con

Written in Java

Top Pro

Good and precise linters/hinters

The lint/hint plugins work very well. See More

Top Con

A little slow to load

The Netbeans IDE is known to take up a large quantity of memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available in the market. Slowdown can decrease productivity and frustrate programmers. See More

Top Pro

Multiple Revision Control System (RCS) integration

This is useful for automating the storage, retrieval, logging, identification, and merging of revisions. See More

Top Con

Crashes while working on big projects

Netbeans is good when working on small projects, but it sometimes crashes when your project reaches 10 thousands lines of code. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal

Top Con

No official support for Angular 4 yet

But Netbeans fully supports Angular 2 which is 100% compatible with 4. This means that by installing the Angular 2 plugin you also get support for the latest version. See More

Top Pro

Powerful debugging and performance optimization

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

Top Con

Slow technical development

As of April 2016, there has been no ES2015 and built-in ESLint support. See More

Top Pro

Support for NodeJS

NodeJS is efficient, lightweight and perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Support for Grunt tasks

Grunt takes care of the tasks the user would like done, making his/her life easier. See More

Top Pro

Powerful chrome extension

This allows you to save the CSS/JS code, even if you use Java deployment (jar, war). See More

Top Pro

Built-in web server

Top Pro

Support for major JS frameworks

These include Ember, Angular, etc. See More

Top Pro

Intellisense for custom objects

Top Pro

Netbeans-Debugger for Chrome

The Netbeans specific Chrome extension for debugging allows the IDE and the browser to know about debugging state, automatic de- and attaching of built-in browser development tools, editing sources directly in the browser with save-back feature, no browser restarts required etc. See More

Top Pro

ECMA script 6 support from v8.2 (Aug 2016)

NetBeans supports ECMA Script 6 since release 8.2 (now available as development release). See More

Top Pro

Powerful refactoring features

NetBeans has some powerful refactoring features for large JavaScript projects which are always useful. NetBeans, for example, can find all occurrences of a variable, function name, or operation, and the developer can change it to suit their needs. NetBeans takes care of the rest and changes the name accordingly on every occurrence throughout the project. It even shows a split-screen view of the changes before they happen. See More

Top Pro

Can actually find the definition of custom objects

Top Pro

Integrated Javascript Debugger and inspector for HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript applications

Top Pro

Good serverside Node.js Debugging

Complete visibility of object structure and values on breakpoint stop when debugging. See More

Top Pro

Docker and Elastic Beanstalk support

From 8.2, supports Docker natively, but requires some fiddling to get it to work. Supports Elastic Beanstalk deployment with the Oracle Java suite installed. See More

Top Pro

Multiple revision control system integration

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

Top Pro

Best for PHP, HTML5 apps development

Top Pro

Supports Twig templates

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

Top Pro

Grunt and Gulp Task Runner support

Top Pro

Composer commands inside IDE

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

Frameworks support

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

Top Pro

JMeter benchmarking tool support

Top Pro

Supports Smarty

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

Top Pro

Bower support

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

PHPstan support

Supports static code analysis with phpstan 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

PHPDoc support

Supports documentation generation through PHPDoc. See More

Top Pro

Linux terminal inside IDE

You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Less and Sass Compiler support

Top Pro

Accelerated HTML5 development support

Top Pro

FTP/SFTP synchronization

Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP. 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

AWS Cloud 9

Cloud9 is a Cloud IDE which makes it easy to collaborate on projects. See More

Cons

Top Pro

Web-based

Top Con

Requires internet

As it's web-based, Cloud9 requires an internet connection to use the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Full terminal access

Cloud9 gives full terminal access to the home directory. In its hosted Linux Ubuntu environment, it has sudo powers. No UNIX commands have been blocked, meaning that npm, ifconfig, chmod, chown, tar, etc. work. All commands can be accessed and any package can be installed. If the terminal is employed when using the Remote SSH feature, it connects directly to the server and runs the commands on that server. See More

Top Con

The self-hosted version is hard to set up

The self-hosted open source version does not come pre-configured and it does not work out-of-the-box. Setting it up on a local server can also be rather hard. See More

Top Pro

Enables real-time online collaboration

An important feature of Cloud9 is its real-time collaboration ability. It allows for easily pairing programs or performing code reviews, as well as simultaneously facilitating text chat. See More

Top Pro

Git and Mercurial support

Git and hg commands can be run in the command-line, the same way as in a local terminal. There are also built-in add-on services for GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab. See More

Top Pro

Provides with a simple way to deploy apps

Cloud9 allows quickly deploying apps via CLI. There are instructions on how to deploy to Azure, CloudFoundry, OpenShift, NodeJitsu, Modulus and Heroku. For example, all hosted environments have Heroku's toolbelt installed by default so all heroku commands are available from the get-go. See More

Top Pro

Can be hosted on own server

Since Cloud9 is an open source project with source code available on GitHub, it can be run as a self-hosted solution on own hardware and behind a firewall. See More

Top Pro

Runs any language

The runner has built-in functionality fo Apache, Node, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Go, CoffeeScript, Julia, Mocha and Shell script, but any other language can be used by creating a runner for it. See More

