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Suraj Vishwakarma for Basecamp Community

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What was your first code editor?

Introduction

Today, we have known many code editors that offer more than a just code editor. They have many features and support for extensions to increase their features.

Coding

Back to when we code the first time, we were having less idea about code and code editor. So we used whatever was best or recommended.

So today, let's share about our first code and code editor.

My Experience

  • Batch Scripting Language was my first programming language. I used it to code my first program that was Hello World!
  • The Code Editor that I used was Notepad
  • No feature of a modern code editor, it was only me and notepad

Discuss

  • What was your first experience with code and code editor?

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Last Note

I am excited to read your experience.

Top comments (121)

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fnh profile image
Fabian Holzer

QBasic, which didn't really make a distinction between its editor/IDE and the interpreter.
And a for my first steps in web development it was Windows notepad, which I quickly replaced with an editor called phase 5.

Great. Now I feel really old.

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icecoffee profile image
Atulit Anand

And I thought I was the only one who learned Q basic.

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rishitc profile image
Rishit Chaudhary

Don't forget QB64 which was quite cool too 😃

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icecoffee profile image
Atulit Anand

I forgot to mention thought. I hated my Qbasic classes.

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surajondev profile image
Suraj Vishwakarma

QBasic sounds like very old ✨and Notepad is lit for first timers 🤩

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

BASIC on the 48K ZX Spectrum (back in 1983)
ZX Spectrum 48K
BASIC REPL/editor

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surajondev profile image
Suraj Vishwakarma

Look like very first code editors 🔥

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undefinedtea profile image
undefinedTea • Edited

There have been so many over the years...
I am a quite firm believer in continuously trying different things to see if something works better for you then the previous thing.

This means that I might focus on other aspects of a tool then most - for instance, I do not really care about the plugin ecosystem all that much, as I think a great tool has to be great out of the box, not only after days, weeks or months of fine tuning.

Don't get me wrong, I do adapt tools over time, but I try to keep this to a minimum. Anyhow, I digress, and every rule has an exception (more on that in a minute).

I got into computers in the 90s and my first editor was Notepad. I first wrote some scripts and later I developed my schools website using it. Yup, it used <blink> and also <marquee>. Yup, on the same element. Apologies for anyone who ever saw that site.

I guess the line above answers the question, so feel free to stop reading here. If you are interested in the journey since, and on my thoughts on tools in general, please read on \o/

A few years later I went into DreamWeaver because a friend had a license and I thought it looked so professional. That did not last long ^^
Eclipse was next, and i actually wrote my first ever production code there. When I joined the first consulting company I worked in, I used Coda and later Brackets, JetBrains and Sublime. All of these were also relatively short journeys, because a colleague introduced me to Vim.

You probably guessed already that Vim is the exception to my 'rule' above. The Vim setup I use today is nothing like the out-of-the-box Vim experience (here is a shameless plug if you want to have a look at my configuration). Perhaps this is also because I have stuck with it for the longest time.
Either way, despite still using this tried and true tool from time to time, these days I have more or less switched entirely to VSCode (probably with less than 5 plugins) and I love it.

This all is just a really long winded way of saying:
Use what works for you, and always at least test drive things that look interesting. At the same time, I do not change just for the sake of change anymore, and any tool I use today has to at least meet these criteria...

  1. Be local and available offline (I am not into browser based tools).
  2. Have great search/file navigation and key based navigation.
  3. Get out of my way.

I balance these and also my 'minimum customisation' rule in practise of course, since after all - a text editor is where i spend most of my time - so it has to be a place i enjoy and something that helps me be productive.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Thanks for adding key values to your experience with code editor and your methods🔥.

I like yours trying new things and keeping minimal as possible🤩.

Your experience will help many others✨

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chingiiiix profile image
Aditya N Bhatt

i started my coding journey back in August 2018 in my uni. we used Gedit for a around 2 years, in 2020 November i shifted to vs code and it's very handy.

