The Programmer’s Text Editor
Software programmers love things that are free, such as free and open source software and freeware. Developers also love their text editors. Over my development experience I have used a ton of editors. As a programmer I like an editor with code and syntax highlighting, code folding, tabs, and all the bells and whistles.
Here are the top text editors that I use, in no particular order. All of the text editors listed below are installed in my home and development machines.
- jEdit – The primer Java-based editor.
- Vim – Vi Improved.
- Scintilla SciTE – My Windows-based editor of choice.
- Notepad++ – Free source code editor and Notepad replacement, based on Scintilla.
- Notepad 2 – Also based on Scintilla.
- Komodo Edit – Free editor based on Komodo IDE. Komodo Edit has a nice FireFox extension project support.
- Jext – Free source code editor written in Java.
- ConTEXT – ConTEXT is a small, fast and powerful freeware text editor.
- TextWrangler – My favorite general purpose text editor for Mac.
Even though they are not free, there are some great commercial text editors too. Many Rails enthusiasts use TextMate on OS X. I also seen a lot of programmers use UltraEdit.
If I missed your favorite text editor, feel free to tell me about it in the comments. I’m always open to try a new editor out.
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