What are the best open-source text editors for programming?

Extension language:Any

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 Pro

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

Top Con

Seg faults + minor instabilities

Once in a while, you get a segmentation fault. Highest version (currently) is v0.2.2 Dated: March, 2019 See More

InventivePerseus's Experience

Fast, easy, Vim-compatible See More

Top Pro

Active development community

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

Lucifer Morningstar's Experience

Updated Frequently and easy installation See More

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

Top Con

Modal editing

Has a split between editing text (Insert Mode) and the other functions of the editor. This can distract you from thinking about what you're trying to accomplish. See More

cosmo's Experience

So much better than Vim and Vi! See More

Top Pro

Fast and light on memory usage

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

Top Con

No stable release yet

Neovim is as of yet in an unstable point in it's development. There is no stable release and using neovim for the moment should be done with caution as many features may change in the future. See More

Top Pro

Fixes some of vim's issues

For example, neovim has a better way to integrate it's clipboard with the underlying OS. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Top Pro

Frequent updates

It is on github and unlike vim it is updated frequently for better performance and modern looks. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Top Pro

Modern Codebase

As a refactor over vim, neovim has greately improved its codebase. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, tha same codebase that powers node.js. 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

Better integration with external tools

The core text editor is "headless", ie detached from the user-interface, so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite, or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous. See More

Top Con

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

Top Pro

Comes with some good configurations out of the box

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

Top Con

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms. The Windows version is currently considered experimental. See More

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Tex User Interface)

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

Top Pro

UI Agnostic

The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that neovim can be embedded into any other gui system, such as Atom. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal emulator

Users have full access to the terminal from inside neovim, and can use it in conjunction with neovim's features. Terminal sessions can be launched in splits, pasted-to, yanked-from (in visual mode, linewise visual mode, or visual block mode), or incorporated into macros. See More

Top Pro

Easy installation

Just grab the nvim.image 64-bit and place it anywhere and run ./nvim.image and to run from anywhere, make an alias, alias nvim='/path/to/image/nvim.image' simple and easy as that. See More

Top Pro

Config file is where it should be

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

Top Pro

Treesitter and LSP

Top Pro

Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds

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

Top Pro

Tab completion of commands improved over vim

It's a small detail, but very appreciated. See More

Top Pro

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

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

Built-in file-explorer and ability to make splits and edit multiple things simutaneously.

This makes editing multiple files at once, moving code around so easy. See More

Top Pro

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

The default installation is very stable and responsive, while also very feature complete (most users will need few, if any, extensions). It does seem to run best when there are no major memory constraints. Be careful when installing extensions; test with many small files, and some very large files after installing new extensions to avoid major performance penalties. See More

score 98 · Answer 2

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Stable and responsive

Top Con

Slow compared to native applications

Although pretty fast and stable (comparable to Atom), VSCode is still slower than traditional editors (compiled). Especially when launching. See More

's Experience

It's just great. Really fast, with a lot of extensions. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT, Proprietary (official builds)

Extension language:JavaScript

Integrated extension manager with very responsive searching and notifies you of extention updates. Extentions for many languages and frameworks with excellent intellisense/integration. Still lacking many feature based extentions that larger extention repositories have such as those from Atom, or Sublime. See More

Top Pro

Extensions

Top Con

Official builds are restrictively licensed

Although source code is available, official builds contain proprietary assets, and users must agree to Microsoft's licensing terms, which is why they are marketed as "Built on Open Source," rather than as fully open source (Source). See More

CaringQuiritis's Experience

Visual Studio Code is Open Source, enormously powerful, and has thousands of useful extensions for almost any kind of programming that you could want to do. See More

Top Pro

Crossplatform

It supports Windows, Linux (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Redhat, ...), MacOS See More

Top Con

Slow launch time

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

GraciousNohochacyum's Experience

VScode comes with lots of loaded feature for JavaScript and typescript however it’s damn slow when you import medium size object. Think about real large scale app. This experience with an average enterprise laptop. I5, 8gb ram and windows 7 See More