Top Pro

Can be self-hosted

Since Cloud9 is an open source project with source code available on GitHub, it can be run as a self-hosted solution on own hardware and behind a firewall. See More

Top Pro

Offline editing

By installing and running a client application that syncs the local file system and cloud storage, Cloud9 can be run locally. This is a great alternative for when the internet connection is unreliable. See More

Top Pro

Provides a simple way to deploy apps

Cloud9 allows for quickly deploying apps via CLI. There are instructions on how to deploy to Azure, CloudFoundry, OpenShift, NodeJitsu, Modulus, and Heroku. For example, all hosted environments have Heroku's toolbelt installed by default so all heroku commands are available from the get-go. See More

Top Pro

Package manager

Top Pro

Support for plugin API

It has a plugin framework that allows you to develop add-ons in JavaScript. See More

Codeanywhere has a feature called Share Links that allows users to collaborate with others on their projects in real-time by simply sharing a link to their work. See More

Codeanywhere

Top Pro

Allows you to invite collaborators with a link

Top Con

Proprietary (non-libre/open source)

Specs

Multi Language Support:yes

Auto Complete:yes

Bracket Matching:yes

Integrated Debugger:yes

Codeanywhere integrates with BitBucket and allows you to log in with your BitBucket account. It's possible to launch Codeanywhere from within BitBucket's repo by adding Codeanywhere integration as an add-on. See More

Top Pro

BitBucket integration

Top Con

SSH Port will be different each time you start your DevBox

Only for Always on DevBoxes will SSH ports remain static. See More

Top Pro

User can work on their own remote servers

Users can connect to their own remote server using FTP or SSH protocol. There are also open terminal sessions on SSH connections. See More

Top Pro

Free fully customizable development container

Codeanywhere containers are fully customizable and you can setup your development environment the way you like it or use one of many predefined environments. With containers, sudo access is allowed; therefore you can install any tool you need. The first container is also free. See More

Top Pro

Stand-alone file revision history

Codeanywhere file revisions feature track changes to files you are working on so you can later revert if needed or just see the difference between revisions. Also, when collaborating on the same project it tracks changes for all collaborators. See More

Top Pro

JavaScript code completion

Autocomplete in Codeanywhere comprises variables, keywords, methods, and functions. See More

Top Pro

Goto anything function

You can open any file or execute any command using Goto anything dialog (Ctrl/Cmd + P). See More

Top Pro

Dropbox and Google Drive support

Codeanywhere supports connection to a Dropbox or a Google Drive account, allowing the user to pull development files from there and making it easy to sync development files across devices. See More

Top Pro

Theme support (dark / light themes)

You can customize the entire IDE look and syntax coloring schemes in Codeanywhere. See More

Top Pro

JavaScript linting

There is a fully customizable linter for JavaScript in Codeanywhere that will show warnings and errors in your code as you write it. See More

Top Pro

Has mobile apps for all major mobile OS'

Codeanywhere has apps for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, Windows, and Blackberry. See More

Top Pro

Multiple cursors

Top Pro

Special icons for most file types in project explorer

Light Table

With LT's inline evaluation, you don't have to re-compile your whole source file. Each time you want to see an output, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the line you'd like to evaluate and press ctrl+enter; LT will evaluate that line of code for you. See More

Top Pro

Inline evaluation

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:MIT

Integrated Debugger:REPL

Collaborative editing:No

The "Watches" feature lets you see your code running live as you type it. This means that you can debug your code live while writing it, which leads to considerably less programming errors. See More

Top Pro

Your code runs live as you write it

Top Pro

Plugin manager available

LT has a plugin manager built directly inside of it. This plugin manager connects to LT's own registry of plugins, so whenever you want assistance while writing your HTML, JS, or even Python, just open up the plugin manager, search for it, and click the little install button beside it's name. Your plugin will then be installed. See More

SourceLair

SourceLair supports a streamlined deployment setup and Heroku-compatible runtime for Node.js-based web applications. See More

Top Pro

Heroku integration for JavaScript projects

Specs

Customizing the error reporting of your project in SourceLair can take place through the ".jshintrc" file in the root directory of the project. See More

Top Pro

Customizable, real-time error reporting

Top Pro

Powerful JavaScript auto-complete

This provides both file-wide and cross-package auto-complete among JavaScript files (and also supports require.js and CommonJS modules) in both browser and Node, function documentation fetching and function argument hinting. See More

Top Pro

Node.js support

Develop your Node.js web applications out of the box, regardless of the framework that you're using. See More

Top Pro

HTTPS web server out of the box

SourceLair provides all web projects with a HTTPS-enabled Public URL out of the box. See More

Top Pro

GitHub integration

Clone your GitHub repositories with a single click and use GitHub to sign into SourceLair, instead of typing in your username and password. See More

Top Pro

TypeScript support

TypeScript is supported out of the box in SourceLair by providing syntax highlighting and the TypeScript Command Line Interface pre-installed in the user's terminal. See More

