The 5 Best Code Editors For Web Development
This first decision will define your productivity and effectiveness as you code.
Before you even start learning Web Development, one must choose and download the code editor of your choice.
This part right here is crucial — your journey, your learning curve is at stake. This will be the tool that you will be using as you start to write your code, and there are various code editors for you to choose from.The best code editors can have a huge impact on your productivity and workflow. Most of us, however, stick with “what we know” out of lazy habit. If you shop around instead, though, you could find the kind of fast and intuitive interface or killer features that help you get your work done more quickly and efficiently.
The best code editors offer a number of things. A fast and flexible interface that makes you more efficient at writing code. Functionality to help you examine code for mistakes, and discover where edits need to be made. The potential to be easily customised, so you can create the kind of UI and user experience that suits you.
For those who have started coding 10+ years ago, the most used platform was Notepad++, and other code editors followed after were TextWrangler, BBEdit, Coda, Sublime Text, VSCode, TextMate, Atom, UltraEdit, Vim, Brackets and CoffeeCup HTML Editor.
In Modern Technology, the choices have been narrowed down into few namely, Sublime Text, Atom, VSCode, Vim, Brackets.
As you study along, you will find different teachers or instructors who preferred to use different text editor, it doesn’t matter if you follow them and use the same editor, or choose your own, what matters is you are comfortable with your chosen text editor. Choose whatever makes you more productive because it will help you become a better programmer.
So, choose wisely.
1. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is the editor that really changed the way the best code editors worked. It is lightweight, open and ready to edit your file almost as soon as you’ve managed to click the button. This responsiveness is one of the things that makes it the best code editor in its class. If you want to open a file and make a quick edit, waiting for a few seconds for loading may not sound like much, but the delay can grow tedious.
Pros:
· Open Source and Cross-Platform, meaning it’s free and can be used in Mac, Windows, and Linux
· Autocompletion
· Lightweight, speedy and Stable
· Syntax Highlight
· Extremely extendable
· Customizable — more than 3,800 packages available
Cons:
· There’s no decent Git plugin yet
·Nagging popup
· Not so beginner-friendly
You can download Sublime Text here: https://www.sublimetext.com/
2. Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a code editor developed by Microsoft, and surprisingly, is open-source software. Of the code editors in this list, it’s probably the closest to being an IDE. It’s very robust, and is also one of the slower programs when starting up. However, while using it, VS Code is quick and able to handle quite a few interesting tasks, such as quick Git commits or opening and sorting through multiple folders’ worth of content.
The most fully featured, well-rounded code editor
Pros
· Lightweight, and fast
· Free
· Simple and Clean User Interface
· Has best features like Git, Terminal, WebView, Live Share
· Built-in Terminal
· Multiple Cursor,Very robust
· IntelliSense — it’s a supercharge auto-completion, syntax highlighting assistant feature to eliminate typos and possible syntax errors
· A huge community for support and building up extensions and additional resource
· Native support for Git collaboration, open directory easily connect to Github, and no complex set up.
· Has Emmet extension, super fast HTML, CSS, and Javascript coding
Cons
· No support for older programming version such as ASP.NET
· Slow to start up
· Debugging features are limited
3. Atom
Atom is open source and developed by GitHub. In its initial development, it was heavily influenced by the new style of editor made popular by Sublime Text. However, there are key differences: Atom is free and open source, and offers easy out-of-box integration with Git and GitHub. Atom has historically had performance and stability problems, but those have diminished significantly as it has matured. It’s true that it still launches slower than some code editors, but it’s just as reliable and quick to use as any of the rest after that.
Atom is a bit similar to Sublime Text, but many developers who preferred Atom was because of its simple interface compared to Sublime Text.
pros:
· Atom is a desktop application for Web Technologies
· It has Modular Design and contains more than 50 open-source extension/packages that you can integrate around a minimal core
· Snippets
· Clean and Simple User Interface
· Node.js Integration
· File System Browser
· Quick and reliable
Cons
· It has some performance issues
· It takes several seconds to launch compared to other Text Editor, especially when you install numerous packages/extensions.
· A little slow compared to Sublime Text because it’s a browser-based app (this is run using Electron)
Download Atom.io : https://atom.io/
4. Brackets
The best code editor for new users
Brackets is Adobe’s open-source editor, and seems to be a very well rounded software. It doesn’t natively support as many languages for syntax highlighting as some of the others (but it still has quite a few). Because of its focus on front end technologies, it also supports CSS preprocessors like Less and Sass.
Pros
· Open Source and Cross-Platform, meaning it’s free and can be used in Mac, Windows, and Linux
· It has code completion, there will be an auto-suggestion as type your code
· Bracket’s unique feature is the quick editing when you mark any HTML element and press CMD/Ctrl + E, the bracket will then opens all the CSS associated with those certain elements in the same window, once you close it, it will automatically apply to the CSS stylesheet.
· Ability to add several extensions and packages to make your bracket editor more powerful and useful
· Brackets also have multiple cursors feature
· It also has a color picker since color hex codes are hard to remember.
· Live Preview, to easily see the results or output of your editing/styling
Cons
· Brackets is focused on Front-end side — clearly made for Frontend Developers in which is very useful in HTML, CSS and Javascript and not much on the server-side languages
· Some performance issues
You can download Brackets.io here: http://brackets.io/
5. Vim
This command line software is a favourite for old-school programmers
Vim is perhaps the most contentious code editor in this list. Vim is a command line software, included natively with Linux operating systems and macOS, and available for download for Windows. Vim is a favourite for many old-school programmers, and keyboard enthusiasts.
Vim is incredibly stable, fast, and a real joy to use for veteran command line aficionados and new, interested users alike. If you have the time to learn it, Vim can really increase your coding productivity, and it’s a nearly seamless cross-platform experience, with so little UI to consider.
Pros
· Lightweight and fast compared to other editors, it uses minimal System’s memory and loads instantly
· You can find plugins for almost everything, from version to control to color preference
· It’s free and it’s opensource, and can be used in terminal or GUI mode
· Keyboard based and you will probably realize you no longer need a mouse, everything is available on your keyboard shortcuts,Good for keyboarders.
Cons
· Learning Curve, it will take you some time to learn, and you will so many commands and shortcuts to remember
· Poor support for its tooling
· No UI — navigated via keyboard
· Not much effective when it comes to cut/paste mechanism
You can download and set up Vim using this resource: https://www.vim.org/download.php