Top Pro

Great UX/UI

Easily accessible views for the integrated explorer, search/replace, debugger, plugin manager, git. Sublime/Atom like command pallet. Very intuitive and easy to use settings interface (easy for most, powerful for pros). Responsive UI. On the whole, certainly geared towards experienced coders (not green coders), but all that is really assumed is familiarity with JSON (to realize it's potential). 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

Lucifer Morningstar's Experience

Used it just recently many updates but pointless, and it's sluggish. See More

Top Pro

Debugger

Debugging support is available for several languages. Conditional breakponits (and hit counts). Inline values. Column breakpoints (great for minified code, or inline closures). See More

Top Con

Intellisense plugins don't work for many languages

While there is great support for C# and JavaScript, many other intellisense plugins, such as the ones for Python, do not work out of the box. See More

Yang Junhai's Experience

very fast, easy to use, great UI, lots of plugins and extensions See More

Top Pro

Integrated Git tools

Top Con

Plugins can cause VSCode to hang

Plugins can cause major hangs. Fortunately VSCode retains edits, so if this should happen, there is little (if any) loss in work following a force quit. Make sure to check performance in large files after installing new plugins, to identify trouble plugins before they cause issues. See More

Natta Wang's Experience

Because it's open source and update frequently, so you can contribute and help in improvement. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

Convenient quick integrated terminal at project directory. Easy to customize. (even on windows e.g.: cmd, git-for-windows, wsl (bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows), powershell, etc.) See More

Top Con

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

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

Top Pro

Hackable

Like atom, it is built on Electron (Chromium + Node.js). Ultimately it's the moden web platform. A platform many feel comfortable hacking on. See More

Top Con

Microsoft

Top Pro

Great performance

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

Top Con

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

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

Top Pro

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

Project search limits results

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

Top Pro

Fast, for being built on HTML5 (electron)

Used to be much faster than Atom despite being built on the same technologies (Atom has since caught up). The main factor affecting speed, will likely be the plugins you opt to install. See More

Top Con

Generalized

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

Top Pro

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

Have no good default js style analyzer

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

Top Pro

Intellisense

Enriched code completion is available for some languages bridging the gap between an editor and IDE. See More

Top Con

Javascript/electron app

It is just a web app that runs in a modified chromium whith node.js. 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

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

Top Pro

Custom snippets support

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

Top Con

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

Top Pro

Extendable through plug-ins

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

Top Con

File search is extremely slow

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

Top Pro

Common GUI keybindings

Familiar keybinds (Ctrl+C/V/S). Also has plugins for adopting default keybinds from Atom, Sublime, Vim, etc. Configured in json with intuitive UX help for new coders or pros. (Mouse combination binds do not appear to be configurable as of Q1 2017). See More

Top Con

Hangs when opening very large projects or files

When opening multiple git repositories, or when opening very large files. (Like vendor files on accident.) The programs becomes unresponsive. See More

Top Pro

"Peek" (Inline Code Edit)

Like Adobe Bracket Editor's ability to edit css from html files by providing an inline embedded editor, VSCode expands on the concept with peek-ing. See More

Top Con

Very bad auto import

Top Pro

Best and more updated Rust support

With two plugins and the RLS is the best editor/IDE with Rust support See More

Top Con

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

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

Top Pro

Fast Project Search

Feels just as fast as grep-ing! See More

Top Con

Extentions ecosystem not yet flourished

While most languages have supporting extensions and there are many other utilities and enhancing extensions, it still lags far behind the like of Sublime or Atom (however it seems to have come farther faster than Atom did, so keep a close eye). See More

Top Pro

It has gotten really good

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

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Pro

Good column editing, and multicursor support.

Alt+Click to place multiple cursors Shift+Alt+Drag to column select Sadly it appreas that these cannot be customized yet, though there is an open issue (as of 2017-06-18 you can now customize the multi cursor placement (mouse) bind somewhat, so there does seem to be some attention here. See More

Top Pro

TypeScript integration

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

Top Pro

JSDoc integration

Now can auto generate much of a JSDoc comment. 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

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 Pro

Huge community behind it

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

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 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

