Programming @programming.dev abbadon420 @lemm.ee 1y ago

What non-IDE tekst editor do you use?

(Graphical) IDE's are great for development, but they're slow to start and heavy to run. Sometimes you just want to take a quick look at an xml or dockerfile and you don't want to spin up the whole IDE for that.

I've recently rediscovered notepad++ for that (on windows), what's your prefered easy-acces-tekst-editor?

53 comments

vim. Just basic vim, I don't jazz it up to be all IDE-like. I want my vim to behave exactly like it would if I'm on some random other computer.

If I need autocomplete, ability to jump to the definition of stuff and so forth I use whatever the other people on the project use, which is often vscode these days.
- exactly this. If I need to do development, i'll use a jetbrains product. If i'm in a pure text editing situation, I want the most powerful thing for manipulating text, and I want it to be available.
- You don't enjoy a plugin like gutentags? You're missing out. Don't let your principles get in the way of your productivity.
Helix. Instant startup. Minimal configuration required. Has all of the killer features I want from an IDE anyway.

EDIT: I assumed people would just research this anyway, but a more complete list of features I enjoy from Helix:

very responsive

modal editing

declarative configuration file format (TOML, not Lua)

language server protocol

debug adapter protocol

written in Rust so I am more likely to be able to submit a PR if I need to

Some cons (all known issues on github):

no plugin API yet

inline LSP diagnostics are overly intrusive and can overlap your code

cold-starts the LSP when you start the editor, so you might need to wait for symbol queries in a large project
- Helix deserves more love. Blazing fast, sensible defaults, good lsp support, vim-ish bindings. It’s really my perfect editor
  
  It's such a cool editor, but after decades of Vim motor memory I just can't seem to wrap my head around the cursor / selection changes. I really wish there was an option to just make selection work like Vim.
  
  You make a good case. I'll check it out
Vim if I'm on Linux, notepad++ if I'm on windows. Though I will use VSCode in both OS if want to make a lot of changes and run the file.
I wouldn't normally point out a spelling mistake but... Why did you spell text like that?
- In some languages tekst is their native word for text. OP seems to at very least know dutch, where that seems to be the case.
  
  Lol yeah, it's a dutchism 😆
  
  That sounds like the most likely explanation
Neovim for most things. At work I use VSCode for Java stuff
Kate, though it gets a bit IDE like.
Emacs. But honestly, I have no idea what I am doing.
- I'd call that an IDE, but also one that makes using a non-IDE editor superfluous.
  
  As the old (bad) joke goes: Emacs is a great operating system. Shame it lacks a good editor.
  
  Yeah, I'd call Emac and Vim both IDE's. They're definitely not "just" text editors.
Vim for everything
vim on any *nix box, Notepad++ when forced to use Windows.
- Vim is cross platform, just in case you don't know
  
  Hadn't looked into that for a long time, will try. I think the biggest hurdle for me might be native Windows terminals still being shit.
Sublime Text 3 perpetual license. I would move to VSCode as my "quick editor" but I'm not trusting an Electron app, for starters same document in both wastes 3x more RAM and second I can open 10GB SQL dumps in Sublime and perform find and replace operations in VSCode however....
Kate on Linux, Notepad++ on Windows.

Also, Kate on Windows (it's really good)
- Didn't know there's Kate for windows, nice
This is going to be a boring answer but I use neovim. I do use it as my ide as well but it’s so fast and lightweight that when I need to edit a random config file or something, I just start another instance of it.
My own. My Emacs config grew over years to several thousand lines, and it got to a point where I decided I could write an editor in fewer lines that it took to configure Emacs how I liked it. It's ... not for everyone. I'm happy with it, because it does exactly only the things I want it to, and nothing else, but it does also mean getting used to quirks you can't be bothered to fix, and not getting to blame someone else when you run into a bug.

That said, writing your own editor is easier than people think, as long as you leverage libraries for whichever things you don't have a pressing need to customize (e.g. mine is written in Ruby, and I use Rouge for syntax highlighting, and I believe Rouge is more lines of code than the editor itself thanks to all the lexers)
Helix and Code - OSS sometimes (Code - OSS is an open source vscode distribution)
- You mean vscodium? VS Code is not OSS...
  
  https://stackoverflow.com/a/58642895/18682712
  
  I edited my comment to clarify it.
Geany or (with a lot of reconfiguration) Kate.

Geany is built upon the same text edit control as Notepad++.
- Same for me, I even use it on Mac OS X too (which somehow still doesn't ship with a basic text editor).
(Neo)vim. Has everything I could ever need.
The GNOME text editor or Nano.

I appreciate Vim, but when I just need to inspect something or change a single line, the former are easier.

As for Neovim and Emacs... I don't have eight hours to set aside monthly to keep them configured and working.
- I've been a vim user for over a decade and I doubt I've spent eight hours configuring it in all that time.
  
  Most of the configuration I've done in vim is to remove whatever someone else did. Like I log in as root on a server and someone put set number in /root/.vimrc. Like having the line number in the bottom right wasn't enough for you, you need to waste three columns to show numbers for every line on the screen, and now I can't copy and paste from vim without having to delete three columns from every line? NO.
Sublime Text

micro

less + highlight/rich-cli/bat
Neovim and Emacs
Sublime Text 2, for which I have a licence. I'd upgraded to 3 but not for a subscription model.
As often as not, I'm using nano on the command line. It's available in Windows through WSL.

Being honest, WSL makes running Windows so much easier.
- Wsl is nice, but it's not much more than an integrated vm. It's good enough to be an asset, but it also lacks enough to make me long for linux.
Kate since VSCode doesn't render correctly on my rig anymore...
- I had the problem a week or so ago. I deleted my settings file and it started working again.
KWrite/Kate or Neovim, depends on whether I’m using a graphical interface or terminal.
Pulsar, granted it can be ide like and I do contribute to it but I loved atom over any other tool that I've been introduced too by anyone. Sometimes I do use nano tho bc of having some familiarity with the command line but not enough to be fully functional tbh.
VSCodium, because it's not a plug-in filled beast like my regular VSCode is. Also Micro is neato. Helix seems nice too.

53 comments