What are the best IDEs for web development?

Extension language:JVM

Bracket Matching:Yes

Can edit/manage databases in your IDE, or use Datagrip from Jetbrains to do this. This means your IDE can make contextual completions based on your schema from your database. See More

Top Pro

Database editing

Top Con

Uses a lot of memory

Can use a lot of memory and need to be restarted. This has been improving, but it still apparent. See More

NeighborlyQucumatz's Experience

For me it's the fact that PHPStorm is really more intelligent that any other IDE out there... See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Can work on your application on the 3 major OSs - Linux, macOS, Windows. This is the upside of using Java. See More

Top Con

Cost - commercial software

If you subscribe you can get the full license even after canceling, but it's still commercial software and this is it's main disadvantage. WebStorm can be used if you don't need Database or PHP Support, which is another Jetbrains Product. See More

hmoebius's Experience

PhpStorm is nice but it's both expensive and proprietary. There's also not an incredible gap between it and free ide's for web development. 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

Top Con

Resource exhaustive

It often maxes out even 4 cores, not to mention several hundred MBs of RSS with a single small project opened. See More

Top Pro

Framework specific plugins

Has support for Drupal, Wordpress, Symfony on the PHP Side. React, Angular, Meteor, Mocha, Karma, ESLint and many more on the JS Side. Some of these require a (free) plugin. Also HTML & CSS full support. See More

Top Con

Pricey

Currently costs £78 but does not seem to offer much more than some free counterparts. See More

Top Pro

Outstanding JavaScript Development capabilities

Gives superior support when developing JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript code with code completion, linting, debugging, refactoring, etc. See More

Top Con

Written in Java

Java applications often have certain UI elements that are unpleasant. Although a lot of the UI is fleshed out, this still applies. For example, opening a file uses a different dialog than your native OS which means keyboard shortcuts may not work. 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

Has built-in console and SSH clients

This allows the developer to execute commands without switching to other windows. It also keeps track of what is 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

Lots of plugins

Lots of plugins from JetBrains and the community are available, from useful things like support for Docker, Vagrant, Angular, Vue.js and more useless (but fun) like a nyan cat progress bar. See More

Top Pro

Great debugging capabilities

Using a 3rd party debugger installed on the system. See More

Top Pro

Templating support

Supports Twig and Laravel's Blade (among others). Technically the later is part of a framework which Phpstorm supports but I've seen IDEs (e.g. Netbeans) with Laravel support but no blade support so it does deserve a notable mention. See More

Top Pro

Auto-sync with remote folders

PHPStorm can monitor files and sync any changes to a remote server. This works more efficiently than libnotify and faster than Vagrant's rsync-auto. See More

Top Pro

Code Refactoring

Quickly rename classes, methods, and variables used across multiple files in the project. 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, which can be hidden when not needed. See More

Top Pro

Supports various PHP frameworks

Supports Symfony2, Yii frameworks and Laravel. See More

Top Pro

Can upgrade to IntelliJ for full language stack

If you are a Polygot or if you mainly write code in Ruby, Python, Go, (or some other) plugins, you can get one piece of software and can do Backend/Frontend in the same IDE while being full featured and all pretty similar. Jetbrains IDEs work all based on a plugin model, although there are exceptions (You can't just get WebStorm and install Ruby/Python, but can install everything on IntelliJ). See More

Top Pro

Preview websites

You can preview websites with multiple browsers and (with the new update) also within the IDE. See More

Top Pro

External command support

Ability to setup custom external commands, which is something inherited from eclipse and found lacking on netbeans. See More

Top Pro

Responsive core developers

Top Pro

Emmet integrated

Top Pro

Inspections of all kinds

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

Excellent search tools

Especially the "find in path" feature that displays both results and file preview! See More

Top Pro

Regular updates for fixes and new features

PhpStorm is clearly being developed continually, which gives confidence that it will be available for some time and is not abandonware. See More

Top Pro

Comes with the ability to test RESTful Web Services

You can save time on building your own or integrating libraries for testing RESTful Web Services. PHPStorm enables you to test endpoints without leaving your workspace or disrupting your workflow. You can code your endpoints in one window and test it immediately in another window. See More

Top Pro

Plugins allow futureproofing and customization

Active development work on plugins is always a plus, as it can extend the use of the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Phar package recognition

Phar support allows running complete applications out of .phar files. See More

Top Pro

Integrated Vagrant support

It recognizes Vagrantfile and allows full control from the IDE. See More

Top Pro

PHPDoc support

PHPDoc is a documentation generator. It allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments. See More