Top Pro

High fidelity C# plugin

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

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

JS typechecking

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

Top Pro

Good support for new Emmet syntax

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed. See More

score 55 · Answer 3

Emacs

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

Top Con

Hard customization

For customization, you need to learn Lisp. See More

Phil Morton's Experience

I was a developer and worked a body of about 1 millions lines of C code. It was very helpful to be able to open multiple files, and to compile and go through compilation errors directly out of the buffer produced by the make process. I would get in to work, fire up emacs and stay in it for the whole day. Email, debugging, writing documentation, everything was integrated. See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Collaborative editing:Yes

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

Top Pro

Total customizability

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. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Top Pro

Self documenting

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

Top Con

Chorded keyboard combinations can be baffling

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

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. See More

Top Con

Not preinstalled on most Linux distributions

Emacs is not preinstalled on Linux distributions. This makes it poor choice for working with a lot of Virtual Machines spawned very often. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal

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

Ubiquity

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

Top Pro

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top Pro

Has stood the test of time

If you learn it you will never have to change your editor. Emacs is in use since mid 1970s. See More

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. See More

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Pro

Mini buffer

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

Top Pro

Org-mode

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

Many customizations available in the public domain

Customizations for html, css, java, python, pearl etc, etc, etc. 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

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

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

(Almost) everything is implemented in Emacs Lisp. You are the limit.

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

Top Pro

Eshell is cross platform

You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

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

Top Pro

Excelent tutorial to get you started

The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later. See More

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

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

Top Pro

Integrates planning in your development process

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. See More

Top Pro

Evil mode

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

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

Top Pro

Vi keybindings through Evil mode

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

Top Pro

Visual selection and text objects with Evil

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects. See More

score 22 · Answer 4

micro

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting for many languages

Specs

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:No

Top Pro

Built-in plugin manager

Top Pro

Supports split windows

Top Pro

Runs in terminal

Interaction with Vim is centered around several modes. Each mode has a different purpose and switching between them changes behaviour and keybindings. There are 12 modes in total (6 basic modes and 6 variations on basic modes) and 4 of them are used commonly. 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. Modes allow separating concerns between various tasks and reusing keys for different kinds of functionality. As a result, the workflow becomes more efficient. See More

score 161 · Answer 5

Vim

Top Pro

Enables effective keyboard-driven editing due to its modal nature

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

dyln mc's Experience

very stable, very efficient once you get the hang of it, strong help community for beginners or experts on freenode/#vim See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Extension language:Vim

Price:0

Top Pro

Ubiquity and portability

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms, it is the de-facto Unix editor, and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Con

Difficult 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

Peter J. Mello's Experience

The Church of Emacs...enough said. See More

Top Pro

Allows keeping fingers in home row

All vim commands can be accessed without the fingers having to stray far away from the home row. Hand position doesn't have to be changed since access to arrow keys or ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdn is not needed. See More

Top Con

Poor package management out of the box

Out of the box package management in vim is (to put it lightly) bad. With the user being forced to download files and spread them out in folders inside their .vim folder. But this can be easily fixed through the use of third-party package managers such as Vundle or Pathogen. Update: Vim 8.0 has package management See More

AuthenticVucubCaquix's Experience

improve my efficiency See More

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vim uses a custom scripting language called VimL (or vimscript). It provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of vim. When combined with, for example, a plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. Vim has thousands of plugins made by the community covering a wide range of languages, integrations and productivity enhancements. Moreover, vim and neovim provide api with various popular programming language. This broadend its extensibility even further. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

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

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

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

Top Con

Difficult to write extensions for

Vim uses a custom scripting language, VimL, that is somewhat difficult to read and write. As part of data analysis on GitHub commit messages, vimL was found to have the highest percentage of commit messages with expressions of Anger. Almost double of that of the language that had the second highest precentage of expressions of Anger. 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 such as Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Is not multithreaded

Vim is not capable of utilizing multiple CPU cores to perform better. This can cause issues when working with large files. 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 Con

Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms

If compiled without -clipboard support (by default on MacOS). This can be worked around 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. See More

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Con

Cursor has the same shape in command and insert mode

Unlike gvim, in vim cursor has the same shape in command and insert modes (but you can configure color depending on mode). See More

