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Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

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Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

#1

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I am kicking around the idea of moving off my Visual Studio IDE and into something more vendor-neutral and cross-platform. Specifically, I'd like to eventually starting coding F# in mono, and I figure changing IDE/Text Editors might be a good start for that. I can learn the new editor while I'm in windows, then it'll be easier to pick up once I make the move to linux.

I need something that is able to handle multiple files, can highlight language syntax (to keep from typos). F# language syntax highlighting would be awesome, but that's probably too much to ask.

It'd be really cool if the editor would integrate with git and ftp and have a macro system -- great to use for blogging.

Any ideas? So far I can't find anything that meets all the criteria: the short list is Vim, Emacs, and JEdit.

I'm really not crazy about any of those -- looks like going back to 1980 for me -- but I'm interested in what the community thinks.

Any other editors I might be missing?

Re: Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

#4

Post by apl »

Vim. Emacs. There's very, very little they can't do. Once you get over the initial bump, you'll find that the main reason why they (seemingly!) haven't changed much since 1995 is simply that they didn't have to.

Re: Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

#5

Post by grobolom »

F# is going to be tough, but take a look at the Netbeans / Eclipse IDEs. A bit easier to set up, especially if you're migrating from Windows to a graphical linux system like Ubuntu.

Vim and Emacs are great, but I would seriously consider a good IDE. The advantages of built-in project management is not to be underestimated. It's not something that's so ridiculously important later on, as you can obviously use something like git on its own to manage it, but initially it is fairly invaluable.

Re: Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

#6

Post by dgulledge »

Both Vim and Emacs have some very nice features. Compared to a full-featured IDE, yeah they do look a bit old school. Even so, you can be incredible productive in either of them. I use Emacs myself, and I can't imagine trying to live within the constraints of an editor that I can't extend.

Re: Ask HN: Best cross-platform code editor?

#8

Post by andrix »

Emacs. I've used to to code in Vim/Gvim, but I switched to Emacs just to try and learn about Lisp. Emacs has tons of interesting "plugins" to add, and actually I'm using emacs as my Organizer (using org-mode) too. Emacs hasn't anything to envy to any of those bloated IDE's like Eclipse or VS. I recommend to you: * http://www.emacswiki.org * http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ Steve Yegge has a lot of articles about Emacs/Elisp and it has been a excellent source of information to me.
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