Being the main software developer for EEMBC, I spend a lot of time writing code. For big projects, an IDE such as Eclipse, Visual Studio, or Multi is essential. But what about other editing needs? When you need a small Perl script? HTML page with some JavaScript? Quick edit to a small C file? Edit a JavaScript that was encoded so that one line is more then 16K chars?
Every programmer needs a code editor, and once you get used to the quirks of an editor, it is hard to switch. Many still use EMACS or even VI – on some embedded platforms I use VI since it is easily available on even the most minimal Linux distribution.
For a graphical environment though, I like more convenience that comes with a GUI but am not willing to give up on some useful features:
- Syntax highlighting
- Regular expressions for find/replace
- Auto code layout (smart tabs, brace matching and their ilk)
- Browse/tags database support
- Performance (time to initial open, time to load/edit/search large files)
- Customization
- Macros (Define commands and key sequences)
- Bindings (the ability to customize any key combo to an editor command)
Other nice to have features:
- Code completion
- Column editing mode
- Tabs for documents
- Integration with external commands
- Code folding
- Integrated file explorer
- Integrated source control (SVN)
- Sessions (open up with whatever was in the editor when it was closed)
- Hex edit
Anything else is a bonus I will gladly take but am not willing to give up
convenience or speed.
I count 60 editors on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors#Programming_features, how do you choose the right one for you? I try to check what is available and try 3 new editors once a year.Sometimes I will even switch…
Currently on Windows I am using Notepad++. Originally I was drawn by the fact this had most of what I wanted and I had access to the source to make a few modifications. Since then this editor has matured and I no longer have a private version compiled from the source.
Things I wish were different but not enough to fix the source code:
- Regex for find/replace could be better (e.g. just use Perl Regex)
- Really long lines don’t display correctly (compressed JavaScript)
Other editors I have used in the past and switched from:
- Slickedit (awesome editor, but cost issues when I switched to a new
company)
- Editplus (was not maintained for a long while. Looks like it is actively
developed again, may need to check it out)
- Ultraedit (somehow it just did not measure up and I ended up dropping it after a mere 3 months of use)
- XEmacs (EMACS is extremely powerful, but the human interface of the GUI version doesn’t cut it)
- PSpad (performance issues caused me to drop this one)
Which 3 editors do you think I should try in 2010?