

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

I've been using TextMate for a few years now, but recently have been doing a lot of work in projects that have either 1) a lot of files or 2) really big files. Both of these situations cause TextMate to crawl to a halt.<p>I've used Emacs in the past, but something about the way in which you can navigate code just makes me feel less than efficient in it. Maybe I didn't take enough time to memorize all the required shortcuts. Mastering an editor that can be used over an ssh session certainly seems a plus.<p>So a question to all the coders out there: what editor do you use? Why did you choose it? What are the downsides?
======
andrewl
I used to use jEdit, which is still a very nice editor. And it ran on
Mac/Unix/Windows, which was good because I moved among all three systems. But
the last I looked (three or four years ago) development had stalled. And I got
into a job where I periodically had to SSH to various Solaris boxes and edit
on the console, in Vim. I knew just enough Vim to edit config files and simple
shell scripts without too much pain. Then I'd come back out to jEdit and start
putting :s and other Vim commands in my files. It was hard to shift gears.

So I decided to pick an editor that I could stay with for a long time, maybe
forever, because it did so many things and was so configurable. It had to run
on my Mac at home, the Windows nd Unix machines at work, and also on the
console. It came down to Emacs or Vim. My boss was an Emacs guy, and could do
wonderful things with it. But I'd had a few RSS problems, and I'd read about
what Emacs did to some users' hands. So I went with Vim, and I'm very happy
with it.

Really, the only downside is that I don't have Vim everywhere, so when I'm
stuck somewhere that doesn't have it my hands do the wrong thing. (Like in our
crappy email system. I write long messages in Vim and paste them in, but I do
short ones in the mail client. And hit escape when I'm done. And then hit
cancel to say that I'm not abandoning the message.)

As far as I know, the only editor more configurable than Vim is Emacs. But Vim
does do a lot. I use it for Ruby, shell scripts, HTML, CSS, XML, Perl, prose,
looking around in log files, and more. It handles long files easily. You can
script it with its built-in language (not as powerful as ELisp, of course) or
other scripting languages.

I sometimes meet people who don't know the difference between Vi and Vim. When
I say I use Vim they ask how I can get by with such a limited editor that
won't split windows and doesn't have tabs and so on. So when I say Vim, I mean
Vim 7.2, available at vim.org.

But Emacs and other tools are worth getting familiar with as well. It's good
to not be too provincial.

~~~
jrockway
I accidentally used Vim the other day. I noticed Vim now has Emacs keybindings
-- C-n goes to the next line, C-p goes to the previous line, etc. For a
second, I thought that C-x C-s was going to save my file and I was going to be
able to exit with C-x C-c. Nope. I had to make the journey over to the ESC
key. So close...

~~~
mapleoin
I think you're supposed to map Caps to be an ESC key in vim, just like most
people who use emacs map it to be an extra Ctrl.

~~~
aperiodic
No, you map it to Ctrl, and use Ctrl-[ instead of Esc.

~~~
bilban
Can't you just use ctrl-c?

~~~
aperiodic
I find it easier to hit ctrl-[, but yeah, ctrl-c does the same thing.

~~~
bilban
depends where that C is I guess, the Sholes (qwerty) placement of the [ might
strain ones pinky! There is something satisfying about banging the escape key
hard.

------
MattJ100
I somewhat suspect I'll be unique on this one here. I use nano full-time.

I use it because it is simple, it gets the job done, and I don't find that I
_need_ anything more.

It's true it's missing a couple of features commonly found in code editors.
But when I start thinking code folding would be useful, I take it as a sign
that this file is getting too large and would be better split. Nano also obeys
the simple UI principle of having a non-modal interface. I haven't used an
editor with bells and whistles for some years, and I'm liking it.

Also contrary to popular belief, nano _does_ support syntax highlighting -
this just isn't enabled by default in most distros.

Now, laugh.

~~~
frossie
_Now, laugh_

Well, I'll admit that was... unexpected, but I am certainly not going to
laugh. After all, the best code editor is the one you feel most productive in,
and you seem to have a rational explanation for it so sure, knock yourself out
:-)

------
pook
Oy, a holy war is about to happen.

I'll open the Emacs lobby with
<http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs> and
<http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/the-emacs-problem>

To give the illusion of fairness, here is a blogpost in which I praise Vim:
<http://zipwith.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-vim.html>

~~~
eob
Thanks for the links. I don't mean to start a holy war, though they are fun :)
I'm looking more for a reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of different
editing environments.

~~~
tjpick
> though they are fun

not the fifty thousandth time.