Top Pro

Built-in debugger

Has built in support for Xdebug including remote debugging. See More

Top Pro

Zero latency typing

Type codes with pleasure. Delay of visual feedback on a computer display has an important effect on typist's behavior and satisfaction, as cited here. See More

Top Pro

It comes with Testing RESTful Web Services

Save time of building your own or integrating libraries for testing RESTful Web Services. PHPStorm enables you to test endpoints without leaving your workspace or disrupting your workflow . You can code your endpoints in one window and test it immediately from another window. See More

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

Task/Context functionality

Similar to Eclipse Mylyn: you can create tasks or retrieve them from your ticketing system, and each task keeps its own context (opened files, modifications, etc.). See More

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

WebStorm

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

Ross Williams's Experience

If you have the money for a license then this is one of the best IDE's you can get for web development (JavaScript). Almost everything you could ever want or need comes right out of the box, however for some people this isn't a good thing as there are many features already built-in that you may never need to use. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

Extension language:JVM-based

Webstorm will auto complete JS variables, keywords, methods, functions, and parameters. Webstorm can also offer completion from methods and functions that are in any external libraries or frameworks. See More

Top Pro

Intelligent code completion

Top Con

Not open source

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

Clint Gallon's Experience

Not free ... but worth it. And half as pricey Visual Studio. See More

Top Pro

Really good configurable code formatting

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

Top Con

Occasional slow performance

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

Top Pro

Node.js integration

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

Top Con

High memory usage

Some of the memory is used for indexing files, which really fasten up things. Despite that, uses too much memory, excessive features cannot be disabled and set too low memory for JVM make it unusable. 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

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

Supports many JavaScript frameworks

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

Top Con

Too much money for too little difference

If free IDEs are just as good, why pay? 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

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

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 Con

Non-native filesystem causes issues

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

Top Pro

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

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

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

Top Pro

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 Con

It's JavaScript IDE

It's only good for JS development, better is phpStorm with full JS support and PHP. 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 Con

Plug-in Ecosystem isn't robust

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

Top Pro

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

Support for all major VCS systems

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

Powerful git and GitHub integration

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

Top Pro

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 Pro

Supports a wide range of plug-ins

Top Pro

Compilers for compile-to-JavaScript languages

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

Top Pro

Ability to base hot keys on previously used IDEs

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

Top Pro

Built-in support for JavaScript task runners

WebStorm has support for Grunt and Gulp task runners. 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

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

Auto sync settings across team / machines / platforms

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

Top Pro

Efficient and effective

Top Pro

Superior Find All and Replace All feature

Find All and Replace All tools run fast and allow live editing 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

Dart language support

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

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

Gulp support

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

Coffeescript support

Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting. See More

Top Pro

Webpack support

Assists with configuration and understands module resolution. See More

Top Pro

Server and client-side debugger

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

Top Pro

Cordova support

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

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

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

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

Vim

Top Pro

Excellent performance

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

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Extension language:Vim

Price:0

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

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

Extremly configurable

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support

There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while. See More

Top Con

VimScript

Top Pro

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

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

Top Con

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

Top Pro

By default in Linux

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Once learned, it's very hard to forget

Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes. See More

Top Con

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

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

Top Con

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

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

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

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

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

Top Pro

Extremely portable

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

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

Works in terminal over SSH

Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

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

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. See More

Top Con

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

Great productivity

Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making most of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

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

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

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 Con

High effort to customize

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 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 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

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". 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

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

Emacs

Top Pro

Excellent tutorial to get you started

Webdev Tory Anderson's Experience

Emacs does everything, and web dev is no different. Whether using Emmet or Web-mode, it's easy to hop between html, css, and javascript, as well as any other language under the heavens. Magnificent implementation of Git, as well as excellent Tramp usage for easy work on remote servers, and tools like Helm for color selection and Company and Yasnippet for auto-complete (all of which are free and easy to include) makes the Emacs flexibility+power a perfect fit for web dev. See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

So much better than proprietary bulls**t See More

Top Pro

eshell is cross platform

ColorfulHaurvatat's Experience

Top Pro

Visual selection and text objects with Evil

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

Top Pro

Customisation with Emacs Lisp

(Almost) everything is implemented in Emacs Lisp. You are the limit when it comes to changing or adding new functions to emacs. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. See More

Top Pro

Excellent Lisp editing support

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

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

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

Top Pro

Gnus

Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use. See More

Top Pro

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

GTK+ widgets support

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things. See More

Top Pro

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

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

Has been widely used for a long time

Top Pro

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top Pro

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

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

Mini buffer

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer. 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

