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Ask HN: Best code editor?

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Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#111

Post by mun2mun »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #108
wenbert wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to use Vim a few weeks back. It works great. I have the minibuffexplorer and NERDTree installed. So it was basically like an IDE for me. BUT everything goes downhill when the "window" arrangements are messed up. I am like, WTF did this open in the upper window. HTF do I move this "window/screen" from A to B. When this happens, I restart Vim and then open the files again. Really annoying. I wonder how exp…

:h windows I prefer using tabs with Vim. Here's a short overview: * :tabnew to open a new tab. * :tabe to edit a file in a new tab. * :q or :close to close a tab. * :tabnext and :tabprevious to move between tabs. * Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDown are bound to :tabnext and :tabprevious. On my MacBook, I bind those to Cmd+[ and Cmd+]. * And, of course, :h tabs to find help.

I have added these line in my .vimrc.

map th :tabnext map tl :tabprev map tn :tabnew map td :tabclose

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#113

Post by JimmyL »

Depends on what I'm doing, and in what language. For Java/Python projects, Eclipse (with appropriate plugins). For Ruby, jedit. For one-file shots, Notepad++. For live editing of remote files - which I shouldn't be doing - E or WinSCP.

Ultimately, I don't think IDEs are something for which we can determine a "best" one. We can divide them into tiers - vim is more powerful than Notepad, for example - but once you get to that top tier of functionality it's all about what you as an individual are used to and have customized to your workflow/needs.

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#114

Post by doki_pen »

wenbert wrote: post #103
camflan wrote: post #3

vim

I have tried to use Vim a few weeks back. It works great. I have the minibuffexplorer and NERDTree installed. So it was basically like an IDE for me. BUT everything goes downhill when the "window" arrangements are messed up. I am like, WTF did this open in the upper window. HTF do I move this "window/screen" from A to B. When this happens, I restart Vim and then open the files again. Really annoying. I wonder how exp…

I use my window manager for managing windows, unlike a lot of vim users. Most ppl don't think about it too much, but maybe your window manager is the problem? Maybe it should do what you want vim to do. Have a look at a tiled wm like dwm, wmii or awesome.. etc...

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#115

Post by memorius »

andrewl wrote: post #97
th0ma5 wrote: post #26

jedit

I used jEdit for a long time. It's an excellent editor, but I left it behind for Vim. I had to spend a lot of time on remote machines and I needed something with a console mode. It's my impression that it was orphaned. Is it still under active development? I'd like it to keep going.

I use Eclipse for java and xml, falling back to jEdit (which I used exclusively for several years) for pretty much every other file type.

jEdit is great for its impressive range of language syntax highlighting support, large selection of small and useful plugins, good search/replace features, and ease of writing your own syntax highlight modes, recording macros, etc. As others have said, it has the power of emacs or vim, and everything is customizable, but it lacks any substantial barrier to entry.

It also has the advantage that you can use the same user profile on multiple platforms (e.g. linux/windows) - before I ditched my Windows machine I ran like that, rsync'ing everything to/from linux at work.

It's certainly still being developed, though activity is less than in the past. Last release was July: http://jedit.org/index.php?page=devel#schedule

I've found that the latest 4.3 releases are very stable and largely feature-complete for the purposes I use it for.

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#116

Post by memorius »

johndoe77 wrote: post #19

Eclipse

The latest Eclipse is superb in its java tooling, especially for large projects - great refactoring abilities, class hierarchy visualization, navigation, ant integration, plugins available for Checkstyle and Findbugs, etc. It's also a lot more stable and robust than I had expected for such a large IDE - I've had no real problems with it so far.

A much-underrated feature is the Mylyn task-focused programming system, which reduces information overload and saves you a lot of time repeatedly navigating around hierarchies and files. I've seen nothing comparable in any other editor.

There is also some great integration into bug tracking systems. My projects use Bugzilla, and I almost never need to visit the slow bugzilla web interface or wade through bugmail emails anymore - bug search and details, comment posting and bug change notifications are all right there in the Mylyn task list.

Before switching to Eclipse when the 3.5 release came out, I previously did all my Java work in jEdit, which I still use for other languages; I hate to think how much time I wasted by manually doing the tedious tasks that Eclipse could have automated for me.

I concede that you do need a fast machine, lots of memory and plenty of screen space, but it's well worth it for the time savings on the tasks for which it is suited.

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#117

Post by Quiark »

hy3lxs wrote: post #55
erlanger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works fine. Unfortunately, developing without Unix stinks. and Cygwin is a hack (very slow). Vim is much more powerful with Unix tools on hand. I learned Vim on XP (no choice of OS, so it was the best choice).

Voxli uses gvim on Windows and Mac, without Cygwin. I switch to Visual Studio or Xcode for debugging and compiling, and it's never been a problem. There are also some clever plugins to open a pipe to Visual Studio so you can kick off a compile directly from Vim, but I haven't needed them yet. Also we had to write some scripts to feed the proper paths to etags depending on the development environment (include Windows…

To compile from Vim, use vcbuild (for C++) or msbuild (.NET) as your makeprg (you will need to add them to your path first. For vcbuild you can do it by using "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat"). Then set errorformat and your ready to go :)

Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?

#120

Post by intranation »

yangyang wrote: post #51
alrex021 wrote: post #14

Aquamacs (Emacs for Mac) http://aquamacs.org/

I really didn't get on with aquamacs. It'll do your head in if you use emacs on other platforms. You can use other emacs builds on mac OS. I use Carbon Emacs. Emacs 23 has a native cocoa build now.

The 23 Cocoa build is a bit broken, though:

http://atomized.org/2009/08/cocoa-emacs-231-cvs-builds-and-t...

I've since reverted to the Carbon Emacs 22 build (since I can't cope without fullscreen).

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