What text editor do you recommend? And why?

Just curious, not complaining about anything here. Just curious what people who've been doing this a couple years or more think is cooler to play with.

 

Previously I used Programmer's Notepad, but I switched over to Notepad++ about a year ago. I love how it loads very quickly, has frequent updates (about a month vs Programmer's Notepad which hasn't had one since 2011), and the community seems to actively create add-ons such as themes, syntax highlighting schemes, etc.

 

Seems like I always hear about Notepad++ or Sublime.

 

For all my real work, I use Sublime. I don't know if it's the best text editor out there, but it's certainly one I find agreeable with how I like to work.

For Unity-related stuff, I use Monodevelop because I simply don't know any better.

 

Sublime Text for everything! It has a large active community, a ton of plugins, themes and much more

 

Once upon a time, on a computer from an era of frequent hardware/software problems (aka Windows 9x/ME), I used UltraEdit. I found it to be a generally useful editor but I never bothered moving forward to newer versions. Back then, and even now after skimming over its current feature list, it simply felt like it was trying too hard to be the swiss army knife of developer tools.

If I am going to invest in a text editor, I want it to try to be the best text editor it can be. I do not want to buy a text editor only for them to waste their time adding an FTP browser or an SSH console. If I need those I will go with someone who specializes in those areas, not a text editor. Certainly not when the price is $80 per year.

Sublime seems like it is at least trying to be a good text editor for the price you pay and the price is far more reasonable at $70 per major release with upgrades to newer releases coming at a discount.

 

NotePad ++. Why? Simple, light and FAST.

 

Used to use Notepad++, switched to Sublime text.
Why? I just found Sublime nicer to use.

 

Still using Unitron as it does not get in my way and is quick and I am on OS X.

 

I recently discovered Atom which I though was pretty neat.

 

Can't help it......VS Community, assuming it is for code. If I want just text, literally, and I don't need anything special, notepad(not ++, rather the one included in windows) is fine. If I want anything like formatting, I use Word 2013. Why? Because I already have it, along with Excel and Access if I need them. Excel comes in handy for many gamedev things too.

 

I just realized I should have said Microsoft Word for editing code.

 

Anything code related : Visual Studio
Documents : Google Docs
Anything else : Notepad++ - Simple, fast, multiple tabs, syntax highlighting, show system chars like '\r\n' with a button on the toolbar, dark theme, remembers tabs after you close the program

 

Right tool for the right job.

If its just for writing a quick not to myself I use sticky notes or notepad

If its code I use MonoDevelop

If its for presentation I'll use Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint as appropriate

For fiction I use yWriter, then NotePad, then Word. I did play with scrivener for a bit too.

For collaborative work you can't get past google docs.

 

I recommend Notepad++
Why: free, updated regularly, tons of plugins for added features or integration with other tools. Syntax coloring that can be extended.




Outsourced software development

 

Notepad++ won, not that it was a contest, but it simply was mentioned the most.

 

@RJ MacReady - I like Word because it is east to make pretty documents and it can save directly in PDF You completely forgot to mention what you plan to use it for, the best "something" typically depend on what you are gonna use it for

The question is like asking people "what the best vehicle is?" without mentioning that you plan to fill it with a few tons of rocks in a mine with a low ceiling etc...

 

The age old battle is between emacs and vi. All others are for pussies ;-)

However, I often use kate on Linux and notepad++ on Windows.

 

What is the best vehicle?

 

Maclaren P1

 

I've always been fond of Notepad++ like many others but it doesn't work with Unity. Monodev isn't working right for me and I need to find something better.

 

Sublime, tons of plugins and I can run it on Windows, Mac, Linux and one license allows me to use it at home and on my work machine with no legal issues.

 

Seems like Notepad++ and Sublime are the leading contenders. Somebody call Deadliest Warrior.

 

Notepad++ for a long time, before (nearly a year ago) I switched to Visual Studio if it counts.

 

Tangential side-note but yeah, I've been a Scrivener user for about three years now. If you're writing prose it's unbeatable. Another one I really like sometimes is Write Monkey. It's great for when you want nothing else cluttering up the words. Write Monkey for first drafts, Scrivener for the main work. Good team.

 

This whole thread is off topic, so why not?

Surprisingly the of original feature that drew me to these fiction editors was the lack of inline spell checking. It's surprising how much more productive you can be if spelling waits till the final draft, once you have decided on every word. The Microsoft Word style really slows you down, and focuses you on making things perfect that will probably be cut anyway.

I believe this feature became optional in later versions, which was disappointing.

 

Notepad++ is my personal favorite also. I used UltraEdit a lot too and it is also very good.

 

For non-unity stuff I've become a huge fan of GitHub's Atom.

