Geany vs Qt Creator
When comparing Geany vs Qt Creator, the Slant community recommends Geany for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Geany is ranked 3rd while Qt Creator is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Geany is:
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Light and fast
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
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.
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.
Pro Cross platform
Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows.
Pro Build in terminal
Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows.
Pro Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software
This software respects your freedom.
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.
Pro Simple project management
Pro Native
It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. This means it runs great and doesn't extraordinary amounts of RAM.
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.
Pro Great syntax highlighting and auto-completion
Qt Creator has a code model which basically has the same information as the compiler. So it can do really nice syntax highlighting (e.g. of virtual methods or local variables) as well as provide great code completion.
Pro Integrates well with non-IDE workflows
Qt Creator uses normal .pro-files, CMakeLists.txt, Makefiles.am, etc. for its projects and rarely needs special configuration for projects.
Projects can be built on the command line as usual.
Pro Built-in Qt GUI editor
Allows for the creation of a window based UI in a graphical editor, no code required to build the UI.
Pro Fast and fully keyboard-navigatable
Responsive UI, no need to use the mouse for the power users.
Pro Supports CMake
Pro Very responsive when compared to similar software
Pro Much space dedicated to the code
Small and beautiful UI, almost all the space is dedicated to the text with hardly and toolbars. Can actually be used on a 1024x768 pixel screen.
Cons
Con Not very advanced
Although it has some IDE features, it is not as advanced as some other text editors that can be extended to contain IDE functionality.
Con Windows installer not digitally signed
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.
Con Poor refactoring
QtCreator has lack of refactoring features. It's not even close to Resharper++ or CLion.
Con Poor multi-window mode support
While multiple windows are supported, many operations will activate in the primary window (debug, goto-line... etc).
Con Qt-focused
Qt Creator is focused on being an IDE for Qt, as a general purpose IDE it performs quite well, but there are areas which are lacking such as project file support (support for generic/CMake projects lags behind Qt projects).