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.
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!
- TextWrangler
- (I don't know of any others, please edit me)
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.
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Hackable text editor.
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Recommended by:
- monners: Build on web tech, incredibly easy to customize, extend, hack.
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An editor which understands web design.
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Recommended by:
- Add yourself here?
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Extensible, general-purpose editor and more.
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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.
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Sophisticated editor for code, markup and prose.
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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
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Advanced editor improving on the original vi.
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Recommended by:
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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.
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Recommended by:
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Lightweight yet powerful JavaScript IDE.
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Recommended by:
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A new IDE for GNOME.
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Recommended by:
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Small and fast GTK2 IDE.
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Recommended by:
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Fast, feature-rich text editor for KDE.
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Recommended by
- Add yourself here?
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Fast, clean, powerful text editor.
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Recommended by:
- Add yourself here?
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(no catchy one liner, edit me)
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Recommended by:
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- Source code editor and Notepad replacement.
- Recommended by:
- Add yourself here?
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(they don't have a catchy one liner, edit me)
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Recommended by:
Herein lie editors which are really good for specific tasks.
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.