Top Pro

Tons of plugins/add-ons

This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling. See More

Top Pro

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

Top Con

Slow when opening files with very long lines

A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file. See More

Top Pro

Out of the box autocompletion

Top Con

Outdated UI

Top Pro

By default in Linux

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files. See More

Top Pro

Macros increase productivity

Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the Vim combinations can actually make you slower at everything else. See More

Top Pro

Can never outgrow it

The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh. See More

Top Con

Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box

A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY. See More

Top Pro

Amazing productivity features

Vim's support of :s and :g commands helps users make complex changes to large files in seconds instead of hours. Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making most of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

Modal editing

Has a clean split between editing text (Insert Mode) and the other functions of the editor. See More

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

But not for all users. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor teaches the basics Vim in 30 minutes

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

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Useful undo features

Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with RTL

Top Pro

Macros are highly predictable

Macros are sequences of instructions usually used to simplify common, repetitive tasks and increase productivity. Many text editors have programmable macros, but since vim is keyboard based, its programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Pro

Everything is mnemonic

No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example. See More

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More

Top Pro

Automatically installed on most Linux distributions

Most distributions have this automatically installed - this is especially useful when creating and using a lot of virtual machines (via ssh). See More

Top Pro

Easy to find help

A lot of people are using Vim so it is very easy to find help. See More

Top Pro

Status Booster

Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex. See More

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

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

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

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

Has multiple distinct editing modes

Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O support

Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze. See More

Top Pro

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

Flexible feature-set

Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way. See More

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

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

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

Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)

If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too. See More

Top Pro

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

Top Pro

Momentum loading

But not a minute like JetBranins IDE. See More

Top Pro

Easy for battery

Because easy on CPU and RAM. See More

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

score 27 · Answer 6

Geany

Top Pro

Light and fast

Top Con

Not very advanced

Similar to Notepad or Gedit. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

Geany just doesn't cut it for me, though I'm hard-pressed to explain precisely why. The UX just feels unnatural to me is the best I can come up with. For such a mature open-source project, it feels surprisingly "feature-bare," lacking a lot of the syntactic sugar that aids your workflow in other text editors. The agonizingly slow process it's been for them just to port from 15-year-old GTK2 to the now-already dated GTK3+ framework certainly hasn't helped; this program has looked and felt "old" for over a decade and probably always will. There are just too many better options for it to hold much currency in this space. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Top Pro

Cross platform

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

Top Con

Not many third-party plugins

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

Top Pro

Native

It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. See More

Top Con

No Windows portable bundle available

But only an installer. See More

Top Pro

Simple to use

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Options in the menu are easy to find

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

Top Pro

Actively developed Open Source

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

Top Pro

Build in terminal

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

Top Pro

Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software

This software respects your freedom. See More

Top Pro

There is portable bundle

It exists at PortableApps.com. See More

Top Pro

Built-in plugin manager

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

Top Pro

Simple project management

Top Pro

Quick search on large files

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

Top Pro

Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)

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

Top Pro

Embedded terminal

Top Pro

Plugins

Top Pro

Themes

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform and Vim UI in the same box. See More

score 46 · Answer 7

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vim and Emacs

Top Con

Even though has vim keybindings it will still feel unfamiliar to vim users

TruthfulAequitas's Experience

Indeed the best parts of Vim and Emacs compiled together See More

Specs

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

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Top Pro

Community-driven configuration

Top Con

Slow startup time

Although configuration is heavily lazy loaded, the starting time of Spacemacs is usually between two and five seconds. It can be considered a disadvantage but it has to be noted that Emacs can be run as a daemon which basically reduces the clients startup time to a few milliseconds. See More

ToughCastor's Experience

cool See More

Top Pro

Use SPACE bar as leader

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is using by default the space bar as a leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI. See More

Top Con

Not preinstalled on most Linux distributions

Spacemacs is not preinstalled on Linux distributions. This makes it poor choice for working with a lot of Virtual Machines spawned very often. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

Mnemonic and consistent key bindings

Key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces, for instance buffer actions are under b, file actions under f, project actions under p, search actions under s etc... Key bindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

Top Con

Functionality layers of complicated configuration

To configure Spacemacs, settings for Emacs/Evil/Spacemacs may need editing. It's not always clear which need to be changed or how to change settings globally: sometimes hooks are needed, other times Spacemacs provides options. See More