Cross-platform

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

Top Pro

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

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system. See More

Top Pro

Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs

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

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

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

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. 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

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

Self documenting

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

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

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

Top Pro

Total customizability

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

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. See More

Top Pro

Rainbow-mode for in-editor color previews

Rainbow mode parses in-line hex color codes and overlays them with the color itself, so you can see exactly what #a54b8f really looks like. See More

Top Pro

helm-colors for color selection

Helm-colors makes color selection a breeze, including easy insertion of the hex, RGB, or HSL form of the color. See More

Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like those taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, and changed and replaced in the editor. The documentation for creating new plugins is also great, making it easier for developers to jump in and create plugins for Atom. See More

Atom

Top Pro

Extendable

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

Grey Proc's Experience

This idiotic piece of crap installs itself with no ability to let you change where it's going. Utterly insulting, and annoying when it's dumping itself automatically to your SSD. See More

Specs

Platforms:Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux

Auto Complete:Yes (plugin)

License:MIT

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

Modern feel and very customizable and extendable

Top Con

Very slow startup time

HonestPapNiginGara's Experience

Clean and clear view, too many plugin extensible features. Done instant run web easier and fast simulate responsive just drag and drop edge. See More

Top Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking. 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

Dvdr Trgn's Experience

Does everything I need and basically replaces Sublime, TextMate, and Netbeans for me. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

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

ResponsiveMnemosyne's Experience

it is perfect 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

Not a fully-fledged IDE

Atom has very limited support and can only be extended by third-party plugins. Core features like debugging, linting and extended language support can be unnecessarily complicated. See More

Top Pro

Written completely in web languages

Don't like something in your web development toolkit? Another web developer has likely written a plugin to fix whatever issue is bothering you. Have a really weird issue no one else has had? You can use your mad siq web dev skillz to hack away at the editor to rebuild it, better, faster, stronger 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

Embedded Git control

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

Top Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it needs sacrificing responsiveness See More

Top Pro

Built-in package management

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

Top Con

Crash and data loss

Unsaved changes can be lost when the app crashes. A bugreport about that was closed automatically after some time. 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 while the second 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

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

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 adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows for selecting vertically. 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

Top Pro

Command Palette support

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

Top Con

Depends on old software

Depends on python 2, which dies out. See More

Top Pro

Extensive list of packages

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

Top Pro

Allows for instant file switching

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

Top Pro

Multiplatform

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

Top Pro

Simple Context Menu integration

Atom can be easily integrated into the context menu to open whole folders or single files. See More

Top Pro

HiDPI support

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

Top Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

It is made upon electron, which means that it works similar tochrome, making it really sluggish after serious customization. See More

Brackets

Top Pro

Intuitive and easy. Doesn't overload you with all sorts of confusing options like VSCode

Top Con

Gets really slow after installing 20+ plugins

WhiteLilac's Experience

The UI and the shortcuts were very intuitive for me, compared to some other IDEs, and I didn't have to customize it in any way, so I stayed with Brackets. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Extension language:JavaScript

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

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

Built-in browser live-updating

Top Con

Problematic updater

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

CredibleManannanMacLir's Experience

Use it for personal and for the classroom. Lightweight, can install on USB stick, useful extensions available to fill any 'gaps' in missing features. Stable, live preview is great so no need to spin up a webserver for simple tasks. See More

Top Pro

Made with web development in mind

It has a live preview, built in autocomplete for all web languages and inspection tools made for the web. This is what it excels at. 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

PerceptiveQucumatz's Experience

No react support out of the box... See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

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

Top Con

Supports only web languages by default <but>

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

Top Pro

Actively developed

Brackets is being actively maintained and developed. See More

Top Con

No react support.

Setting up react highlighting is a brainache. See More

Top Pro

Can style a tag without switching over to the stylesheet

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

Top Pro

Drag and drop support

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

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

Brackets is entirely free and open source. See More

Top Pro

Can be hacked by any front-end developer

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

Top Pro

Vim mode

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

Top Pro

Support for Adobe PSD content

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

Top Pro

Built-in extension manager

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

Top Pro

Popup previews

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

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

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Distraction free editing mode

Top Con

Proprietary

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

ODAO™ OSAWERE's Experience

It's very lightweight, fast and extremely customizable. I also enjoy the variety of packages that can easily be installed to boost productivity while using SublimeText. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:Proprietary

