You’re a programmer. You know what you need to be productive, and you know that it all starts with your tools.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using outdated, inefficient tools. These tools may have been great at one point, but new technologies have come up to replace them.
And, unfortunately for you, programmers are prone to holding on to their old habits. They get set in their ways and don’t want to change–even when they know they should!
So, we’ve taken the time to put together this list of the 10 best text editors for programming in 2020 so you won’t have any excuse not to make a change if necessary. We hope it helps!
Best Text Editor For Programming 2020
1. Visual studio code
Visual studio code commonly referred to as VS code, is one of the best code editors in the market. VS code is a product of Microsoft. Like many Microsoft brands, VS code is a cross-platform editor. Developers can use this powerful tool either on Windows, Linux, and mac. VS Code has powerful features that will fully support developers’ work. With the VS code, you are assured of fast system debugging and auto-completion.
Key features
- Cross-platform
- Built-in Git and git commands
- Reliable autocomplete and syntax highlighting using IntelliSense
- Debugging code right from the editor
- Easy to integrate with terminal
- Extensions for customizing and extending functionalities
- Ease of deploying projects to such platform as Microsoft Azure
- Compatible with almost every programming language
- Easy to use
- Lightweight and robust as compared to other editors
Platforms
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
2. Sublime text
If you are looking for a very lightweight yet robust code editor, the sublime text is your option. Sublime text is easy to install and opens rather quickly than other lightweight code editors. It is available on all platforms. Developers can enjoy the robust and remarkable features of sublime text regardless of the platform they are using.
Key features
- Cross-platform
- Fast customization of the editor to suit your likes
- Supports split editing
- Switching from one project to another is like a dream
- High performance
- Enables multiple selections
- Command palette for holding rarely used functionalities
- Keyboard shortcuts for file opening
- Project index generation from syntax definitions information
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
3. Atom Editor
Atom is a cross-platform code editor. If you want to share your project progress, then the atom is the best option. Atom allows developers to work together using teletype for atom – from sharing knowledge to teaching. One of the critical things for developers is collaboration while working to share ideas. Atom enables this operation right from your editor.
Key features
- Cross-platform editing
- Code sharing and collaboration using teletype
- GitHub support
- Built-in package manager
- Smart code auto-completion
- Easy system browser opening
- Multiple panes support
- Find and replace functionality
- Customizable themes
- Easy customization and style
- Many packages
- Open-source
Platforms
- OS X
- Windows
- Linux
4. Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free and open-source code editor governed by GPL License. It supports several programming languages. Notepad++ is written in C++ and thus offers a smaller program size and a higher execution speed of programs. It’s one of the code editors to reduce world carbon dioxide emissions. Notepad++ allows your system to use less CPU power, thus reducing power consumption to contribute to a greener environment.
Key features
- Code auto-completion
- Syntax highlighting
- Lightweight
- Higher performance
- Search and replace functionalities
- Multi-language environment support
- Highly customizable
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux
5. Bluefish
Bluefish is among the code editors equipped with a lot of features to support your work. It supports the integration of external programs such as weblint to handle error detection or top-level text processing. If you worry about speed and performance, then bluefish are here to fix your worries. Here is a list of the most outstanding or essential features offered by bluefish:
Key features
- Lightweight
- Fast and high performance
- Supports multiple document interface
- Multiple project support
- Powerful search and replace
- Recursive file opening
- Multithreaded support for remote files
- Full-screen editing
- Unlimited redo/undo functionality
- Site download/upload
- Inline spell checker
- Supports nearly every programming language
- Customizable support for programming language
- Zen coding support
- Multiple encoding supports
Platforms
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
- Solaris
6. Brackets
Brackets is a powerful yet lightweight and modern text editor. It’s one of the contemporary open-source code editors that understand web design. Brackets are created from the ground up for front-end developers and web designers. It makes it easier to design in the browser as it supports preprocessor and focused visual tools.
Key features
- Live preview
- Inline editors
- Preprocessor support
- Lightweight
- Powerful with reliable performance
- Extension support
- Beautify functionality
- Git support
- Autoprefixer
Platforms
- Linux
- Windows
- macOS
7. Phpstorm
Phpstorm is more of an IDE than a text editor. It is a cross-platform and commercial smart PHP IDE. Just like the name suggests, phpStorm supports PHP language only. It is more applicable by PHP developers, offering them a wide range of advanced features and high performance. It is perfect for working with popular frameworks such as Laravel, Joomla, WordPress, symphony, Magento, Yii, and other frameworks. Phpstorm has a thirty-day trial, after which you have to purchase the product from Jetbrains.