Top Pro

Above average documentation quality

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

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

Top Pro

Configuration Layer 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 to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages. See More

Top Con

High CPU and unresponsive at times

There are occasions when Spacemacs would suddenly consume a LOT of CPU and then other times would become completely unresponsive. This instability took place only 6 months or so ago. Restarting Spacemacs can fix it for a while but perhaps this issue is already fixed in newer versions. See More

Top Pro

Great support

The community is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat to ask for questions. See More

Top Con

Can be quite glitchy at times

Spacemacs combines many packages from many different authors that were never designed to work together. Sometimes they interact in unexpected ways, and things randomly break as one package interferes with another's features. This combined with delayed auto-loading of packages in unpredictable order, different modes for different file types, frequent package updates, and necessary customization by selection of layers and packages, can make these glitches hard to reproduce. It takes a lot of emacs know-how to fix these problems. Fortunately there is a very active community willing to help with these problems, but it might take a while. See More

Top Pro

Gradual learning curve

Evil package is a first class citizen, 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

Org-Mode

Org-mode is an extremely powerful emacs mode which is primarily used to take notes or as a TODO list. It can be used for much more than that though, with a lot of users practically planning their life in org-mode. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added every day and release cycles are short. 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

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

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

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

Offers a number of practical features

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

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

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

Daemon support

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

Top Pro

LaTeX support

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

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

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

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

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

Easily extended with community plugins

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

score 95 · Answer 8

Atom

Top Con

Slow

Top Pro

Hackable

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 plugins is also great and thus it's easier for developers ti jump in and create plugins for Atom. See More

Lucifer Morningstar's Experience

Although this is github's official Text Editor, it has a long way to go. Use sublime/gedit/nano/vim instead of this thing. Please make the right decision and support the right project. Atom won't be on my good side until a bleeding edge update appears. See More

Specs

Platforms:Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:Plug-in

Bracket Matching:Yes (plugin)

It's almost impossible to open large files with Atom. It has a 2MB limit and even files smaller than the limit but still considerably large take forever to load. See More

Top Con

Slow to open large files

Top Pro

Multiplatform

Runs on Mac, Windows, Linux. See More

MotivatedEunostus's Experience

Hackable and free. This it's the alternative (clon) of Sublime Text. Maybe should add more plugins default. 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

Lots of packages

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

OptimisticRohe's Experience

great!!!!!!!!!!! See More

Top Con

Memory hog

Consumes a lot of memory for each instance. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

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

Luis Carlos Gallego's Experience

maybe for pros but begginers is kind of confused,the menu bar dissapear and i couldnt get it back,confused to me. 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

Multi-line select and edit

Multiple cursors & column selection allow versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated add the next occurence 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 allows selecting vertically. See More

Top Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it needs sacrificing responsiveness. See More

Top Pro

Command Palette

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

Top Con

Web platform focused

Top Pro

Good-looking out of the box

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

Built in package management

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

Top Con

Not suitable for older computers

Atom requires a lot of system resources to run, so it will most probably be painfully slow on an older machine. 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

Javascript/electron app

It is just a web app that runs in a modified chromium whith node.js. See More

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

Does not work in the terminal

Because it does not work in the terminal, it can't be used via ssh. When working with Virtual Machines for example, you need to use a terminal-based editor. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

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

Top Con

Missing polish

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 things 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

Instant file switching

Ctrl or Command + T and using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. See More

Top Con

Bloated - too many packages, too little productivity

Unable to use package to even convert a C file to PDF. See More

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 plugins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old-fashioned way. It 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

No text UI

Top Pro

Modern feel and very customizable and extendable

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

Themes

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

Top Con

Not known when a new window will open

It's not really clear why and when a new window is opened when you open a file out of the tree view. See More

It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. See More

score 6 · Answer 9

Textadept

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Top Con

Community

Does not have an IRC channel or some kind of forum where a community of developers/plugin writers could evolve around. Has a mailing list which is said to be active but that does not feel that attractive. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Textadept is a fast, minimal and extensible open-source cross-platform text editor for programmers written in C and Lua. See More

Specs

Has very few dependencies, and very small footprint. Can be copied to a new system in a moment, unpacked and be at your service. See More

