

Ask HN: What code-editor do you use? - pranaya_co

I have been using Coda for a while and like it but it has its limitations. Just curious what editor is popular among coders today.<p>Extra credit if you also tell me your favorite language.
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Sean-Der
I used Vim for a really long time, but then got a job at a company that uses
Emacs + Slime really saw the light.

Emacs is an amazing program, but really is awful without EVIL/Paredit. I don't
really like the commands chaining and actually find it hurts my wrists after a
day in Emacs mode. If anyone has any advice on how to maximize emacs I would
love to hear them!

~~~
dmm
Please don't ignore wrist pain. If your behavior doesn't change the pain will
not get better and can get much worse.

When I used a traditional keyboard layout. I bound the key immediately to the
left and right of space as control. Similar to the space-cadet keyboard:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Space-
cad...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Space-cadet.jpg)

This allows you to use the relatively strong thumbs to activate the commonly
used ctrl key. I now use a Kinesis advantage pro which similarly allows the
thumbs to activate many commonly used keys.

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Sodaware
Emacs.

Tried it years ago and absolutely hated it, then last year I saw a screenshot
of someone's org-mode setup and thought I'd give it another go. Since then
it's become my main editor for coding, project organization, diet tracking and
more.

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catenate
I used Emacs for 11 years, but gave it up in 2004 for wily/acme-sac/acme. Now
I use Acme (running in hosted Inferno) to edit all text files, mostly shell
scripts and notes. My favorite shell dialect is Inferno's sh. My favorite text
stream editor is sed (because I can use it in scripts), followed by the sam-
like Edit command in Acme.

I have many favorite languages for different tasks, because I don't try to
make one language do everything, and it takes less time and effort to make a
language do things for which it was designed.

My favorite functional language is Haskell, my favorite systems language is Go
(I should do more Limbo programming in Inferno), and my favorite object-
oriented language is Ruby.

My favorite production-dependency-management language is my own build tool
credo, followed by Plan 9's mk.

My favorite document language is UTF-8, followed by LaTeX if I actually have
to make it look pretty.

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Mahn
I'm not ashamed to admit I spend most of my coding time with Notepad++ — I
suppose I'm not a "real" programmer. I think I'll most likely switch to
Sublime Text eventually though, if nothing else because of its cross OS
compatibility; I just have to find some time to test if everything I use on
npp is there on Sublime Text aswell.

~~~
sherril8
I made the switch from Notepad++ to Sublime Text recently. Sublime Text feels
quite a bit more polished and was easier to get it setup to fit my needs.
Definitely recommend giving it a try.

~~~
Mahn
Out of curiosity: is there anything you miss from npp? Any critical feature
that isn't there in Sublime Text?

~~~
sherril8
Sorry for the late response. I cant recall anything that I missed from
NotePad++. Once I was all set up in ST2 (which was super quick thanks to the
package installer), everything felt the similar.

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kellros
I mostly do ASP.NET MVC development, so I use Visual Studio 2010 + 2012 with a
bunch of plugins daily. I also bought a bunch of other IDE's on JetBrains' end
of of the world sale including Intellij Idea, WebStorm, RubyMine and PyCharm.
I have found they are a lot slower than VS 2012. I haven't worked with
Eclipse/Netbeans in over a year. Other than that I usually use Notepad++ daily
and I really like SublimeText - I've used it on trial, but haven't bought a
license yet. I also use Microsoft Management Studio for T-SQL, otherwise one
of the aforementioned text editors. A couple of months ago I was hacking away
on Ubuntu and found Geany - which is actually pretty good for what you pay for
(free). CodeBlocks on windows is not bad either. It might be a good idea to
specify language of choice with preferred IDE if that's what you're after :)

~~~
zpk
"I also bought a bunch of other IDE's on JetBrains' end of of the world sale
including Intellij Idea, WebStorm, RubyMine and PyCharm"...RubyMine and
PyCharm are IntelliJ plugins, check them out before dropping $$ on the license
upgrade.

~~~
kellros
Will do, thanks.

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LarryMade2
I'm using Aptana, a PHP centric variation of Eclipse.

It's great at matching parenthesis, braces and brckets, provides popup tips on
commands and functions (including defined) as you code, can customize syntax
highlighting, does some proactive error checking and the file manager is good.
Doesn't do upload well.

Used to use Quanta Plus - what I miss from that was the better speed, drag and
drop tags (drop an image from your tree into your source - instant img tag.)
Better PHP example popups, easier color tag editing, nice preview/WYSIWYG
editor pane and decent printout (aptana printing is formatted lousy, and
sublime is literally non-existent) And better file transport (pre KDE 4)

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zpk
IntelliJ, for almost everything...best $50 I ever spent. Seriously, Java, PHP
and even my first Rails project. Missing my favorite MVC framework(CI) for PHP
though.