~~~
Mathnerd314
Then where are the wars archived?

~~~
tjpick
not sure if that's an honest question or sarcasm or what?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war>

------
jb55
Vim is like a virus that plants itself directly into your brain. Using it has
crippled my ability to use "normal" text editors. No longer am I satisfied
with default application navigation controls. I can't use a browser without
Vimperator installed. How can this madness be stopped!?

~~~
mapleoin
learn emacs. Yeah, I know what that sounds like. You don't have to also use it
forever, just for, say, 6 months. Then you use both at the same time. You're
brain will have rewired a pretty sturdy understanding of different ways to
edit and you'll be able to switch painlessly between emacs, vim and non-
editors (like the HN textbox).

Well anyway, it worked for me. I have no trouble switching between the 3
editing modes while I program, edit configs and write email (thunderbird for
now).

------
WesleyJohnson
I always hesitate to post on these types of questions: everyone seems to be
Java, Ruby, Python, etc and I feel like the Microsoft stack outcast!

Visual Studio 2010 at home and 2008 at work. We're primarily .NET so the two
just kind of go hand in hand. I'm also spoiled by intellisense.

I also use Eclipse at work since we've been doing a lot with GWT on the client
side (thought still using .NET on the backend).

Finally, I'll often use notepad++ for anything JavaScript simply because it
takes far too long to load up VS when I want to do something small/edit a
file/etc.

~~~
henrikschroder
If you like Eclipse and miss some of its features in Visual Studio I can
really recommend Studio Tools: <http://submain.com/products/studiotools.aspx>

I used to run Resharper when I used Visual Studio 2005, but with 2008 there's
much less need for it.

~~~
henrikschroder
There's one thing I lack for Visual Studio though, and that is the ability to
highlight a searchterm in a file.

Anyone knows of a simple way of getting that?

~~~
pook
In vim, it's :set hlsearch
[http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_match...](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_matches)

Emacs has many ways of highlighting search terms:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/385661/emacs-highlight-
al...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/385661/emacs-highlight-all-
occurences-of-a-word)

~~~
henrikschroder
That's nice, but totally not what I was asking for. :-)

After some more googling it appears Visual Studio 2010 has the feature,
almost, and a simple plugin gives the exact functionality I want. Dunno if I
want to upgrade to 2010 yet though. Hm...

