The 15 Most Popular Text Editors for Developers
For many developers, a trusty text editor is all you need for even the most complex web applications. Whether you’re creating a site from scratch, editing a CSS file, or messing around with configuration files on the server – a good, solid text editor will do the trick just fine. Last week, over 600 people voted for the text editor that they felt was the best from the large set of options out in the market.
In this article, you’ll find fifteen of the most ubiquitous text editors for development as voted by you.
15. SciTE
SciTE, an open source text editor for Windows and Linux, was originally developed to demonstrate the power of Scintilla. It has since grown into a fully-featured text editor for developers. You can extend the default SciTE installation with user-generated configuration files like the SciTE command-line launcher (a simple Windows command-line tool for opening files in SciTE).
14. EditPlus
EditPlus is a Windows text editor for HTML and programming. It has syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript (among others), a built-in web browser (which they call Seamless Web Browser) for previewing your work and browsing the web, and auto-completion. EditPlus isn’t free, and it costs thirty-five buckaroos for a 1-user license.
13. E – TextEditor
E – TextEditor, or just called E, is TextMate for Windows. It has a host of useful features that developers will appreciate such as a personal revision control system to ease the burden of managing multiple versions of a file, ultimate customization possibilities, and a collection of automated tasks to save you time and improve your productivity. Check out the Keyboard Shortcuts Cheatsheet to make writing with E more efficient.
12. GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs is an open source, cross-platform (available for various distros of Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows) text editor. Emacs is highly extensible and customizable to your particular needs and has all of the things you’d expect from a developer’s source code editor such as syntax highlighting, ability to edit plenty of file types, and the ability to broaden its features with extensions such as debuggers and note managers/organizers.
11. gedit
gedit is the official open source text editor for GNOME (a desktop GUI for Linux-based and Unix-based computers). It has a plethora of options and features that coders will love, including syntax highlighting for many languages, full support for UTF-8 text, remote-file editing, and file backups. It also has a very accommodating plugin system that permits you to extend gedit.
10. TextPad
TextPad is a general purpose text editor for Windows-based systems. It has plenty of features like a spell checker for 10 languages, a Warm Start feature which lets you start the program from where you left off when you last opened it, and a keystroke macro recorder for automating keystrokes (which can save you a ton of time from typing frequently-used code), and lots more.
9. UltraEdit
UltraEdit is a popular and powerful Windows-based text editor for developers and programmers. It has support for languages like PHP, JavaScript, Perl, C/C++, has built-in file management features, and has a notable and robust search-and-replace feature. Check out their feature map to see a gallery-style presentation of UltraEdit’s features.
8. Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is a fully-featured IDE for web designers and developers created by Adobe. Its built-in Code View is excellent for developers: it has syntax-highlighting, a very smart code-hinting/auto-completion feature, and on-the-fly syntax validation.
7. Komodo Edit / Komodo IDE
Komodo Edit is an open source, cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) editor for serverside languages that comes with Komodo IDE (but you can download it separately). Developers will have a great set of features in store for them in Komodo Edit, including code folding for tucking away lines of code you’re not currently working on, on-the-fly syntax checking, and the ability to extend it with various plugins.
6. Aptana
Aptana is a free, complete web development IDE that’s available as a standalone application or as an Eclipse plugin. It has built-in support for popular libraries like jQuery, MooTools, and Prototype to make client-side web development easier for you.
5. PSPad
PSPad is a freeware programmer’s editor for MS Windows. It has the ability to save sessions so that you can return to your previous set-up after you close the program, a built-in FTP client, and a text difference feature so that you can compare differences between several files.
4. Vim
Vim is an advanced text editor for Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS. It is very extensible and was designed with the principle of making text editing as efficient as possible. Many consider it to be a programmer’s text editor, and even an IDE. Vim is charityware, meaning that donations to the project go to charities.
3. Coda
Coda is a web development environment for the Mac OS. It’s powerful and elegant text editor has all the features you’d expect from an application made for developers: syntax highlighting, line numbers, and auto-completion. It also has the ability for live collaboration (based on the Subetha Engine) and a Clips feature which is a floating window that stores frequently used snippets automatically.
2. TextMate
TextMate is a powerful Mac OS editor for programmers and designers. It allows you to theme the interface to your preference, auto completes character pairs like parenthesis and brackets, and allows you to run shell commands from within a document.
1. Notepad++
Garnering close to a quarter of the total votes, Notepad++ stands to be the most popular text editor for developers. Notepad++ is a free source code editor for Windows released under the GPL license. Its features are too many to mention, but among the notable ones are: macro-recording and playback for repetitive keystrokes, a powerful regular expression search-and-replace, and support for many programming languages.
