What is your favorite editor and why?

I used to use TextMate, but switched to Sublime Text when they stopped supporting TextMate 1 (many years ago), and have gotten really fast with Sublime.

Recently though I've played around with VS Code and really like it (because of how customizable it is), but I still find myself opening Sublime more.

So: without starting any editor "wars", I was just curious: what is your favorite editor right now and why?

If you'd like to give more context, I'd also love to know: What is your favorite plugin/extension for that editor?

For Sublime, one fun one is "Emoji" (so you can insert emojis with just a few keystrokes): https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Emoji

And for VS Code, an underrated one I think is "Custom CSS", which lets you fully customize the VSCode experience by writing custom css: https://github.com/be5invis/vscode-custom-css

Comments

[Bishwas Bhandari]

Personally, I prefer using PyCharm and WebStorm IDE by Jetbrains as my go-to code editor. I find it offers a more efficient and user-friendly experience.

While I understand the appeal of VsCode being a free, versatile option, I've found its intellisense to be lacking and overall it feels bloated to me.

[Erik Engheim]

I don't get why people leave TextMate. Still my favorite editor. Yes I dabble in Sublime, Atom, VSCode, Vim and Kakoune, but I always go back to TextMate. Yes there are some annoyances with TextMate, but I cannot find anybody else which has such a nice Bundle plugin system. It is not just that Bundles are easy to make and edit, but I love how their functionality is so well sectioned off and easy to discover. Like you have a menu entry for each language. I cannot see that for other editors.

Sublime just has way too little UI. Everything seems to be text configuration files. TextMate makes it a lot easier to discover functionality. Especially related to configuring bundles.

If I have to use a text mode editor then I prefer Kakoune for many of the same reasons. I tend to prefer simplicity and ease of use. Editor which are based on some simple powerful principles. Kakoune takes make of the good ideas of Vim and simplifies them and make them more powerful.

Thus you get a far more manageable editor for a developer not willing to invest tons of time in being a Vim wizard.

[Andrea Pavone]

PHPStorm on my local machine for developing projects or VSCode just for fast scripting/testing some new languages and Vi on server for editing conf files :)

[Miguel]

Vim! been using it for 5+ years and never looked back

• Vi comes pre-installed in most *nix systems
• Can use it on both servers and desktops
• It's fast
• Easy to extend
• Easy to backup dotvim files and restore in new computers
• More use of keyboard and less mouse movements makes me more production

[Shaurya]

I am using kakoune currently. It is like a better version of vim with some features being completion and command help.

My code editor journey has been -

1. Notepad
2. Notepad++
3. Atom
4. Sublime Text
5. Atom
6. VSCode
7. Vim
8. Kakoune

At first, when starting out with web development, I used Notepad mostly because I did not know about the concept of a code editor :) and Notepad was the only thing that I knew about that could edit plain text files. Then I found Notepad++ and it seemed amazing to me at the time - basic stuff like syntax highlighting and code folding and line numbers made me say "wow, this is cool". Then I saw Atom on some tutorial video online and it looked very nice with a dark theme and material design so I switched to Atom.

Atom was too slow on my computer so I decided to use Sublime Text. Sublime Text did not have a lot of plugins and a GUI settings editor so I came back to Atom. Then I discovered VSCode which was a good balance between speed and features so I switched to Sublime. I saw some article saying that vim will make me a better developer so I started using vim. I don't think vim improved my productivity, it probably reduced it.

Then I discovered Kakoune which gave me a better experience with help messages out of the box so I switched to that and thats what I am using till date.

[Rogier Zeebregts]

I'm a huge fan of all things Jet Brains. Used VS Code for a little while but quickly switched back to phpStorm/Webstorm. VS Code is just way slower, and just not as good at code completion, as phpStorm is.

[Andrei Dascalu]

I work mainly with Js and php, but lately also a good deal of Golang. I've used:

• vim on and off, generally love it but over time I found it tedious to replicate my configs, extensions and customization between changing laptops and os'
• in the hey day I used a lot of phpstorm, eclipse, NetBeans and Aptana. They felt huge, bloated and barely usable. Phpstorm is great at php and php only.
• sublime 1 and 2. Fast and useful, but found php support lacking compared to others. Golang isn't that great either. Heard it got better in recent years but didn't feel like going back.
• atom, used to love it but grows slow really fast and seems thee is no cure for it. Great golang support, would use it for golang only.
• vscode, is my current workhorse. Seems great no matter what I add to it. There is little to nitpick about, small things over php and golang (but amazing at js, particularly react)

[corridor4]

Atom! It's really great and highly customizable. The Teletype add-on is great for collaboration.

[Jariullah Safi]

Spacemacs. It's easy to set up, allows for superhuman speeds for code navigation (owing mostly to evil mode), can be used from a terminal, and easy to keep my configuration synced across multiple computers.

I love it so much I made videos about it ( youtube.com/c/jack-of-some )

Oh and the plugin Magit ... the best way to use git in my opinion.

[Saleh Rahimzadeh]

I use Notepad++ to opening bunch of text files, editing Config files, etc.
and I use VS Code for programming and develop.

[Jariullah Safi]

Out of curiosity what benefit do to get from notepad++ in the use cases where you're not using vs code?

[Saleh Rahimzadeh]

Notepad++ is light-weight editor with good features, simple, stable, pluginable.

I would like to divide text files into three categories:

1. Simple, Single and Small files
2. Complicated, Large and Multiple (bunch) files
3. Project, Complex and related files

I use Windows Notepad for 1st category, because they don't need very effort.
I use Notepad++ for 2nd category, because they need syntax-highlighting, tabs, plugin to handle, auto-complete, line-joining, line-spliting, encoding, searching, commenting, converting case, etc.
I use VSCode for 3nd category, because they need compilation, sophisticated auto-complete, professional tabs management and grouping, advanced plugins, programming-related plugins and tools, professioal shortcuts, etc.