------
Vitaly
I used TextMate for a couple of years but lately switched back to vim. This
time I invested in a good vim setup with plugins to fill in places where it
wasl lacking compared to TextMate. the config can be found at
<http://github.com/astrails/dotvim> There is a (rather long) README with
explanations of what is there and short instructions of basic use.

~~~
eob
Thanks a lot for sharing Vitaly. I think one of the hardest things about
moving to the emacs/vim world is the fact that, in addition to learning the
editor, you also have to find a good .emacs/.vim file to start yourself out
with.

------
gurraman
I've been using vim for about ten years now. A few of my favorite things about
the editor: it features the best application navigation that I've ever been
exposed to (I also use vi-like navigation in readline, Firefox and mutt); it
can open large files without breaking a sweat; it has a great many useful
features for quickly modifying text (q, =, gq, cit, ci(, ci' etc) -- something
I spend about 50 % of my time at work doing; it's almost always available, I
merely download my settings and it feels like home; it features a great ui and
I love how close the editor lives to the shell.

The only thing I do not like about vim is that auto-indentation and syntax
highlighting feel a bit "shaky". I find many of the editors mentioned here
more consistent in that regard.

------
btilly
On a work email list I wound up writing something that answers the question
fairly clearly:

    
    
      vi I use to write my code for work,
      It's modal and quite light, so quick to type
      I'm glad to use it for the great big perk
      That it lives up quite nicely to its hype
    
      But emacs I do not so choose for me,
      I fear the chords would sorely hurt my hands
      And carpal tunnel is so bad you see
      That misery makes it for me be banned.
    
      I know this is not good according to
      The cult of emacs users that I find
      Would tell me to not speak until I knew
      Why theirs was the best editor for mind
    
      But I cannot agree with them and so
      vi I use and now will say no mo!

------
mceachen
I'm finding RubyMine to be great for rails webapp development. Hopping through
a project to method or class or migration definitions, the "view model
dependency diagram", and good git integration make for a pretty nice IDE.

The main good thing about vi is that it's ubiquitous. You really should know
how to use it, at least cursorily.

You can certainly use emacs over ssh (and you know about ssh's X11 forwarding,
which let's you run a remote pointy-clicky editor rendered locally?).

Depending on your network and the files you're playing with, sshfs might be a
relevant tool to view the files "locally".

If the files are _really_ big, man the "split" command.

------
jarin
I use TextMate for most things, Espresso for working on HTML mailers and
(some) static sites, XCode for iPhone/iPad, and Eclipse for my most hated
projects (Adobe Flex/AIR mostly. I don't hate Flex, I just hate Eclipse).

I use Inconsolata font at 14pt and a modified Monokai theme (with darker
background) whenever possible.

About once a year or so I decide I'm going to switch to vim. I spend about a
week getting my vimrc and plugins set up and use it for a couple more weeks,
before I eventually get sick of keyboard navigation and NERDTree and go back
to TextMate. I know that with MacVim I get things like scrollwheel support and
mouse navigation, but if I'm using those anyway I might as well use them in
TextMate and get back my tab triggers and other shortcuts.

It's always good to brush up on vim once in a while though, since it often
comes in handy when you need to edit config files on a server or when you are
collaborating with a developer who uses vim exclusively. I also wish TextMate
had split panes and some of the keyboard shortcuts (o, O, I, and A come to
mind), but overall my productivity is better with TextMate.

~~~
bilban
Maybe you just need to bin the mouse for a week. That is the thing that gets
in the way for me, and when it's present, I start using the damn thing. The
one thing it feels good for is copy and paste, a necessity when copying
outside vim.

------
vtail
> I've used Emacs in the past, but something about the way in which you can
> navigate code just makes me feel less than efficient in it.

Have you ever tried IDO,
<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings>?

~~~
justinweiss
IDO is 100% necessary for decent code navigation in emacs, but it's also worth
trying textmate.el (<http://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el>), PeepOpen
(<http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen>), or my fuzzy-find-in-project
(<http://github.com/justinweiss/fuzzy-find-in-project>) for something like,
but more flexible than, TextMate's command-T functionality.

------
mixmax
Notepad++ because it's relatively simple and gets the job done. I like
unbloated minimalism.

~~~
geedee77
I use Notepad++ as well most of the time for this exact reason. It's
minimalist enough but still has useful features such as colouring keywords
which I miss when I use just notepad.

------
braindead_in
Vim of course.

------
shiloa
I do most of my coding at work (rails, python, ruby, js, html, css), where we
have ubuntu machines - I LOVE gedit and simply can't do without it. It has a
powerful plugins system, and there's a good repo at github.com/lexrupy/gmate
that contains some of the best. There's a port for it on a mac, but I tend to
stick to TextMate when on OSX (my home computer).

Some of my can't-do-without features are: delete line, duplicate line, shift-
line (up/down), select word, multi-edit (on gedit), word complete (circle
through options bash style) and snippets. If I had to pick between gedit and
TextMate, I'd probably go with gedit, but only because I spend a lot more time
on it on a daily basis. I'm sure if I had TM at work, I'd probably understand
what all the hype is about.. :)

~~~
jjanzer
If you like gedit you should give geany a try.

------
tgittos
I don't use a single editor.

Currently I'm using Visual Studio for all .NET related things, because it's a
nice, overall IDE.

I'm also getting into C++, for which I use vim in Ubuntu (although I am far,
far from being a decent vim user). I couldn't stand the way it tried to handle
everything by default and felt like it was interfering with my understanding
of C++ dev. I also didn't like the way the VS solution layout doesn't match
the disk layout. I wanted to get more down and dirty with my compiler, and
possibly learn make.

I also interchangably use Notepad++, Textmate and e-texteditor depending on
what's available on the machine I'm on.

------
kentosi
Your question's made me realise something I completely wasn't aware of! In my
many years of coding I always seem to have 2 separate editors open: one for
coding and one for editing.

Currently at work, it's eclipse for Java development, and Textpad for all
quick editing, regular expressions, mass find/replace across files, large
files, etc.