Key features
- Major framework support
- Availability of all the PHP tools
- Inclusion of front-end technologies
- Built-in developer tools
- Databases/SQL support
- Intelligent coding assistance
- Smart code navigation
- Safe and fast refactoring
- Easy testing and debugging
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux
- macOS
8. GNU Emacs
Gnu Emacs is a free and customizable text editor. It is licensed under the GNU License and thus is entirely available for free across several platforms. GNU Emacs is here to help developers deal with some of the features that are barriers to efficiency in other text editors. Emacs is equipped with complete documentation or manuals fragments offering guidelines to beginners. It is available in various versions with regular version releases to keep it up-to-date.
Key features
- Content-aware editing modes
- Complete built-in documentation – tutorials for new users
- Full Unicode support
- Highly customizable
- Packaging systems for extension download and install
- Project planner, debugger interface functionalities
- Syntax coloring for a variety of file types
Platforms
- GNU/Linux
- Windows
- macOS
9. Ultraedit
Like PHPstorm, UltraEdit is more of an IDE than a real text editor. Only a 30-day trial is available for free. After 30-days, you have to purchase the product. It’s among the world’s best text editors with a variety of features that surpass other editors. Ultraedit is a powerful text editor supporting quite many languages such as PHP, Python, HTML, and other languages. Its existence in the market is evident from its 25 years of usage by commercial companies and known developers. It’s a tool that developers or corporations wouldn’t hate using.
Key features
- Multi-selection and multi-caret editing capabilities
- HTML/Markdown real-time preview
- Search functionality – find and replace
- Highly customizable UI
- Integrated SSH, Telnet, and FTP
- Powerful themes
- Automatic code completion
- File compare
- Column mode editing
- Code syntax highlighting
- File and data sorting
- Robust bookmarking
- And many more features…
Platforms
- Linux
- Windows
- macOS
10. Komodo IDE
Komodo is more of an IDE than a text editor. It is free registered under the ActiveState Platform and supports nearly are languages. It also supports web languages such as PHP, Perl, Golang, and many more.
Key features
- Code intelligence with robust syntax highlighting
- Debugging and unit testing
- Version control functionality
- Customizable extensions and add-ons
- Fast workflow management
- Activestate platform integration
- Devdocs.io integration
- Live previewing
Platforms
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
best code editor for python
1. Online Compiler from Programiz
For: Beginner Pricing: Free
If you want to start writing Python code without investing time installing Python and setting up a development environment, you can use our online Python compiler. You just need the internet and a browser to get started.
By the way, our online interpreter is completely free.
2. IDLE
For: Beginner Pricing: Free
When you install Python, IDLE is also installed by default. This makes it easy to get started in Python. Its major features include the Python shell window(interactive interpreter), auto-completion, syntax highlighting, smart indentation, and a basic integrated debugger.
IDLE is a decent IDE for learning as it’s lightweight and simple to use. However, it’s not for optimum for larger projects.
Learn more: IDLE features
3. Sublime Text 3
For: Beginner, Professional Pricing: Freemium
Sublime Text is a popular code editor that supports many languages including Python. It’s fast, highly customizable and has a huge community.
It has basic built-in support for Python when you install it. However, you can install packages such as debugging, auto-completion, code linting, etc. There are also various packages for scientific development, Django, Flask and so on. Basically, you can customize Sublime text to create a full-fledged Python development environment as per your need.
You can download and use evaluate Sublime text for an indefinite period of time. However, you will occasionally get a pop-up stating “you need to purchase a license for continued use”.
4. Atom
For: Beginner, Professional Pricing: Free
Atom is an open-source code editor developed by Github that can be used for Python development (similar Sublime text).
Its features are also similar to Sublime Text. Atom is highly customizable. You can install packages as per your need. Some of the commonly used packages in Atom for Python development are autocomplete-python, linter-flake8, python-debugger, etc.
Personally speaking, I prefer Atom to Sublime Text for Python development.
5. Thonny
For: Beginner Pricing: Free
Thonny is a Python dedicated IDE that comes with Python 3 built-in. Once you install it, you can start writing Python code.
Thonny is intended for beginners. The user interface is kept simple so that beginners will find it easy to get started.
Though Thonny is intended for beginners, it has several useful features that also make it a good IDE for full-fledged Python development. Some of its features are syntax error highlighting, debugger, code completion, step through expression evaluation, etc.
Quick Tip: If you are a beginner, go to View and click variables. This will open variables view that contains your program’s variable list and their values.
Conclusion
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