 

I used UltraEdit for a little over a year and recently switched to NotePad++. UltraEdit pissed me off with some UTF-8 BOM issues when I was in the middle of some time-sensitive php work and I got so irritated at it that I dumped it to the curb and switched that day to NotePad++. Haven't looked back since.

 

Totally true. It's very easy to fall into the trap of editing while writing. "Perfecting" each sentence before writing the next, then going back and forth cleaning up this, changing that. It will slow your writing down to a crawl. I succumb to the temptation myself fairly often and sometime have to remind myself again not to do it. Just have to jump in and start writing.

Write first, edit later. They're two separate processes. One creative and the other logical. Mix them up and all hell breaks loose!

 

Visual Studio and Resharper - Hard to beat...

 

Anything without intelli-sense (or auto-completion as other programs may call it) is useless for programming. I don't know if you're asking for what editor to use for programming or for something else though.

What has intelli-sense? Visual Studio and MonoDevelope are the only ones I know of. If for non-programming, I use Textpad, but there's several programs like that.

 

You should try out Script Inspector from Flipbookee, really really fast and many cool features.


VS2013 + RS is good but still too slow to me. Sublime seems fine but autocomplete does not work very well yet ...

 

Developers went for years without IntelliSense (auto-completion isn't really the same). I've had moments both where it was a tremendous help and where it was simply in the way.

 

I've got along just fine without it all these years.

 

I used too. I also used to write correctly without a spell checker. Yeah, neither of them is happening again anytime soon.

 

I can't stand that stuff getting in my way. I shut it off if it is on. I use Unitron because it simply hilights key words so I can skim though later on and see things at a glance.

 

Let me just say all you guys who don't like intelli-sense are crazy (my opinion). It never gets in my way. Never. Ever. Once you see *when* it does things you don't want it to, you do them a slightly different way and it never "gets in your way" again. Overall the time saved by not typing the rest is a massive time saver.

And for programmers just learning an API (or for huge API's - dot net anyone?) it's an absolute must-have. No bones about it. I'm extremely surprised to see 4 people disagree with this and no one agree with it.

Everywhere I've worked in the last 15 years I've never heard of a person shutting off Intelli-sense. And I've done my share of pair programming and never saw it turned off, regardless of skill level of the programmer. I guess this is where the very vocal extreme minority comes to talk.

So color me flabbergasted :|

However...I do hate spell checker haha.

Now admittedly, using C# in Unity in general has a much smaller API than .NET, so it's less necessary than when doing "day job non-game programming", but it's still a life-saver.

 

I may not have been clear in my post. I come down firmly on the side of intelli-sense. I used to write code without it. Now I lack the ability to do so.

 

Oh ok, then I wasn't talking to you

 

@jerotas I agree, I used to work without Intelli-sense in Notepad++ for a couple of years, but those years are past beyond me.. Intelli-sense is a live & time saver imo...

 

Cool man.

Going a little further: if the OP is asking what text editor is good, he's probably not super experienced, meaning: he's going to need Intelli-sense a lot more than the rest of you pros . Intelli-sense is not a must, but it does let me work somewhat faster.

 

It's funny how many people out there still think that coding without intelli-sense make you a pro ...

 

It isnt the tools you use that make you a professional or not. What's funny are the the the people who think it is.

 

There is a difference between finding it practical and claiming anything without it is useless. Some coding situations I find it absolutely invaluable and other times it simply gets in the way. Rather than force one tool to fit every situation, I prefer to pick the right tool for the job.

 

True enough. Often I write my algorithms out in pseudo code on paper first. So I guess I do find a text editor without all the bells and whistles to be useful from time to time.

 

Nice potshot pal. My brain does not work apparently like yours so I am crazy. I don't like the popup crap getting in the way of my thinking. For example..I have a function or variable name transport. I type tra and have a popup now over top of my code obscuring my work and I have to dismiss it. I have been writing Unity code daily for 6 to 7 years and AS 2 & 3 for 8 years prior daily and I know what I want to write before I hit the first key. The times I had to on to try it out just frustrated the crap out of me.

Potshot back atcha.. If ya studied the API you wouldn't need intelli-sense. It is for the lazy minded. Not really but if ya want to pull opinions from your lower fundament and cast aspersions..well...I'l play your gambit. Same with halflashed or whatever.

 

Some of us just don't need training wheels to get things done.

 

Intelli-sense is great for writing code. My key stroke pattern might look something like this:

gec<myc>().mym(myf, myi);

As you can see that's less then 10% of the keystrokes I need. Code gets written faster.

On the other hand this relies heavily on me knowing what I want to code, and having already implemented all of the needed APIs on all of the other classes. Intelli-sense is useless for a class you haven't written yet, or if you wait until you need a variable before declaring it. Sometimes it's insistence on perfect syntax also gets in the way, it's difficult to leave a line half coded.

So yeah, I use it most of the time. But I totally see why you wouldn't want to.

 

When two tribes go to war...