~~~
eob
That's an interesting observation. Before going back to school, I worked at a
place where Eclipse was the gospel. And Eclipse is a wonderful tool when
you're a Java coder, but I often found myself doing exactly the same thing
(except with TextMate for the mac) -- when I needed to hack up a file to make
changes, I'd copy everything into TextMate, run a bunch of RegEx search and
replace jobs, and then paste it back into Eclipse.

------
kprobst
Visual Studio 2008/2010 for C# stuff, vim for everything else. TextPad is my
general-purpose text manipulation tool. along with the Win32 ports of the *nix
toolchain.

------
bwr
This is old but seems relevant: <http://xkcd.com/378/>

~~~
ez77
Thank you! This absolutely rocks!

------
cowmixtoo
Komodo Edit works well on all platforms and support 'scp' for file access.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Komodo Edit (Mac) with the Vim bindings turned on. It's lightweight with some
advanced features like code completion and basic project management (find &
replace in project, etc).

~~~
jay_kyburz
I finally settled on Komodo as well.

~~~
chrischen
I got Komodo IDE but it was way too slow on Mac. Not sure why. I switched over
to Netbeans 6.9.

------
jimmysanchez
UltraEdit for me! Works great for large files and all my day-to-day editing.

<http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultraedit.html>

If you work with large files a lot, you may want to check this out:

[http://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutorials_power_tips/ultrae...](http://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutorials_power_tips/ultraedit/large_file_handling.html)

I also LOVE the scripting. I've written a lot of custom scripts to automate
repetitive tasks.

The only downside, it's not free like many of the other editors listed here;
however, it is well worth the money.

------
thinkbohemian
Mac = Textmate Windows = Notepad++

Color me crazy but the majority of "fancy" stuff that most IDE's have is
counter productive. Unfortunately i'm still a newb at VI and emacs to truly
appreciate either.

~~~
jamie_ca
Same here - I'm mostly on a mac so I use Textmate (and just gEdit on linux
lately), but I can't recall the last time I used a snippet or anything.

Decent editing functionality, syntax highlighting, the concept of opening a
project directory (which gEdit doesn't do well), and open file by pattern
match is 95% of my use cases.

------
daeken
I use <http://www.e-texteditor.com/> on Windows. It's a clone of Textmate,
supporting its bundles and all that; works very, very well.

~~~
amk
big fan of e text editor. I have been desperately trying to compile the new
source code releases for ubuntu but not too successful. (Not to familiar with
linux programming/building). It works on wine though.