Top Pro

Small and portable

Top Pro

Scriptable

Has a built-in lua engine. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Pro

Easily written plugins

You can write plugins pretty easily. Here is the API doc, quite compact. Here is a module which adds a support for ctags. See More

Top Pro

Detailed documentation and elegant API

Good for making and installing plugins. See More

Top Pro

Has both GUI and TUI

Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to. Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file. See More

Top Pro

It is easy to split a window

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

score 11 · Answer 10

Kate

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

Top Con

Hard to install on Windows or OS X

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

Peter J. Mello's Experience

Kate has definitely experienced a renaissance of late, seeing a rush of new development that's brought new features, squashed old bugs and brought the project much closer to cross-platform feature parity. Surprisingly that last part is what has me really hot on using Kate as my go-to text editor lately: the fact that whether I'm in the comfort of either of my two favorite Linux distributions or grumbling through a stint in Windows for some accursed reason, I can fire up Kate and it's covering my screen in fractions of a second, looking and behaving damned-near identically with everything right where I like it. The new command palette homage to Sublime Text is pretty spiffy, the Filesystem Browser pane feels the same regardless of platform, my adaptive code snippets are synced, what more could I possibly want? It even has a new Wakatime plugin so I can take a shotgun to the face of my privacy and brag to all of my nerd friends about how much time I spend coding after the sun goes down each day! Seriously, though, if you haven't taken Kate out for a test drive in a couple years or more, you owe it to yourself to do so as soon as you have the chance. See More

Specs

License:LGPL-2.0-or-later, MIT

Collaborative editing:No

RTL:Yes

Top Pro

Project mode

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

Top Pro

Fast and minimaistic

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

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting

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

Top Pro

Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols

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

Top Pro

Thriving plugin ecosystem

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

Top Pro

By far one of the best and lightest text editors.

Notepads alternative (for the Windows users). See More

Top Pro

Vi entry mode

Kate has a vi entry mode. See More

Kakoune provides a very expressive set of commands, including various objects selection (paragraph, blocks, words), alignment support, conditional selection filtering... This set of command is expressive enough to implement all the provided auto indentation logic. See More

score 8 · Answer 11

Kakoune

Top Pro

Very expressive

Top Con

Small community

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Android

License:Unlicense

Top Pro

Actively developed and supported

Top Con

Written in C++

Top Pro

Good UNIX citizen

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

Top Pro

Text selection mechanism

Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around. See More

Top Pro

Will be familiar to vim users

Kakoune first started as a rewrite from scratch of vim, but then ended up being another text editor altogether. So it's inspired in a lot of ways from vim. See More

Top Pro

More modern than vim

You can't use it cross platform. Although it does work with wine, many features don't work or function imperfectly on other platforms. See More

score 43 · Answer 12

Notepad++

Top Con

Windows only

Top Pro

Light and fast

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

Herb Martin's Experience

The best there is for Windows in GENERAL -- everything else has some one or a few specifics where they shine. Small and easy to install, plus easy to use as a 'portable app' or just copy either settings or the entire app to another machine. The worst cons people can invent for this is that it has an 'old UI' when in truth this means they don't keep MOVING your UI elements around once you have trained your eyes, hands and brain to use it automatically. Or that it might be slow on files larger than 64 MB -- not even sure that is true because even though I use this every day, all day, on a dozen machines I never edit anything nearly that big, and the few times I've loaded giant log files or something it did just fine. Do YOU edit 64MB files? Give me a break, people just trying to invent a 'CON'. It's Windows only, if that is a disadvantage to YOU then it's an issue. Pretty much the only one. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Collaborative editing:Plug-in

Disgusting finding out that almost each version is related to a political slogan, polluting FOSS society. See More

Top Con

Politics related software

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting for a wide variety of languages

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

FunnySuwaliyat's Experience

No politics! See More

Top Con

Confusing settings

It is hard to find where to find the option you need to change. See More

Top Pro

Extendable via plugins

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained. See More

Luis Carlos Gallego's Experience

i liked but i like more in black background,an didnt work to me the auto complete ..... See More

Top Con

Dated UI

Very old fashioned user interface. With a modern GUI, Notepad++ could be way more popular. See More

