A Note on Text Editors

There has been a lot of discussion about text editors lately -- notably Coming Home to VIM -- and I understand it can be an emotionally-charged issue for many people. I consider myself fortunate to not be one of those. My experience programming to now is focused on ease-of-setup, functionality, and beauty, in that order, which excludes VIM from the start because it doesn't come naturally to the newly nerdy. For those interested in a simple, free and freely available solution to get coding, read on.

First coding experiences nowadays are typically in an online tool such as the "write your code here" boxes at W3Schools, CodeAcademy, and the like, or whatever you find on your computer willing to open a .html file, such as Notepad. Pretty quickly, you want to upgrade to an editor suitable for writing, viewing, and editing files of code.

I transitioned first to Aptana, which was too much. I like it as a tool; its features are pretty sweet, especially if you want to code without having to open a browser, because it not only has intense organizational structuring for building a many-filed website but makes it super easy to preview what your page will look like in tabs within the program. But, intense may not be what you're looking for when getting started. I stopped using Aptana because I felt like to start writing something it had to be a full-fledged project; all the structure was intimidating to me for just playing around with a single file.


Next came TextWrangler, which was not enough. It IS a step above a plain white page in that it's made for coding, which is a clear benefit as the editor's recognition that your code is code enables it to do appropriate highlighting, bracket pairing, and other basic things which have an immediate impact on productivity. That said, it's still basically a plain white page. For me, that's not enough to want to use it for real.


Now I'm using Sublime, which I find to be just right. It's much more straightforward and lightweight than Aptana, but much prettier and with some nice extra features over TextWrangler. I find it very appealing to work with, whether I'm just opening a blank page to play around with a few lines of code or building an application with some structure. Using the free version of Sublime, you're prompted to consider buying a license every 5-10 times you save, but it's not too bothersome. Try it and tell me what you think, or what your favorite text editor for people starting to code is.