~~~
safetytrick
Does it work seamlessly through wine? I've been missing textmate snippets
lately but it's frustrating to work around little problems?

~~~
amk
I didn't use it for a long time. It works, but it still needs cygwin to be
install for some snippets. That's a little ironic. installing cygwin on wine..
but I guess that's the only way to get a text-mate like editor on linux.

Or you could try something called Red Car Editor (<http://redcareditor.com>)
which proclaims to be an editor specially made for ruby/rails programmers. It
looks pretty impressive, but again I couldn't get it installed properly. (I
think the latest version runs on jRuby platform)

EDIT: I got inspired to try Red Car again after posting this comment.
Uninstalled Ruby completely from Windows 7, installed jRUby 1.5. Red car gem
installation went perfectly, but the editor is shockingly slow and
unresponsive. I don't know if the same applies to linux platform, or if there
is something wrong with my system (its a 2 year old laptop, and its been a
long while since I have reinstalled the Windows OS)

------
svnv
We do most of our stuff in C# and JavaScript, so I use Visual Studio 2008 with
Resharper and Viemu plugins. Reshaper really does make visual studio a whole
lot better, it's definitively worth a try if you code in C#. Viemu is a set of
vi-bindings for visual studio.

Worst part about using VS2008 is the intellisense for JavaScript, it's so bad
it is actually a slight annoyance. Supposedly the JavaScript intellisense for
Visual Studio 2010 is a lot better.

------
jmulder
Doing primarily CSS, HTML or Javascript in my editor, my requirements are less
about code navigation and more about just being quick and simple.

On OSX I use TextMate, but on Windows I use Intype -- www.intype.info

Intype is a very, very useful text editor similar to TextMate in that it
supports three key points:

1\. Bundles / snippets 2\. Intelligent selections and editing (multiple,
rectangle, etc.) 3\. Fuzzy search in quick open

Anyone using TextMate knows how important bundles are to one's work flow.

By far the biggest downside of Intype is its pace of development. It's
incredibly slow and right now the best version they have is an 'unstable'
release:
[http://intype.info/download/download.php?intype-0.3.1.734.ex...](http://intype.info/download/download.php?intype-0.3.1.734.exe)

It's still a very basic editor. As such, they're looking really good project
management tools, file watching (refresh on external changes), integration
with source control systems, etc.

They have been working on 0.3.5 for such a long time and I doubt we'll see a
release of it before the end of the year. Nonetheless, the upsides outdo the
downsides by far for me personally.

------
pkghost
emacs. first job out of college, got put on a team that used emacs, so i
learned emacs.

things i love: non-modal interface (used vim in college, found myself
frequently cursing its modes: "do what i think, not what i type!"); lives on
every system i work on; does not require smelling salts after encounters with
large files; insanely flexible and powerful

things i hate: insanely flexible and powerful (i.e., large investment required
to capitalize on flexibility and power); i'm not a pianist (abundance of
control and alt prefixes to key commands make rachmaninov cry from his grave);
this is 2010 -- where is my anti-aliasing, dammit; after a year, i still have
regular arguments with tabs/spaces/indentation

to address your concern about navigating code efficiently, i sympathize. i
felt that way when i started out (even after realizing i could select text
with my mouse), but i'm in a phase where _i spend more time thinking about
writing code than actually writing it_ , so i worry less about how fast i can
copy and paste an awkward selection from one file to another than i do about
how well my editor fits with my work environment and personal habits.

~~~
leif
> i still have regular arguments with tabs/spaces/indentation

Clearly, you should end your files with ".py".

> navigating code efficiently

Use xcscope, if your language is supported. Obvious, and you've probably tried
it (and now, probably don't care), but worth mention, for others at least.

~~~
madrik
What if his files end with ".hs"?

~~~
leif
I still don't fully understand haskell's whitespace usage. :-/

------
postfuturist
NetBeans with jVi plugin (vim style editing) for projects and vim for one-
offs. Netbeans has good support for PHP and Python auto-complete, etc. jVi
plugin faithfully recreates vim experience. Downside is that NetBeans can be
slow and crashes about once per day. It is worth it for fast searching,
switching files, jumping to function/class definitions, etc.

------
rianjs
I bought EditPlus (www.editplus.com) _way_ back when I was in high school (NT4
days), and the license is still good for newer versions. I've lost the license
twice, don't have the CC or email address it was registered to, and Sangil has
been very responsive about getting me my license info even without that stuff.

Since I bought it, they've added code folding, which is really nice. It's
really just a plain jane text editor with pluggable syntax highlighting. The
ability to save to a remote server is really nice, too, especially if you're
doing remote dev work. I just wish it had SFTP support instead of just FTP. Or
SCP. Whatever. Something more secure.

It's incredibly fast and lightweight, and I've never felt a need to use
anything else.

I've also been known to use jEdit, nedit, and vim, depending on what type of
environment I'm working in/through.

------
davidedicillo
Coda, but I am just a designer/front-end guy, so I don't count

~~~
grinich
The Coda editor is actually just a version of SubEthaEdit.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coda_(web_development_software)...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coda_\(web_development_software\)#Editor)

<http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/index.html>

~~~
benreyes
I have to admit I use Coda too as a developer. I have tried other text editors
but have found Coda to have a really nice UI.

------
kacy
I'll throw my vote in here. I use a good mix of vim and textmate. Nothing too
special. :-P

~~~
ahlatimer
I also use vim and textmate. I use textmate far more than vim, though.

------
DanielStraight
Sublime Text. It has the minimap. It has multiple cursors. It has macros. It
has plugins. It has color schemes. It's simple. It's beautiful. It's actively
developed. It's affordable.

Downsides? It's Windows only.

~~~
pook
<http://www.sublimetext.com/features>

This looks like a great editor. It's proprietary, though. Damn.

