Recommended editors.

editors.md

Which editors do you recommend?

A heated question, oft asked in the nether of SO Chat. It's at the end, of course, a matter of taste and usage: Some editors are better than others at some things, some things are only possible in some editors.

So here's a list of editors and IDEs which we of room 17 use and can recommend, sorted alphabetically.

For beginners

Most importantly, here's a very short list of (free!) editors which are recommended for beginners to scripting or web-dev (i.e. no compiling necessary), aimed at people who just got into JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Bash, etc and want to get a feel of things. Just pick one and have fun!

Linux

• gedit / KWrite
• Geany / Kate
• medit

Mac

• TextWrangler
• (I don't know of any others, please edit me)

Windows

• Edit Plus
• Notepad++

The Meat

Here's The List. Feel free to edit yourself in if you can recommend an editor - just put a link to your username and why you recommend it. Also feel free to add editors. Just keep things sorted alphabetically.

Cross-Platform

• Atom

• Hackable text editor.

• Recommended by:

  • monners: Build on web tech, incredibly easy to customize, extend, hack.

• Brackets

• An editor which understands web design.

• Recommended by:

  • Add yourself here?

• Emacs

• Extensible, general-purpose editor and more.

• Recommended by: - Florian Margaine: A short sentence on why you recommend it - Zirak: It gives you a platform and power to do anything you can dream of.

• Sublime Text

• Sophisticated editor for code, markup and prose.

• Recommended by:

  • Awal Garg: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451893
  • Loktar
  • rlemon: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451516
  • Some Guy: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451711
  • SomeKittens: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451520

• Vim

• Advanced editor improving on the original vi.

• Recommended by:

  • copy
  • ssube: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1452075

• Visual Studio Code

• VS Code is a new type of tool that combines the simplicity of a code editor with what developers need for their core edit-build-debug cycle. Code provides comprehensive editing and debugging support, an extensibility model, and lightweight integration with existing tools.

• Recommended by:

  • Luggage
  • ssube

• Web Storm

• Lightweight yet powerful JavaScript IDE.

• Recommended by:

  • Benjamin Gruenbaum: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451539
  • Madara Uchiha
  • ssube: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1452075

Linux

• Builder

• A new IDE for GNOME.

• Recommended by:

  • Awal Garg: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451893]

• Geany

• Small and fast GTK2 IDE.

• Recommended by:

  • dystroy: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1452830

• Kate

• Fast, feature-rich text editor for KDE.

• Recommended by

  • Add yourself here?

Mac

• Coda

• Fast, clean, powerful text editor.

• Recommended by:

  • Add yourself here?

• Text Mate

• (no catchy one liner, edit me)

• Recommended by:

  • phenomnomnominal

Windows

• Notepad++

  • Source code editor and Notepad replacement.
  • Recommended by:
    • Add yourself here?

• Visual Studio

• (they don't have a catchy one liner, edit me)

• Recommended by:

  • Benjamin Gruenbaum: https://gist.github.com/Zirak/9999e97e01a7bd0a76f6#comment-1451539

Specific Stuff

Herein lie editors which are really good for specific tasks.

• RStudio (Free/Payed, Cross Platform)

• Powerful IDE for R.

• Recommended by:

  • Zirak: It's the shit. As if R wasn't fun enough.

• TeXstudio (Free, Cross Platform)

• Integrated writing environment for creating LaTeX documents.

• Recommended by:

  • Zirak: Makes writing LaTeX less of a rollercoaster ride in hell.

ST has rich plugin support, easy to customize, and has a wonderful set of "out of the box" features. It is likely on par with many other editors out today, I just like it.
Geany on linux is similar to n++ on windows. Plugin support is decent and the out of the box features are nice. It is crap on windows.

ST: Incredibly powerful text editor (plugins are awesome), cross-platform, can stick config in Dropbox, doesn't get in my way

Visual Studio with ReSharper and WebStorm get in your way.

They get in your way when you make syntax errors, they get in your way when you make reference errors, they get in your way when you use an API incorrectly by passing incorrect types. They will get in your way when your server throws an error in development right to the debugger so you can see exactly what went wrong and where. In fact, as you type they will run millions of possibilities of things that can or might go wrong and analyse them for you and see how they can help you because they actually look at your syntax tree rather than a string of text.

Sure, you can use a text editor like ST or Notepad++, but when you're working on a non-trivial code base and you have an error 10 files away because of some refactoring you did - you want an editor to get in your way before you waste 2 hours debugging it.

This is why whenever you see someone presenting his large code base you can bet your ass you'll see WebStorm or VS there - and not some string editor whose main feature is a pretty font on a dark background.

Not to mention that WebStorm has a huge plugin ecosystem and integration and great support. It costs about as much as tools like SublimeText (and unlike it it's free for students) - but you get oh so much more.

Sublime Text: Light, but very feature-rich and allows for a lot of customizability. Also, tons of neat plugins.

vim is great, since it can do approximately anything and also has ES6 highlighting. Setting up the build command to run gulp or tests without leaving your editor is pretty sweet.

Failing that, IntelliJ IDEA (ultimate, if your company has licenses) is mostly decent. It works well if you have JS and Java in the same project.

Visual Studio Code, cross platform (mac, linux and windows). It's based on the same webkit shell that Atom.io is. It's made for .NET and Node and has debugging of both.

https://code.visualstudio.com/

I like Geany on linux when I don't need an IDE (i.e. almost always).
It's fast, easily handles hundreds of open files, has dumb completion, convenient search/replace functions, has the most needed shortcuts (for example for commenting), is easy to configure to run your compilation/execution commands and is much easier to use than vim (which I'll learn as soon as I'm old enough to retire).

Sublime: It's just, well... sublime. Features, plugins, build systems... all really good.

vim: When you're ssh'd into a system, there's nothing better to use.

Vim in compound with tmux makes you feel like a spaceship pilot.

Also:
http://vim-adventures.com
http://vimcasts.org

Emacs: I was surprised to find a text editor.

gedit: Simple and easy-to-use texteditor.

You need the comment of suggest editor.
Love too Kwrite, editor with perfect colour and "contest assist" but is only for Linux/Debian.
Zirak you had a good idea for build this page

vim, chrome developer tools, notepad++
thats what i frequently use for editing (yes.. you can use vanilla chrome as editor)

You can add my name as "Recommended by" at the Notepad++.

I love atom for any web dev language. I like VS code for things like java and c++

I use and recommend free cross-platform editor - Codelobster