Top Pro

Bower integration

Bower integrates into SourceLair's Command Palette. See More

Top Pro

CoffeeScript support

CoffeeScript is supported out of the box in SourceLair by providing syntax highlighting and the typescript Command Line Interface pre-installed in the user's terminal. See More

Top Pro

JSX and React support

SourceLair supports developing React applications using JSX out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Npm integration

SourceLair integrates with npm, parses the package.json file, and populates it to the Command Palette. See More

Javascript Intellisense allows Visual Studio to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code. See More

Microsoft's Visual Studio

Top Pro

Javascript Intellisense support

Top Con

Tons of feature bloat

If you're doing simple web frontend dev, then VS is far too arcane and feature bloated for most of your work. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Web

Top Pro

Clean UI

Visual Studio has a clean, intuitive user interface. See More

Top Con

Not cross-platform

Visual Studio is only available on Windows, which causes platform lock-in. See More

Top Pro

Cloud storage

Your Visual Studio online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage. See More

Top Con

Slow

Visual Studio can be quite laggy. See More

Top Pro

Product backlog

In agile development teams, one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to teammates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web-based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project. See More

Top Con

Takes up a lot of space

Visual Studio can use about 6 GBs which a lot of space to be taken from your computer. See More

Top Pro

Very good XML/XSD support

Syntax highlighting, Intellisense, and jump to declaration all work in XML documents. See More

Top Con

Terribly slow development

Keep dreaming about features already provided by alternative products. See More

Top Con

Non-native window frame

The IDE main window lacks a standard window frame (titlebar/borders). A custom solution is used where the custom titlebar contains numerous application-specific controls. This results in inconsistent UX and can also be problematic when you're using shell replacements or other various window-management software (such as bbLean). See More

Top Con

Terrible UI

Top Con

Windows only

Visual Studio is only available on Windows, though there is now a cross-platform derivation of Visual Studio named Visual Studio Code. It has fewer features and is more of a code editor than an IDE. See More

Top Con

Extensions

Codenvy can provide a runtime environment to test and debug code. This can also be used to share work progress with a client. Codenvy uses Docker as the runtime application and gives access to Dockerfiles, allowing any environment that runs on Linux to be built. This permits use of any database, reverse proxy, or builder, etc. Codenvy even provides SSH access to running container in every image. Finally, there's a selection of pre-built environments to speed up the development. See More

Codenvy

Top Pro

Can provide a custom runtime environment

Top Con

Lacks drag and drop support

Codenvy doesn't support drag and drop functionality in the working tree. See More

Specs

Platforms:Browser-Based

Once an account is set up and the user has logged in, all the user needs to do in order to start is pick a language, a framework, and a PaaS. Codenvy also allows anonymous logins. See More

Top Pro

Easy setup

Top Con

Lacks Mercurial support

Currently, Codenvy supports Git and SVN Version Control Systems, but there are no plans announced yet in relation to Mercurial. See More

Top Pro

On-demand, instant-access, real-time collaborative IDEs

Codenvy "Factory" feature enables developers to create temporary IDE workspaces with full code, build, test, deploy, and collaboration functionality that can be shared via a URL. Multiple people can work in the same workspace making code reviews and teaching simpler and faster. There's also no limit to collaborators. See More

Top Con

No SSH, FTP mode

For example, "Codeanywhere" permits use of SSH, FTP as the base of a project. In Codenvy, this is possible only through VM. See More

Top Pro

Powerful editor

Codenvy has a fast, secure browser-based editor that supports syntax highlighting, code completion, refactoring, and more. It can be used to edit, build, run, and debug projects, and it even has multi-cursor support. The layout of Codenvy will be familiar to most developers, especially those experienced with Eclipse. It comprises a file explorer on the left, code on the right, as well as tabs for builders, runners, terminal, and events at the bottom. See More

Top Pro

JavaScript support

There's support for all JavaScript in Codenvy, in addition to Java and other languages. See More

PyCharm

PyCharm professional offers Web Storm and Data Grip functionality built-in. See More

Top Pro

Paid version gives extra tools

Specs

Since Version Control features are very frequently used these days, having them built right into your IDE seems quite the right thing to do. With Komodo, you can perform your Git pushes and pulls right while you're coding. See More

Komodo IDE

Top Pro

Built-in Version Control

Top Con

Not free

Komodo IDE costs $89 for a personal license. Even though they have a free Basic Version (that's also open source), this lacks most of the functionality that the paid version has. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

With the Komodo IDE you can debug PHP, Perl, JS, Python, Lisp, etc. In the options, you can set whether to debug locally or remotely, plus you can even configure breakpoints. See More

Top Pro

Supports a lot of programming languages

Top Pro

Collaboration support

If you're working with a remote development team, you'll quickly realize the importance of code collaboration while programming. With the Komodo IDE you don't have to set up a separate teamviewer session, or even share code via dropbox with other devs. All you need is an ActiveState account (+ a partner with the Komodo IDE, of course) and your remote team can see LIVE and contribute to your changes in the source files of your app. See More

Top Pro

Good autocomplete for JavaScript