Why is it that, as with Opera, every now and then you find an amazing program
which, even more amazingly, is closed-source?

Emacs, however, offers minimap as well:
<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MiniMap>

I wonder how well we did compared to Sublime.

~~~
jarin
These days, I'm actually more amazed when I find an amazing desktop program
which is open-source. Maybe it's just because opinionated software appeals to
me.

~~~
nailer
<http://redcareditor.com/> looks as if it will be decent. But yes, I agree.

------
keefe
eclipse. Why? Default for java. Some pluses... nice plugin based architecture,
stable code. Autocomplete, refactoring, source code generation, etc. are not
optional things when you're trying to do too much all the time. It's nice
working in something that is pretty standard and offers you the ability to
share styles etc.

Downsides.. IDE-ification of development. Slow startup time (wants SSD hybrid
drive for this). Synchronizing plugin versions can be a pain in the ass.
Fairly steep learning curve to advanced features.

------
tremendo
on Windows, Textpad does well both with 1) a lot of files or 2) really big
files. Ok, I've only opened files of about 125Mb on it. Takes a few seconds to
load it, but once up, it flies. If you have a lot of files open, the tabbed UI
doesn't really help, so you can F11 for the Document Selector sidebar.

These days while on Windows I often have gVim, Sublimetext and Texpad open
simultaneously. The minimap is cute, but have never found it useful, still
Sublime is almost as snappy as TP.

------
mark_l_watson
Hmmm. The editors that other people use is basically as un-interesting as
someone's religion or politics. I'll not bore you with my views on politics or
spirituality, only editing text:

Any Lisp: Gambit-C Scheme, Clojure, Common Lisp: Emacs with either Slime or
custom support. (I also like the IntelliJ support for Clojure.)

Ruby: mostly TextMate or GEdit, sometimes RubyMine.

Java, Scala: IntelliJ. Nothing else even comes close.

Latex: TeXShop on the mac, GEdit on Linux

------
hsmyers
EditPlus because it does what I need and very little more. Has add-ons for
just about any language I've every needed to program in, but still simple for
all that.

~~~
harisenbon
Herehere! I love me some edit plus. I've been using it since college.

I usually use EditPlus for my notepad replacement as well as any regex
functions or searches I need to do.

For any system-based programming, I do everything in Eclipse because it
automatically interfaces with my SVN and deploy servers.

------
Ixiaus
Emacs! I'm a pious follower of the Church of Emacs...

------
TrevorBramble
For my day job, Eclipse + PDT due to a number of quirks in the dev
environment.

Otherwise I'm using Vim exclusively, and hope to someday be pretty good with
it. ;^)

When I was on Windows I used EditPlus and still advocate it for Windows users.
Fast, capable, customizable, and the developer was always very responsive to
my questions and requests.

------
metamemetics
Notepad++ for html\css\javascript\python all at once. The dynamic highlighting
based on the context of the cursor position is clutch for web work. Makes it
easier to take care of all the cascading changes in your templates and
stylesheets.

WingIDE hands down if its just python or a ton of python. Emacs for servers
and CygWin.

------
iamelgringo
I develop on WAMP: Windows 7, Python/Django, Apache, Postgres.

For editing code I use e. It's great. It does hang on large files, however.

I spend the vast majority of my time inside of the iPython command line, and
when I finally work out what I'm trying to do, copying the result back in to
the text file in e.

------
JoeAltmaier
Whatever is already installed. I also use the default email tool. And file
explorer. ANd web browser. Because, see, I have a life and it doesn't include
redecorating every room I enter to suit my peccadillos. And yes I write code
every day, all day, on 3 different platforms at the moment.

------
spektom
Writing plug-ins for Eclipse is only possible using Eclipse itself. But I use
it for other Java projects as well. What I like: code assist, quick fix, code
generation, refactoring, code navigation. The only thing I dislike is buggy
SVN integration plug-ins :)

------
mx12
Eclispe for java. I could not imagine writing java without an IDE.

TextWrangler/BBEdit, for most other files. I like the built in support for
sftp, so I can work remotely in a gui.

For the quick edits from the command line I use the old standby, vi.

~~~
bilban
I'm not a Java programmer, why do you say this?