Top Pro

Free under GPL

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

Top Con

Unstable updates

Unstable updates have made it unusable in past... I am not sure what caused it but corrupt download of extensions/updates and unstable update and download manager may have caused my installation to become unusable in 2 occasions. I was forced to fully uninstall and reinstall. See More

Top Pro

Portable

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

Top Con

Performance problems with huge textfiles (>64MB)

When you have to analyze big server log files, the app becomes slow. See More

Top Pro

Available on Windows

Vim and Emacs are not easily available on Windows. This is a great editor when stuck in that environment. See More

Top Pro

Regex replace in selection, active tab, or all tabs

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

Top Pro

Displays nonprinting characters clearly

Console-oriented editors like Emacs and Vim would just show you confusing mojibake based on printing characters. N++ gives you dedicated little icons for them. See More

Top Pro

Split screen

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

Top Pro

Persistent documents, even after exiting the application

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

Top Pro

With autosave and session history there is literally no reason to save until you are finished with a feature

Notepad++ sessions can just be left there without worrying about saving when work is interrupted. If the machine crashes or gets reboot then the exact state of open apps and all changes are "just there" when it's restarted (except the Undo feature). See More

Top Pro

User defined language syntax support

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

Top Pro

Multi-line editing

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

Useful built-in addon manager. See More

score 7 · Answer 13

CudaText

Top Pro

Addon manager

Specs

License:MPL-2.0

About ~180 programming languages supported at the time of writing either built-in or can be added easily with the addon manager. See More

Top Pro

Package for Linux ARM available

Top Pro

Many programming languages supported for syntax highlighting

Top Pro

Addons can be developed in Python

Top Pro

Minimap plugin available

Top Pro

Support for many programming languages

Supports approximately 180 languages either built-in or to be easily installed with add-on manager. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Pro

Add-ons can be written in Python

Top Pro

Built in add-on manager

When opening files from the file manager, it is still nice to have vim. See More

score 6 · Answer 14

GVim

Top Pro

Vim without a shell

Top Con

GVim, like Vim, has a difficult learning curve

A lot of time is needed to learn all the commands and modes supported. A lot of time will also be spent tuning all the settings to the user's preference. See More

Top Pro

Excellent performance

Because it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurences in 100MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor sort of died during that. See More

Top Pro

Works on all platforms

Whether its your windows machine, a Linux, Unix or a Mac Vim would work everywhere. You can even build it from its source on your favorite linux environment. See More

Top Pro

Has different cursor shape in command and insert modes

Unlike vim, gvim has different cursor shape in command and insert mode, which is very convenient. See More

Top Pro

Supports all vim features and settings

All vim features, custom settings, and plugins are automatically available. See More

Top Pro

Compatible with cmdline vim macros

There is no diff. in macros and scripts for Vim and GVim. Both functiom almost exactly the same way, GVim just add some menus and Windows Explorer int. (on windows only, obviously). See More

You can easily create extensions for the editor. See More

score 11 · Answer 15

Brackets

Top Pro

Extensions

Top Con

No more updates

Adobe seem to not updating the editor anymore... See More

FrankPujo's Experience

Complete yet simple code editor, really enjoyable. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:No

Extension language:JavaScript

It is definitely optimized for html. css and javascript, but it is completely fine for every language. See More

Top Pro

Perfect HTML, CSS and JS

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

Actively developed

Brackets is being actively maintained and developed. See More

Top Con

Made using Javascript and HTML

Compared to making a program in a lower-level language, creating one as you would create a website does make it easier. When installed however, it requires running its own web browser in the background, using many more resources and making it slower to start. 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

Imperfect nodejs code intellisense compared to atom ternjs

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

Brackets is entirely free and open source. See More

Top Pro

Support for Adobe PSD content

Default extension allows extraction of PSD resources, such as images and styles. Good integration for placing extracted resources into source. 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. Works with php as well. Editing a css will even highlight the tag that's currently worked on. It only works with Chrome though. See More

Top Pro

Popup previews

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

Top Pro

Can style a tag without switching over to the stylesheet

A feature called quick edit allows selecting a tag in, for example, an html file and edit the associated style without switching over to the css document. It also supports SASS and LESS pre-processors. See More

create a package.json with a main.js file and write what you want inside it, paste it into .graviton in the roaming directory. Once pasted in there, restart graviton and there it is! See More

score 1 · Answer 16

Graviton

Top Pro

Can write a plugin in 5 seconds.

