CraigHardy
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- May 11, 2021
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- #1
There are a lot of text editors out there. Since I began looking for something to use in earnest, I’ve been sort of overwhelmed. I guess the days of Notepad are over. People have figured out better ways of doing things.
If you ask any serious developer today what their favorite text editor is, three out of four of them would most likely tell you, “Sublime.” With good reason too – Sublime is awesome. If you’ve never used a real editor for writing code, head over and download a copy for free to see what you’ve been missing. I downloaded it and played around for a few days. I actually fell in love with it until a little box popped up and asked me to register my copy (for a fee). Of course, I could keep using it for free, but I’d have to continuously close the little box that popped up every so often. Not a big deal. I did decide to continue my search because, obviously, unless I paid up, this text editor wouldn’t be the solution I was looking for. The cross platform compatibility, folder and file structure on the left hand side and that little mini code view over to the right will be missed though. Just having those features almost makes the $70 worth it.
During my text editor search journey, I bumped into a few more that are worth mentioning here (and a bunch others that aren’t). One editor is called “Notepad++” and the other is called “Atom.” Notepad++ is great. I downloaded and went through a few sections of one of my classes with it. It worked well and offered many themes to make your coding area easier to read. The only issue, though, is that this particular editor is only available for Windows. While that’s fine for today, if I ever decide to purchase a Mac for development purposes, this won’t help. And I wouldn’t want to invest time into something I’m just going to have to abandon later.
Atom really caught my attention. It’s created by the folks at GitHub (if you don’t know what GitHub is, click here) and is getting some very positive reviews. It’s also available for many different operating systems, such as OS X 10.8 or later, Windows 7 & 8, RedHat Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. I didn’t get around to downloading and using Atom, but someone else did and loved it. Check out the video:
GitHub ATOM – Why Atom.io will be your favorite Text Editor
If you like the fella who’s doing the talking, you can subscribe to his channel to learn some web design. He’s got some nice tutorials.
Now, the reason I didn’t download and use Atom was because just as I discovered it, I also discovered a fairly new text editor called, “Brackets.” It’s developed by the folks at Adobe and is totally open-source and is written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you are proficient at writing code and have some good ideas, you can even contribute to Brackets. Just head over to their GitHub repo to begin your collaborative effort.
So, what’s so great about Brackets? Well, right off the bat, their live preview is what sold me. Check out this video to see what I’m talking about:
Brackets: A Free Open Source Code Editor for the Web
Brackets’ inline editor, cross-platform capabilities and open-source community really sealed the deal. And now that I’ve been using this editor for a few days, I have to tell you, I couldn’t be happier. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the fact that it’s free didn’t hurt with this decision.
If you’re a coder or are looking into coding, check out the editors I discussed above. They really are the biggest names and are the most popular. You’ll most likely make a choice from one of these four. Also, if you do pick one, let me know about it below.
If you ask any serious developer today what their favorite text editor is, three out of four of them would most likely tell you, “Sublime.” With good reason too – Sublime is awesome. If you’ve never used a real editor for writing code, head over and download a copy for free to see what you’ve been missing. I downloaded it and played around for a few days. I actually fell in love with it until a little box popped up and asked me to register my copy (for a fee). Of course, I could keep using it for free, but I’d have to continuously close the little box that popped up every so often. Not a big deal. I did decide to continue my search because, obviously, unless I paid up, this text editor wouldn’t be the solution I was looking for. The cross platform compatibility, folder and file structure on the left hand side and that little mini code view over to the right will be missed though. Just having those features almost makes the $70 worth it.
During my text editor search journey, I bumped into a few more that are worth mentioning here (and a bunch others that aren’t). One editor is called “Notepad++” and the other is called “Atom.” Notepad++ is great. I downloaded and went through a few sections of one of my classes with it. It worked well and offered many themes to make your coding area easier to read. The only issue, though, is that this particular editor is only available for Windows. While that’s fine for today, if I ever decide to purchase a Mac for development purposes, this won’t help. And I wouldn’t want to invest time into something I’m just going to have to abandon later.
Atom really caught my attention. It’s created by the folks at GitHub (if you don’t know what GitHub is, click here) and is getting some very positive reviews. It’s also available for many different operating systems, such as OS X 10.8 or later, Windows 7 & 8, RedHat Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. I didn’t get around to downloading and using Atom, but someone else did and loved it. Check out the video:
GitHub ATOM – Why Atom.io will be your favorite Text Editor
If you like the fella who’s doing the talking, you can subscribe to his channel to learn some web design. He’s got some nice tutorials.
Now, the reason I didn’t download and use Atom was because just as I discovered it, I also discovered a fairly new text editor called, “Brackets.” It’s developed by the folks at Adobe and is totally open-source and is written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you are proficient at writing code and have some good ideas, you can even contribute to Brackets. Just head over to their GitHub repo to begin your collaborative effort.
So, what’s so great about Brackets? Well, right off the bat, their live preview is what sold me. Check out this video to see what I’m talking about:
Brackets: A Free Open Source Code Editor for the Web
Brackets’ inline editor, cross-platform capabilities and open-source community really sealed the deal. And now that I’ve been using this editor for a few days, I have to tell you, I couldn’t be happier. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the fact that it’s free didn’t hurt with this decision.
If you’re a coder or are looking into coding, check out the editors I discussed above. They really are the biggest names and are the most popular. You’ll most likely make a choice from one of these four. Also, if you do pick one, let me know about it below.
