SciTE vs Geany

It's property files allow for fine tweaks of its behavior, at a global or per language / project level. These textual settings might be confusing for those used to preference dialogs, but prove to be powerful, flexible, and fine grained.

With less than 2 MB of binary on Windows, SciTE starts instantly. Plus, if you don't need all the config, syntax files, blah, there's a 678k standalone .exe version. Nothing is going to beat that for lightweight and start-up times. Stick it in a folder that is already on your PATH.

Based on the Scintilla source code editor, SciTE has some advanced features like rectangular editing, simple regular expression search and replace, code folding, etc. It allows the user to launch a compiler or interpreter, and it can also interpret the error messages, jumping at the location they point to.

Lua scripting is key to SciTE's power and flexibility. The Lua scripting language can be used to perform complex text transformations. It's relatively simple syntax and its large user-base makes it a great choice for a scripting feature.

The console window can show the result of ran commands (like build current file, reporting warnings, and errors), but also accept interactive shell commands.

SciTE works on Windows and Linux, and it also has a commercial port on MacOS.

Lexers providing folding and syntax highlighting are based on code, not on regular expressions. They support context, nesting, special rules, etc.

SciTE is written in C++, with lot of contributors, both to the core and to the numerous lexers.

Has a simple graphical user interface

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

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

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

It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. This means it runs great and doesn't extraordinary amounts of RAM.

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.

This software respects your freedom.

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.

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

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