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux Mac

Top Pro

Easy to extend, customization, nice UI

Files on SFTP, SSHFS, FTP, SMB, NFS mounts can be edited and saved back just like local files. See More

score 8 · Answer 17

Gedit

Top Con

It crashes when the files are large or have long lines.

Top Pro

Editing on remote file systems

Lucifer Morningstar's Experience

Best for Quick Edits involving GUI. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:GPL

Collaborative editing:plug-in

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

Gedit is a text editor. Simple and fast and it misses a lot of features. Most notably auto-complete for several languages. Also worth noting the GNOME development team has actually removed features over time See More

Top Con

Not a lot of features

Top Pro

Fast and Simple

It is best for Quick Edits and is fairly simple to navigate. Not modern but minimal so highly usable. See More

ConvivialHelernus's Experience

It crashes when the files are large or have long lines. See More

Top Pro

Great UX

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

Top Pro

The external tools allows you to create/launch shell scripts

score 8 · Answer 18

Notepadqq

Top Pro

Simple to use

Top Pro

Very fast

Top Pro

Plugin support

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

score 7 · Answer 19

Yi

Top Pro

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

Top Con

Very few plugins available

Even though Yi is a general purpose text editor similar to Vim and Emacs, almost all of the plugins that have been written for Yi so far focus on supporting Haskell as a programming environment. See More

Top Pro

More performant than Vim

Vim can be rather slow due the age of its code base. In particular, running large macros in Vim can be rather painful. Since Yi is being built from scratch it has been engineered for performance and with the benefit of hindsight. See More

Top Con

No way to reuse your existing customizations and keybindings

If you have spent years crafting your .vimrc or .emacs, there's no way to reuse it in Yi. You have to start from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Extensible and modular editing features

As far as extensibility goes, Yi easily outstrips any other open-source text editor. Motions can be built from parser combinators, making them simultaneously flexible and modular - an open source hacker's dream. See More

Top Con

Requires Haskell to compile and configure

GHC + Haskell packages makes for a rather large installation, which is a big ask for a relatively obscure terminal editor. See More

Top Pro

Plugins work together

Packages work together because they compile together. See More

Built-in terminal with root access so I can make changes to my running machines and they sync back to the project files - critical for interpreted languages. Although I don't use it often being able to SSH into the workspace so I can use a desktop IDE is handy. See More

score 22 · Answer 20

Eclipse Che

Top Pro

SSH + terminal

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Shareable and portable workspaces

The workspace in Che includes project sources, IDE and the runtime. So if you hand your Che workspace definition to another user and they execute it they will get everything they need to build, run and debug the project. Also the runtime is in a Docker container so it will work even if the second user is on a different OS than the original user who shared their workspace with them. See More

Top Pro

It's an IDE

A clean and lightweight IDE much like an editor. Includes syntax highlighting for >50 languages and autocomplete / intellisense for Java and JS with other languages in the works. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Open sourced under the Eclipse Foundation (licensed EPL 1.0). See More

Top Pro

GIT and SVN VCS support

Projects can be easily imported from any Git or Svn repository hosting service. See More

Top Pro

Out of the box and custom (Docker) runtimes

You can choose from pre-configured environments for Java, Javascript, C++, PHP, C#, etc... or you can define your own by dropping in a Dockerfile - makes it easy for simple and complex projects. See More

Top Pro

Application previews

Che does a nice job to automatically map the service:port running in a Docker container (e.g. tomcat on 8080) to the Docker port it actually uses (something in the ephemeral range). The user never needs to figure that out - it's just made available to them when they run their server. See More

Top Pro

Custom commands

Another IDE features is the ability for me to create custom commands with a wizard interface. These are saved in workspace, but you can also share them with everyone else. See More

Top Pro

Merge tool for git

There's a built-in visual diff and ability to do selective merges. You also can use the git menu or just execute git commands from the terminal. See More