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Almost every programmer feels the need to find the best development tools. These can be editors, libraries for managing tasks, frameworks for simplifying work on projects, etc.

Tools make work easier and at the same time increase productivity.

Of all the tools developers have ever used, the text editor is the hardest to pick. Livecoding.tv streamers use a variety of editors, and almost everyone vehemently defends their choice.

Not to mention that there are separate communities for each popular editor. In the end, everyone has their own preferences, their own arguments for and against.

The editor plays a central role in any developer workspace. Code is written, debugged, and executed using a text editor.

Choosing the perfect editor for your work can be a daunting task that involves: testing, personal preference, and the final decision. Before you make your choice, we'll take you on a tour through the best editors 2016 of the year.

We will discuss 6 editors in detail, but you can find other, lesser known editors at the end of the article.

SUBLIME TEXT EDITOR

Sublime Text editor is one of the best text editors today. It's a great alternative to powerful IDEs, it's lightweight and does its job with great efficiency and precision.

Sublime Text has tons of features that will make you feel the power at your fingertips. But, like any tool, it is not perfect. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of using Sublime Text editor.

Advantages:

  • Nice, easy, minimalistic interface.
  • Very flexibly configurable. Multiple selection.
  • The ability to create any snippets and insert them at least by hot keys, at least by letter abbreviations (in the style of Zen Coding).
  • The ability to assign hot keys to absolutely any action.
  • In snippets, you can set where the cursor will be when pasting, set placeholders and switch to the desired parts of the snippet with Tab.
  • The presence of a code minimap for easy movement.
  • Ability to display hidden characters (spaces, tabs) only when highlighting code.
  • There are many plugins available and a growing community of users who write them for any need.

Flaws:

  • Sublime text is paid. Given that there are many good free editors on the market, anyone can choose an alternative.
  • It is not updated as often as before.
  • Load times are higher compared to Notepad++.
  • The quality of the plugins remains in question.

All in all, Sublime text is a great editor to work with. You can use it for free with an infinite trial period. If you don't like popups, you can purchase the editor for $70. It works on all major OS - Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Vim has stood the test of time and is one of the oldest editors in history.

Vim is very popular among developers and other computer enthusiasts who are obsessed with fully customizable editors.

Vim is famous for two reasons. Firstly, it can work with just a keyboard, without a mouse.

Secondly, it is present in almost all Unix machines. So, portability and ubiquity is a key feature of Vim.

Advantages:

  • Can be fully controlled by keyboard
  • Can be used in a remote development environment using SSH.
  • Vim can be customized to your heart's content with a .vimrc dotfile and VimScript.
  • Tons of plugins to support Vim, extend its functionality.
  • Improves performance and handles large files very well.

Flaws:

  • Vim for advanced users. It is not easy to learn, it will take a long time before you reach mastery, but once you master it, it will give you more power than any other editor.

Also read how to create .

atom

Atom was introduced a year ago and is known as a modern, highly customizable open source editor. Despite the use of browser technologies, Atom is not a web application, but in fact, it is a specialized version of Chromium, in which each tab acts as a locally rendered web page.

Advantages:

  • Atom is an open source editor that is free to use.
  • Cross-platform OS X, Windows and Linux;
  • Smart auto-completion;
  • File browser;
  • Search and replace across multiple files.
  • Easy to use even for a beginner.

Flaws:

  • Cannot handle large files and tends to crash when uploading files above 10MB.
  • Uses a lot of memory.

If you are looking for a free, open source editor, Atom is perfect for you. It is highly mobile and available for all three major OSes. However, using Atom in large projects is undesirable.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a Microsoft product that aims to allow developers to code without downloading the massive Visual Studio (3GB+). Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, open source editor that works equally well on Windows, OS X, and Linux. The main features of Visual Studio code include support for more than 30+ languages, auto-completion, easy navigation, and more. It also includes Git and debugging tools to make development easier.

Advantages:

  • Support for more than 30 languages, as well as major Microsoft languages ​​such as ASP.NET, C#, etc.
  • The small size guarantees fast installation and use.

Flaws:

  • Extension support needs improvement.
  • Upgrading on Linux can be a daunting task.

Visual Studio Code is a great choice for developers who don't want to download and use bulky IDEs. It's small, cuddly, and most importantly, it does the job!

Notepad++

Notepad++ is another open source editor. In general, it resembles a vanilla notepad that supports tons of programming languages. Notepad++'s biggest advantage over the other text editors listed here is the fact that it can handle large files without any major lag or crashes. It is very fast and light. In addition, its functionality can be extended with hundreds of plugins available.

Advantages:

  • Support for a large number of encodings.
  • Syntax highlighting.
  • Parallel editing of documents.
  • Comparison of documents.
  • Search and autocorrect by regular expressions.
  • Working with files on the FTP server.
  • Auto completion.
  • Extensible with plugins.

Flaws:

  • Not the best user interface.
  • Too simple.

Notepad ++ is perfect for those who are satisfied with the simple interface and feature set. It will help you quickly and easily create new products.

Brackets

Our last text editor that we will be discussing in detail is the open source editor “Brackets”. Brackets is not a universal editor, it is focused on front-end development and supports a wide range of front-end technologies.

Advantages:

  • It's lightweight, modern, and has a great user interface.
  • Preview capability, preprocessor support and built-in editors.
  • Comes with a built-in manager for easy management of extensions.
  • Brackets is a powerful text editor with a focus on web design and front-end development.

Flaws:

If you notice an error, select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter
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