What do you look for in a Code Editor?

I find myself often searching for better editor experiences when writing code.

Things I've tried:

• Visual Studio code: too slow, resource hog.
• Atom: same as above.
• Intellij: very slow to open.
• NeoVim/Vim: steep learning curve and requires a good memory (human, not computer!).
• Lite (and Lite-xl): lacking fully-featured language support currently.
• Sublime Text: Has probably come the closest to my reliable editor, but actually getting it setup to be an editor can be fiddly, because it's primarily supposed to be a text editor.

Things I need:

• Speed - my biggest frustration
• cross-platform
• LSP integrations (specifically gopls and pylsp)
• debug support (delve, pdb)
• Large extension library / list of plugins

Things I want:

• Nice Testing & coverage visualisations
• Kubernetes & docker support
• hackability / customisation

This got me thinking, with modern LSPs (Language Server Protocols) and rich web-based ecosystems - what do you look for in an editor?

Comments

[JWP]

I look for visual studio code.

[Templar++]

setup to be an editor can be fiddly, because it's primarily supposed to be a text editor

Sorry I don't understand that part?

[James King]

Sublime text is a fast (and generally great) text editor. However some plugin's / packages require pre-installation & setup of the tools required. Some handle this better than others, but debugging why it doesn't work can be awkward sometimes

[Djilou]

Used to code in vs code then used atom then vim/neovim with lunarvim and i honestly love it !

[Valentin Baca]

• IntelliJ for Java and Kotlin.
• Xcode for Objective-C and Swift.
• vim for quick edits: git commits, working over ssh, config files, etc.
• And VS Code for literally everything else: notes, JS/TS, Clojure, etc...

[Husen]

I most of the time need LSP, so I only use this editor:

1. Sublime Text 4: My main editor
2. VS Code: I only use this for things that can't be done in Sublime Text
3. Helix: My $EDITOR in terminal. EditorConfig support is still missing.

If you are using Mac, maybe you also can try Nova. It's written natively for Mac.

[Daniel Fitzpatrick]

I feel like emacs ticks all your boxes.

If you try it, pick a popular distribution and read the docs first. I recommend spacemacs, but I know a lot of people prefer doom these days so give that a try, too. You'll want to

1. Install emacs first, and use the graphical version. I believe it's in scoop (scoop.sh/) if you're on windows.
2. Enable the emacs daemon for speed, but probably only after you're happy with your config
3. Learn how to manage buffers and windows inside an emacs client for even more speed. No need to keep opening fresh clients.

• spacemacs (remember to switch to the develop branch) spacemacs.org/
• doom github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs

[Jonathan Flower]

I used Sublime for years and loved it! I switched to VS Code about 2 years ago because it had better support for Typescript at the time. I just downloaded Sublime again and going to give another shake. I am running an M1 Mac, so VS code is not painfully slow. Sublime has got to be blazing fast with M1 support. Speed is huge for me.

[hidden_dude]

First and foremost is good debugging support..

[𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️]

One thing that's absolutely essential for me is that an editor must be programmable. I get paid to solve problems, not to operate a text editor; so whenever there is any repetitive typing to do, I want to automate that as much as possible.

In that sense, having an interface for extensions is useless to me. Sure, it's a great thing to have, but it doesn't solve my problem of wanting to hammer a few lines of code into an editor and within 30 seconds have a solution that solves my problem even though it's way too brittle to be of general use.

So far, vim is the only editor I've used that does this. I'm sure emacs is the same, but I don't see the reason to switch away from one stone-age editor to another. Among the modern browsers, I haven't yet found anything like what I expect.

[Eljay-Adobe]

An editor that I never have to take my hands off the keyboard to use a mouse.

An editor that does not get in my way, so I don't have to think about the editor, I can focus on what I'm editing. Zen-like. One with the code.

And editor that is available on every platform I work on. And I work on dozens of platforms.

I use Vim.