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

Top Pro

Support for TextMate themes and window decoration themes

Top Con

Paid

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

PleasantNgai's Experience

Fast... See More

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Con

Not a full IDE

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

Top Pro

Haxe and OpenFL integration via plugin

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

Top Con

Annoying whitespace management

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

Top Pro

Multiple languages are supported

Top Con

Often crashes due to poor quality plugins

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

Top Pro

Functionality can be easily extended

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

Top Con

Inadequate language support

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

Top Pro

Very fast

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

Top Con

Interruption while work

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

Top Pro

Lightweight

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

Top Con

Loading big files on Windows is slow

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

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

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

Top Con

No toolbar

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

Top Pro

Fully customizable

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

Top Con

No printing of files

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

Top Pro

Easy to get started

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

Top Pro

Permits instant file switching

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

Top Pro

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

Multi-line select and editing

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

Top Pro

IDE features without the cruft

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

Top Pro

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

Top Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Top Pro

Offers Command Palette

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

Top Pro

Dynamic Build System

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

Top Pro

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

Top Pro

Consistent cross-platform

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

Top Pro

File management is good and the ui is great

Top Pro

Functionalities

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

Top Pro

Freemium

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

Top Pro

Allows for Vim-style editing

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

Top Pro

Highly theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More

Top Pro

Installable package manager

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

Top Pro

Regex commands

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

Komodo IDE costs you $89 for a personal license. Even though they have a Free basic version (that's also opensource), but this lacks most of the functionality that the paid version has. See More

Komodo IDE

Top Con

Not free

Top Pro

Built in Version Control

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 push-es and pull-s right while you're coding. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Integrated Debugger:Yes

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

Top Pro

Collaboration tools

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

NetBeans

Top Pro

Supports community plugins

Top Con

Development has stalled dramatically

This is no longer true. Since moving to the Apache Software Foundation development for the IDE has become regular with many of the plugins receiving regular updates too. 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

MotivatedCyamites's Experience

Aplicaciones empresariales See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Bracket Matching:Yes

Bloated piece of crap. Whatever it can do, you're better off using a text editor. See More

Top Pro

Best for PHP, HTML5 app development

Top Con

Has been horrible for a decade

HelpfulDievas's Experience

Since moving to the Apache Software Foundation development has become regular. I have been using since Netbeans 6 for PHP and web development. I find it easy and reliable to use and there are some great plugins to change the IDE interface and provide many additional useful tools. It works seamlessly with Mercurial version control on our local network and Github. In the past if the IDE windows was left open for a period of time Java did eat up all the memory though this problem has improved since Netbeans 11 See More

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

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

Top Con

Slows down occasionally

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

FriendlyKratos's Experience

They no longer provide a downloadable EXE file with their download package See More

Top Pro

Multiple revision control system integration

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

Top Con

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

hmoebius's Experience

Netbeans is an excellent ide for web development. Especially in a world where web development often requires multiple languages, fantastic support for php and js is necessary. Netbeans does what I want an ide to do. See More

Top Pro

Frameworks support

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

Top Pro

Less and Sass Compiler support

Top Pro

Powerful debugging and performance optimization

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

Top Pro

You can access source code history

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

Top Pro

Supports Twig templates

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

Top Pro

Static analysis with PHPStan

Netbeans can integrate with the powerful code analysis tool PHPStan. See More

Top Pro

Conditional breakpoints for PHP

Breakpoints can be configured to only catch on a specific variable value. (netbeans 10.0+). See More

Top Pro

PHPUnit support

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

Top Pro

Accelerated HTML5 development support

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

Intellij IDEA

Top Pro

Smart refactorings

Top Con

Somewhat expensive

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

Specs

License:Apache 2.0

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

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

Top Con

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

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

Many convenient features

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

Top Pro

Android support, JavaEE support, etc

A very complete development environment support. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive and slick UI

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

Top Pro

Stable and robust

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

Top Pro

Support for many languages

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

Top Pro

Free version available

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

Top Pro

Fast and smart contextual assistance

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

Top Pro

Supports many building mechanisms

Natively supports make, mavin, gradle and other builders. See More

Top Pro

Clear and detailed documentation

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

it's a very powerful and it's run on the cloud. See More

Angular IDE (by Webclipse)

Add Video or Image

CodeSandbox

Top Con

No .NET support

Yiğit Alp ÇÖRTÜK's Experience

Eclipse

Top Pro

Multiple languages - one IDE

Top Con

Tends to be slow and lags a lot

PoisedTohil's Experience

I'm always running development version on my lamp environment since ten years. Nearly never experiencing issues and can always use the stable if so. Newer versions are really using little memory, giving you what you need when you need. Running Netbeans sometimes just to keep an eye on the evolution and for SQL querying. Also regularly trying other editors or ides, even VSCode on my Debian (I really dont understand the hype around-it plus using a M$ product... ) Finally always returning to Eclipse. See More

Specs

Platforms:Cross Platform

Multi Language Support:yes

Auto Complete:yes

License:MIT

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

Top Pro

Large selection of plugins

Top Con

UI can be confusing

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

Top Pro

Dark theme improved!

Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

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

Top Pro

Good refactoring tools

Top Pro

Good font rendering

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

Top Pro

Great debugger

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

Top Pro

Free and open source

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

Top Pro

Highly customizable

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

Top Pro

Gives good perspectives on your project

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

Top Pro

Fast compiler

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

Source code is available on GitHub. See More

Codelobster

score 234 · Accepted Answer

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

It's Microsoft

evil corpo See More

Doomd's Experience

It is the one lightweight "IDE" (more like a code editor) that works really well out of the box and makes it dead easy to download/install extensions that will customize the app to your dev needs. I've only really used Sublime Text 3 and Atom (for this generation), and I think Visual Code strikes the best balance between features and speed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT, Proprietary (official builds)

Very useful, you always know what you change. See More

Top Pro

Git integrated

Top Con

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

Hanike's Experience

VS Code is the best IDE for most of your needs on web development whenever you don't need the complexity of VisualStudio and it's the best companion for it too whenever you need a lighter interface for things like tweaking through your UI design/front-end needs. Highly customizable and extendable through extensions. 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

Telemetry enabled by default

Visual Studio Code collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft, although this telemetry reporting can be disabled. The data is shared among Microsoft-controlled affiliates and subsidiaries and with law enforcement per the privacy statement. Source: Visual Studio Code See More

Joel Hernández's Experience

The future of coding! See More

Top Pro

Great performance

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

Top Con

Not as dedicated to one purpose or as smart as JetBrains IDEs.

Yamid Ospina's Experience

I have used Sublime Text and Atom and when I found VS Code I saw it has better performance and better plugins integration, with atom the plugins made it slow. See More

Top Pro

Updated frequently

There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month, with great communication of new features and changes. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily. See More

Top Con

It can sometimes be frustrating to configure.

ShrewdThanatos's Experience

havings tons of plugins See More

Top Pro

TypeScript integration

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

Top Con

Using too much memory either with plugins or not

Deniss Muhla's Experience

1 year happy development See More

Top Pro

Extendable through plugins

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

Top Con

Slow launch time

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

CoolEnki's Experience

I am just loving it, using it for TS, ReactJS, ElasticSearch, Java, NodeJS. 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

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

FriendlyKratos's Experience

Even after installing several plugins for HTML, after i entered some code and tried to run it, it said the code was not recognised See More

Top Pro

Useful hints and auto-completion while you code

JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with suggestions based on variable types, functions, etc. See More

Top Con

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

AgreeableDanina's Experience

I simply love the dark mode, the numerous available plugins and the attractive UI. See More

Top Pro

Under active development

With a lot of improvements. 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

Integrated terminal

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

Top Con

Very bad auto import

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

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

Beautiful and customizable UI

Multiple themes including those used in Sublime Text and Visual Studio are available by default. 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

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

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

Huge community behind it

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

Python support

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

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 Con

Memory hog

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

Top Pro

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

Atom clone

It's nothing else than Atom with some plugins. See More

Top Pro

Emmet syntax support

Top Pro

Supports a great deal of languages, all you will ever need from an IDE.

Top Pro

Highly customizable through plugins and configuration files.

Users can set exactly how they want VSCode to behave. See More

Top Pro

Excellent integration with VisualStudio projects

You can easily switch from VisualStudio to VSCode to work on your web projects in a lighter environment if you, for example, just want to work on your interface design or anything that doesn't require a complex IDE, and VSCode won't do anything strange or affect your project's builds in any way. 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

Excellent support

The issues tag on github is very well maintained. 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

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

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Vast repository of plugins

There are being developed many plugins for each task, giving alternatives and leading to improved functionalities due to "competition" See More

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Multi-process

Give performance due to split use on all cores, and the user can kill the unresponsive unique process of vs code. See More

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High fidelity C# plugin

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

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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

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Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

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Blazor extensions

Top 3 Blazor Extensions for Visual Studio Code See More

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Support RTL Language

While most of IDEs don't support it. See More

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Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

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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