When comparing SlickEdit vs Kate, the Slant community recommends Kate for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Kate is ranked 7th while SlickEdit is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Kate is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Extensive support for programming languages
SlickEdit supports over 50 programming languages on nine platforms.
Pro Built-in beautifier
The beautifier formats code as you type to help improve readability and consistency.
Pro Compiler tools
Pro Scriptable
Write custom macro commands, functions, dialogs and tool windows.
Pro Over 13 emulations
Choose from fifteen keyboard emulations, containing the key bindings and behaviors necessary to emulate other editors (e.g., CUA, Vim, GNU Emacs, etc.)
Pro Extensive configuration options
Pro Easy access to Visual Studio workspace
SlickEdit opens Visual Studio workspace with no conversions needed.
Pro Symbol analysis support
There are powerful symbol analysis features in SlickEdit, including context tagging and references.
Pro Integrated debuggers for multiple languages
Integrated debuggers for GNU C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.
Pro Multi-Platform
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86
Pro Portable mode
Possibility to set up a portable installation, to run on a USB drive for example.
Pro Easy access to XCode projects
SlickEdit opens XCode projects with no conversions needed.
Pro Third party tool integration
Pro Popular version control system
Pro Integrated terminal
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.
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.
Pro Fast and minimaistic
Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed.
Pro Syntax highlighting
Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh.
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.
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.
Pro By far one of the best and lightest text editors.
Notepads alternative (for the Windows users).
Pro Vi entry mode
Kate has a vi entry mode.
Cons
Con No command line option
This is a visual only editor
Con It's kinda slow
If you have a very large project or tag database, it can hang the UI.
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.