Top Text Editors For Programming | Tech Tips

As a developer, One  always have to find the best tools for development purposes. Specially a Text Editor.

Text editor plays the primary role in any developer workspace. The project code is written, debugged and executed with the help of the text editor. It’s like a garage to build tools/products for the world.

As a developer you need a text-editor that fulfill all your requirements.

Now, comes the real problem.

Choosing the perfect text editor for your work can be a challenging task. It requires skillful experimentation, personal preference, and final judgment. Before you jump into a single text editor.

So, lets get started with the list of Top text Editors.

Top Text Editors For Developers:

 Sublime Text Editor



Sublime Text editor is one best text editor in the market. It is a proprietary software with a focus on features. Not only it is a great alternative to a powerful IDE, but it is also lightweight and does the job with great efficiency and accuracy.
With tons of features to fiddle with, you will feel the power in your fingertip. But, just like any tool, nothing is perfect. Let’s go through the pros and cons of using the Sublime text editor.
Pros
  • Sublime text is easy to use with excellent UI and UX.
  • There are tons of sublime plugins available. The functionality can be improved easily, and customization is just one plugin installation away.
  • Offers command palette for easy accessibility to snippets, settings and more.
  • Offers multi-line editing and selection.
Cons
  • Sublime text is not free. Considering that equally capable free text editors are available in the market, anyone can opt for the alternative.
  • Updates are not frequent as used to in the past.
  • Loading time is higher compared to the Notepad++.
  • The quality of plugins is questionable.
Overall, Sublime text is an excellent text editor to work with. You can opt to use Sublime text for free by using the unending trial version. If you don’t like the idea of popups, you can purchase the editor for just $70 (one-time purchase). It works on all the three major OS — Windows, Linux, and Mac.

 Atom
 Atom is advertised as the hackable text editor for the 21st century. Atom focus on providing a hackable text editor. It resembles Sublime text and succeeds in providing similar experiences to Sublime. Just like any gem, it is also plagued with issues. The UI and UX are excellent and perfect for a great coding session. Other key features include the ability of auto-completion, file system browser, multiple panes and much more.
Pros
  • Atom is open source and free to use.
  • Tons of packages to use. Hence, highly customizable. Uses CoffeeScript to write packages.
  • Hackable to the core, thanks to the modular design used by the text editor.
  • Offers git control and package management features.
  • Can be easily picked by up a beginner.
Cons
  • Cannot handle large files and tends to crash if you load files above 10 MB in size.
  • Consumes a lot of memory.
If you are looking for a free, open source text editor, Atom is an excellent choice. But, it is advisable to ignore Atom if you plan to work on large projects. It is available for all the three major OS and is completely portable.
   
     


Vim stands for the “Vi Improved”. Vim has survived the test of time and is one of the oldest text editors in the history of computers.
Vim is extremely popular among developers and other computer enthusiasts who seek an entirely customizable text editor.
Vim is famous for two reasons. First, it supports complete keyboard operations without any need for the mouse.
Second, it is present in almost every Unix-based machines. So, portability and ubiquity is a key feature of Vim.
Pros
  • Completely keyboard based operations supported.
  • Can be used in a remote development environment using a terminal over SSH.
  • Vim is open source and free to use.
  • Vim can be customized to heart’s content using .vimrc dotfile and VimScript.
  • Tons of plugins support for Vim, extending its core functionality.
  • Enhances productivity and performs great with large files.
Cons
  • The learning curve is steep. Takes time to get used to it.
  • Most of the modern programming features need to be incorporated using plugins.
Vim is for the advanced users. It is not easy to learn and require time for mastery. But, once discovered, it provides you with the power that no other text editor can ever do.

Visual Studio Code

 

Visual Studio Code is an effort by Microsoft to enable developers to code without downloading the massive Visual Studio editions (3 GB+ size). Visual Studio is a lightweight, open-source text editor, aimed to provide seamless development experience on all the major platforms — Windows, OS X, and Linux. Key features of Visual Studio code include 30+ language support, code-focused editing, auto-complete, code navigation, etc. It also offers Git version control and debugging tools for easy development.
Pros
  • Supports 30+ languages and also Microsoft’s core languages such as ASP.NET, C#, etc.
  • The small size ensures that quick installation and usage.
  • Portable versions are also available.
Cons
  • Extension support needs improvement.
  • Updating on Linux can be a daunting task.
Visual Studio Code is an excellent choice for developers who are not eager to download a huge clunky IDE for their development purposes. It is small, sweet and perfect for the job!



Notepad++ is yet another open source text editor in the market. It resembles the vanilla notepad and improves it in every possible way for text editor purposes. Tons of programming languages are supported out of the box. The biggest advantage of Notepad++ over any other text editor listed here is the fact that it can manage huge files without any major lags or crashes. It is very fast and lightweight. Moreover, its functionality can be extended using hundreds of available plugins.
Pros
  • Supports Syntax Folding and Syntax Highlighting.
  • Auto-completion of words, functions and much more.
  • Comes with WYSIWYG and multi-view support.
  • Extensible using plugins.
Cons
  • The UI is not the best out there. Needs improvements to meet current industry standards.
  • The text editor can benefit from the addition of new language support.
  • Too simplistic. New features are always welcome.
Notepad++ is for those who want simplistic UI and feature set. It is clean, fast and an excellent way to do the new stuff!

Conclusion

A text editor is an indispensable tool in any developer’s arsenal. With major text editor discussed, we hope that you can now make the final call.
If you think that we have missed a text editor that should have been mentioned in the article, don’t forget to comment below and let us know. We will update the article accordingly!
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Comments

  1. I recently came across your article and have been reading along. I want to express my admiration of your writing skill and ability to make readers read from the beginning to the end. I would like to read newer posts and to share my thoughts with you.

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