Wait for the sale.

~~~
fprotthetarball
Are you anticipating a sale soon? I've been eyeing IntelliJ IDEA for a while,
but only expect to use it for hobby projects so I'm having a problem
justifying the full cost. I do need some of the features in the Ultimate
edition to make it worthwhile, too.

~~~
zpk
Unfortunately I can't gauge that at all. They don't pre-announce, I got my
license of IntelliJ last December...I discovered the news here. I think they
have a twitter acct which you can subscribe to, and they mention sales on
that.

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sumeetchawla
Try using Sublime Text. It has really grown with time and the new 3.0 version
has a lot of awesome features.. <http://www.sublimetext.com/>

The best part about sublime text are the small add ons. Also, if you know
Python, you can write your own add ons right in the editor console itself.

Favourite Language: C but by profession am a web developer so I mostly deal
with JS, CSS3, PHP etc.

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edlucas
I just converted to Sublime Text 2, using the "Vintage Mode" VI keybindings.
I'm still missing a few things, but the "Vintage Ex" package and a handful of
custom key overrides have gotten me pretty close to an ideal VI environment.
Sublime Text is extremely customizable.

My favorite language is C, but I'm doing mainly web front-end work now.

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nayefc
Emacs for everything. I am yet to find a more efficient editor. I guess the
same can be be said if you're a seasoned Vim user.

I used Sublime a little recently for some HTML and CSS. It may be a better
choice for some HTML and CSS, in some or most cases.

Favourite languages: Used to be C but now Ruby, as paradoxical as that sounds.

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rm999
Textwrangler and vim. I'm looking to move to sublime eventually, but my needs
aren't overly complex and I'd rather not spend the effort switching at the
moment.

I waste maybe 1-5% of my time on inefficiencies regarding my editor. It's a
low priority decision to me.

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edparry
C#: Visual Studio 2012, obviously. Java: Eclipse Everything else: Sublime Text
2. Super powerful, customisable, a lot of packages, relatively quick learning
curve. What's not to like!

Favourite language...either Javascript or C# at the moment. Not even kidding.

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johncoltrane
Vim exclusively for HTML/CSS/JS/PHP and learning Python.

Eclipse + Flash Builder for the occasional AS3.

Eclipse for toying with Android dev.

I went Dreamweaver 3 -> BBEdit -> TextMate -> Vim. I. Can't. Look. Back.

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dagw
PyCharm and WebStorm for python and javascript/coffeescript respectively,
matlab IDE for matlab, Visual Studio for the one C++ library i sometimes have
to touch, Sublime text for just about everything else.

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swarthy_io
I use Sublime Text 2 with Vim bindings (Vintage mode) enabled. I use this at
work to write PHP and Go. My favorite language is Golang.

I also routinely use Vim on the server and my local machine.

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Proleps
Java, C++ : eclipse

python, javascript, LaTeX : Geany in linux, notepad++ in windows.

I also use gedit to quickly edit files sometimes, but Geany has a lot of extra
IDE like stuff.

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parasight
I use vim, TextMate, gedit, Visual Studio, or Eclipse depending on the
operating system and language I'm working with.

My favorite language is C#.

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crazydiamond
Vim in the terminal (along with tmux). Been using vim since about 1980.
Favorite language currently is ruby, earlier it was C.

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manishsharan
Netbeans for all java , javascript and J2EE. I had tried EMACS for Clojure but
switched to Eclipse with CCW.

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sydneyitguy
I've been using Eclipse, Aptana, RubyMine, Espresso, TextWrangler, Notepad++

Now I only use: Vim + Sublime

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veesahni
I've spent years with vim but recently started making the migration to Sublime
Text

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tagabek
On Mac OS: TextWrangler, Xcode, Eclipse On Windows: Notepad++, Eclipse

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Spoom
Gedit. Surprisingly good with the right plugins.

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i_vetrov
NetBeans for JavaScript, Eclipse for Java

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factorialboy
IntelliJ IDEA and Sublime Text

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anderspetersson
Sublime Text 2

Python

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jelmerdejong
PyCharm, so Phyton :)

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toutouastro
vim for coding and eclipse for refactoring

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codegeek
vi,vim,gedit

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devan
espresso

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fakeer
MacVim, TextWrangler, Xcode on Mac at home.

N++, IntelliJ and Eclipse on Windows and gedit, gvim on Linux at office.

Favourite language: Python (which I am learning). BTW I work with Java and
C/C++(little) on Android platform.

