[Image](../images/Writing.jpg" title=“Text Editors)
Text editors are programs used to create and edit plain text files. They are fast and easy to use. They usually provide many features: undo and redo the last edit (who can live without it?), basic editing and formatting features (cut, copy, and paste, search and replace), syntax highlighting, etc.
What are the best editors out there?
[Image](../images/notepad.jpg” title=“Notepad)
Vim is a highly configurable text editor for efficiently creating and editing any kind of text. It is included as “vi” with most UNIX systems and with macOS. Another option is GNU Emacs an extensible, customizable, free text editor - and more.
Best online IDEs: Small Basic is a coding IDE for kids; Tynker is a block-based IDE for kids; jsfiddle.net is an online code editor and playground that allows users to write and run CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code directly in the browser; p5.js Web Editor is a web editor for p5.js, a JavaScript library with the goal of making coding accessible to artists; Codepen is an online code editor for front-end designers and developers.
Visual Studio Code is a free, lightweight, and powerful source code editor developed by Microsoft. It comes with the IntelliSense feature. “IntelliSense is a general term for a variety of code editing features including: code completion, parameter info, quick info, and member lists. IntelliSense features are sometimes called by other names such as code completion, content assist, and code hinting.” It is highly extensible and customizable with its huge library of extensions.
Sublime Text and Atom
Sublime Text is “a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose.” However, it is not free and you must buy a license to use it.
First, let’s configure it. We need to install a full-featured package manager. Tools -> Install Package Manager.
Then, you may want to install some of the following packages (CTRL-Windows-/CMD-Mac- + SHIFT + P, Install-Package):
Sublime’s look and feel is configured in Preferences.sublime-settings (Preferences > Settings—User). I use the following settings:
"theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme",
"dictionary": "Packages/Language - English/en_GB.dic",
"font_face": "Ubuntu Mono",
"font_size": 16,
"ignored_packages":
[
"Vintage"
],
"spell_check": true,
Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st Century. It is completely free, open-source, and it looks very much like Sublime Text. GitHub is sunsetting Atom and will archive all projects under the organization on December 15, 2022.