What do you look for in a Code Editor?

Does it support vim bindings? 😄

On a serious note: highly customisable, ability to write your own plugins, not too resource heavy.

I've been using Jetbrains products for so long (IntelliJ etc.) that I don't really know any other IDEs. Vim + IntelliJ works for me!

• Open source
• Good enough support for tools/languages
• Good performance.
• LSP is ideal.
• Community.

I recently went on a spree to find a alternative for VSCodium which I am using. Tried Emacs, Lite-XL, Kate. And ended up liking Emacs and Lite-XL.

• Emacs just blows any text editor out of the water with respect to functionalities IMO. The only problem is that it's just too hard to get used to. Not to mention the keybindings are from jurassic park era. Keybindings before ctrl+c and ctrl+v for copy and paste were even a thing. Found everything unnecessarily hard and you have to relearn a lot of things. After using it for almost a month, I moved on. Not because it is bad. But because I didn't get settled with it even after almost a month. And I ran out of time. Still can't deny that...

  • Orgmode is mindblowing.
  • Magit is crazy.

• Lite-XL is fast and minimal. It's is my ideal choice and I use it whenever I can. Trying it out made me learn a lot about text editors. It needs a little more tools and functionality support is all. And it is getting there as far as I can tell. Also, you can extend it easily with Lua. I ended up writing stuff in Lua even though I didn't know Lua. So I am pretty sure anybody can if they really wanted to.

While I had to come back to VSCodium, I still use Lite-XL as my secondary text editor. Oh, and their community is really nice. :)

The only other text editor I want to try out now is NeoVim. It has good support AFAIK. It uses Lua for plugins, so it's an excuse to play around with Lua outside of Lite-XL. All I need now is some time. :)

I think the key here is not to expect one editor to rule them all. In my case I use sublime text for quick edits but rider/webstorm for most of development. This way you get the best of both worlds. You really can't have a super snappy ide that does everything and also starts really quickly , something has got to give. Hence going with two is a great strategy. Is there really anyone who exclusively uses one IDE and no other editor? I've never met one

• Not being forced to use mouse/touchpad for anything - be it Vim bindings or something else, I don't care so much
• Ability to easily store the editor config in version control
• Having some kind of command palette so I don't have to memorize all the keyboard shortcuts to lesser used things

That being said, I use Doom Emacs as my main editor and VSCodium as my supporting editor.

A huge extension library so I can customise it any way I want. This is an area where VS Code excels.

Is it really called that? 😄

Beware of evil-mode though! It's addicting...

An editor that I never have to take my hands off the keyboard to use a mouse.

An editor that does not get in my way, so I don't have to think about the editor, I can focus on what I'm editing. Zen-like. One with the code.

And editor that is available on every platform I work on. And I work on dozens of platforms.

I use Vim.

One thing that's absolutely essential for me is that an editor must be programmable. I get paid to solve problems, not to operate a text editor; so whenever there is any repetitive typing to do, I want to automate that as much as possible.

In that sense, having an interface for extensions is useless to me. Sure, it's a great thing to have, but it doesn't solve my problem of wanting to hammer a few lines of code into an editor and within 30 seconds have a solution that solves my problem even though it's way too brittle to be of general use.

So far, vim is the only editor I've used that does this. I'm sure emacs is the same, but I don't see the reason to switch away from one stone-age editor to another. Among the modern browsers, I haven't yet found anything like what I expect.

First and foremost is good debugging support..

I used Sublime for years and loved it! I switched to VS Code about 2 years ago because it had better support for Typescript at the time. I just downloaded Sublime again and going to give another shake. I am running an M1 Mac, so VS code is not painfully slow. Sublime has got to be blazing fast with M1 support. Speed is huge for me.

I feel like emacs ticks all your boxes.

If you try it, pick a popular distribution and read the docs first. I recommend spacemacs, but I know a lot of people prefer doom these days so give that a try, too. You'll want to

1. Install emacs first, and use the graphical version. I believe it's in scoop (scoop.sh/) if you're on windows.
2. Enable the emacs daemon for speed, but probably only after you're happy with your config
3. Learn how to manage buffers and windows inside an emacs client for even more speed. No need to keep opening fresh clients.

• spacemacs (remember to switch to the develop branch) spacemacs.org/
• doom github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs

I most of the time need LSP, so I only use this editor:

1. Sublime Text 4: My main editor
2. VS Code: I only use this for things that can't be done in Sublime Text
3. Helix: My $EDITOR in terminal. EditorConfig support is still missing.

If you are using Mac, maybe you also can try Nova. It's written natively for Mac.

• IntelliJ for Java and Kotlin.
• Xcode for Objective-C and Swift.
• vim for quick edits: git commits, working over ssh, config files, etc.
• And VS Code for literally everything else: notes, JS/TS, Clojure, etc...

Used to code in vs code then used atom then vim/neovim with lunarvim and i honestly love it !

setup to be an editor can be fiddly, because it's primarily supposed to be a text editor

Sorry I don't understand that part?

I look for visual studio code.