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onceuponkauai
I use netbeans because it is on parity of sucking as bad as zend studio but it
is free. I really like the "intellisense" as i went from C# asp.net stuff to
php

i really want to give jetbrains my money but they haven't put out anything for
me...yet :)

------
madrik
Ye can gain mine Emacs when ye wrest it from mine chill, mortified fingers.

~~~
strait

        O ye'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road  
        And I'll be a editin afore ye  
        For me and my emacsen will ne'er wont to gae  
        On the Vim Vimmy scriptin o' productivitin'

~~~
madrik
Emacs be an organism. It be runnin' all the while. On the other hand, I'll
admit to using vi from eshell.

------
astrec
IntelliJ IDEA for clojure and groovy. TextMate for everything else.

~~~
Lewisham
IDEA is also the best Scala IDE IMHO.

------
adrianscott
a) Fosdev ;) b) because I'm part of the team developing it, and it takes care
of a lot of setup stuff, etc. c) plenty (almost everything) as it's a new,
fresh product/project

I'd love to hear more about how the projects have 1) a lot of files or 2)
really big files... and how you navigate around the proj. should the really
big files be broken into smaller files? etc...

------
prodigal_erik
Eclipse is a terrible editor (200 million cycles per keystroke isn't enough to
keep up!?) but a good Java browser with svn support (which we haven't migrated
off of quite yet), so I mostly live in that. Someday I hope to work on a
codebase that's DRY and clean enough that I can go back to Emacs.

I don't understand all the love for Visual Studio. Everyone I met a few years
back at Microsoft ignored it and used gvim and their own make clone, in spite
of devdiv's pleas for feedback.

~~~
robryan
Any overriding reason why it was ignored? In terms of doing .NET development
at least, if you were including that.

------
alain94040
vi, Xcode, Xemacs, Eclipse, textedit. That's a good start. Depends on what is
handy. emacs wins for super-large files (>1GB).

~~~
hboon
Other than logs, do you handle text files > 1GB?

~~~
alain94040
Not logs. The gate-level EDIF of a full chip can be pretty big... Sometimes
you need to check out exactly how two logic gates were generated by synthesis.

------
mitko
recently gedit is my favourite. Really fast and easy to setup. Also to move my
settings from one computer to another I just need to copy 1 folder and install
one package. That, in combination with command line is very powerful for me.

I used to use different editor for every language but I am getting more and
more comfy with gedit.

~~~
safetytrick
I've noticed that gedit is a little sluggish to start and somewhat buggy. All
that same it's a great editor.

------
ten7
Dare I say Coda? Um, I guess I just did...

------
cperciva
I use kwrite, unless I'm at a console, in which case I use nano.

Easy to use, and no holy wars.

------
talleyrand
Geany, my absolute favorite. It does everything and it does it efficiently.

------
proee
jEdit is my third arm. Hypersearch is amazing and the beanshell rules.

------
jhawk28
Textmate on the mac, sublime text and scite on the PC, eclipse for Java

------
kabdib
Epsilon (a good Emacs clone that has excellent Windows integration).

------
strait
On Linux, Geany or SciTE. Both are scriptable with Lua.

~~~
safetytrick
SciTE seems really solid but it's missing some features I like in other
editors.

------
michaelneale
IDEA, emacs (various types), vim, vi if on a server.

------
thisisnotmyname
I use gvim whenever possible and vim otherwise.

------
christo16
Xcode, only tool available for iPhone/iPad dev

------
giozdemir
gedit with gmate (<http://github.com/gmate/gmate>)

------
marilyn
SlickEdit has been a long time friend.

------
keeptrying
Emacs. I do everything within emacs.

------
noodle
on windows, e-texteditor, a textmate clone (i love it), and notepad++.

on linux, i use nano.

------
thunk
The editor I chose x years ago for no reason is _way_ better than the editor
you chose y years ago for no reason.

------
balding_n_tired
emacs (including xemacs), Visual Studio if I'm doing C#, vi now and then.

------
technikhil
At work I use various flavors of Visual Studio (including VS.NET 2003 on
Windows 7 [http://technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-
studio-200...](http://technikhil.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/visual-
studio-2003-and-windows-7-can-get-along-really/)). For any quick editing and
especially text manipulation it's notepad++ or emacs. I am trying to learn
emacs but I am still not completely there yet - I use it for text editing
mostly with some python editing.