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Injamul Mohammad Mollah • Edited

I wonder how you managed to code in only gedit for 2 years.
I know gedit is customisable but it's not that handy.
I only use gedit to write docs.

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chingiiiix profile image
Aditya N Bhatt

don't ask 🥲 the struggle was real

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mrinjamul profile image
Injamul Mohammad Mollah

😅 I can relate.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

VS code is my number 1 preference rn🔥

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chingiiiix profile image
Aditya N Bhatt

indeed it's a very powerful ide

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surajondev profile image
Suraj Vishwakarma

Yesss🔥

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guledali profile image
guledali • Edited

Sublime Text 2 I believe whatever that was popular around 2015-2016, then there was a short period of atom. I think I picked it up because of Travis Neilson of devtips, finally I settled with VSCode

Occasionally I would pick up rubymine for ruby development but even then I have gone back to using vscode for ruby.

Oh I forgot there was period of me trying to get in VIM, and I was using macvim + janus in order to look cool that didn't last very long, now I just use the vim extension for VSCode.

VSCode is the best, light text editor yet powerful as IDE

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Great to start❤️

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carlosrenatohr profile image
~👨🏻‍💻🇳🇮

I started at college 10 years ago and remember like it was yesterday, I was so excited to start coding and there it was, I saw the first time the death blue screen on the console for..C!!!

That was my first language and we worked on the cmd, after 2 months teachers let us move to an editor, we used notepad but the big ones took Notepad++. Great days!

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The Interview Sage

My first code editor was Notepad too 🙂

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Pandita

notepad :3

back then sites didn't need too much fancy stuff and everyone could easily make a site... nowadays? not so sure hahaha

after notepad, in no specific order, I used turbo pascal, dev c++, python's normal thingy, eclipse, netbeans, sublime, visual studio and vscode.

I currently use sublime, vscode and visual studio(my main workstation).

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Back when code editors were word editors✨

And nice current editors🔥

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Nikola Stojaković • Edited

DevCPP. I had some quite old book on C++ and author used it so I thought it would be a good choice. Later I found out there is much more sane Visual C++ 2010 Express.

My first code editor after that was Sublime Text. I spent much time on it after finally moving to VS Code (I changed few editors in the meantime but didn't use them for long). Nowadays I mostly use WebStorm and VS Code.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

I had used DEVCPP for compiling and running my c program in my early program learning

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brandon_wallace • Edited

When I started using computers, I started with notepad because it was installed on the computer and I did not know any better. After reading a great deal of the editors available, I started using Vim. 10+ years later I still use Vim.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

We all have started with the plain Notepad

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Jonathan Apodaca

Notepad. I was learning HTML/JavaScript, and later Java, programming in notepad, compiling from the Windows command prompt. My Dad (who was facilitating my learning) did not tell me about IDEs for a while. It was one day when he was working from home on a Java project that I first learned about Eclipse. I was like, "can we download that on my computer, please?"

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alvarosc2

My first editor was edit.com which cam with Microsoft DOS 6.2. it worked with QBasic which came in the same package and the first language where I did programming.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Great man 🔥

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𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Musta been lazarus, back when I was learning programming with pascal :D

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Never head of it but sounds good 🤩

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Wesley Branton

I started out with web development using Programmer's Notepad, which in retrospect isn't really much of a step up from using Notepad. It's still a pretty solid editor, although it's pretty basic. I actually still use it from time to time when I need to quickly view some code.

Currently, I use Visual Studio Code for most web-related stuff. For Java (which I also now heavily work in), I prefer JetBrains.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

Me too for the quick view, I open some code in notepad

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Daniil

First language was Pascal in school, but i wasnt interested in it. Later in school i got a project to do kinda history museum site for it. I got into HTML/CSS + JS, so i think JavaSript was my first programming language i was really interested in.

When i just started i was using Notepad++ but then found VS Code and still love it.

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Suraj Vishwakarma

VS Code is awesome🔥