A Poll
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74 Comments
Robert Banh
March 27th, 2009
Notepad++ is the best! Tabs, syntax highlights, and quicktext are all built-in lifesavers.
Umut Muhaddisoglu
March 27th, 2009
Although never tried most of them, my favorite is Notepad++. It runs fast, highlights and these are all that matters.
myDevWares
March 27th, 2009
I can’t believe you put Notepad ++ as the second LAST item!?
rami
March 27th, 2009
Geany is the best, because he is very nice and VERY fast.
kodisha
March 27th, 2009
No editor can come even close to the textMate when it comes to work comfort.
Jim Gaudet
March 27th, 2009
Oh yes, Notepad++ had to be the winner!
VitaminCM
March 27th, 2009
I just switched over to a Mac and mostly love it. I wish I could get Notepad ++ for Mac though. Coda is good, I just love the way ++ works.
Tyk
March 27th, 2009
There’s also Geany and Bluefish, both wonderful text editors for Gnome. I personally use Geany because it’s lightning fast and versatile, but Bluefish is more complete and robust.
Ruan Carlos Eduardo Kovalczyk
March 27th, 2009
Hello
I develope in Eclipse. It is a very good IDE
Peter
March 27th, 2009
Coda is an absolute lifesaver for me – although I keep hearing people really talk up TextMate.
Can anybody whose used both give their preference?
Dan
March 27th, 2009
Excellent round-up. I am always looking for, and trying, new text editors. I have used almost all the editors on this list at one point or another. One that I was surprised was not on this list, was Crimson Editor. It is not in development anymore, but is still a pretty solid editor, with macro support.
I am currently transitioning from Dreamweaver to Aptana, and really like it.
Thanks to all the Six Revisions visitors who participated to make this great list.
Mark O'Grady
March 27th, 2009
I’ve seen a few of these polls lately and although im a fan of ultra edit how is Visual Studio missed out. It is by far one of the best editors on the market. It is way more advanced and initutive than most of the editors above. Is this because people dislike microsoft. If you haven’t tried it download Web Developer Express I’ts free and may improve your development no end.
FlLottoNumbers
March 27th, 2009
Very good collection, thanks for the post.
basil
March 27th, 2009
what about eclipse? http://www.zend.com/PDT
Desiztech
March 27th, 2009
I love text editors that are easy to use. Smultron for me. Thanks for the share
taylan
March 27th, 2009
My favorite is pspad. Its free, open source and very useful.
Keith Dsouza
March 27th, 2009
Wow I am surprised you skipped Eclipse from this list
JManGt
March 27th, 2009
I like my editor to do what I want it to do, and not eat 1Gb or Ram in the process. Emacs FTW!!! plus you can use it via ssh directly to your remote server.
kidata
March 27th, 2009
Aptana is really awesome! Loving it!
Matt
March 27th, 2009
SubEthaEdit!!!
Paulius
March 27th, 2009
I prefer NetBeans for development. It has a plenty of features and is easier configurable than Eclipse, which is a great IDE as well.
Netbeans is not only for Java, but there are separate versions for the most popular languages: Java, Ruby, PHP, C/C++
carlos
March 27th, 2009
being a non-developer who has to occasionally dabble in code I find Dreamweaver to be the easiest, the auto complete/code hints are a lifesaver…
zela
March 27th, 2009
Strange reviews of editors. Most of them have features, that described for just one, for example FTP access or auto complete character pairs. All in all difference of concrete editor from others didn’t discovered.
Craig Huffstetler
March 27th, 2009
I’m glad gedit and vim are listed!
Cheers,
Craig
demogar
March 27th, 2009
E all the way :)
Alexey
March 27th, 2009
Vim. Just because it’s Vim.
jack
March 27th, 2009
I’m “cool enough” to be a mac user and rockin’ Panic’s Coda. I use Dreamweaver at work though, turn off the silly preview stuff, work straight off of firefox and it’s dev tools and it’s a nice editor.
cancel bubble
March 27th, 2009
Does anyone still use BBEdit? I used to use it back in the day, the built-in FTP was the bomb!
twe4ked
March 27th, 2009
NP++ for PC and Text Mate for mac osx, has most, if not all of the standard features found in ++.
Bonnie
March 27th, 2009
As a Mac person I would say BBEdit, which I don’t see on your list, but that’s probably because it’s not made for PC. It’s awesome with tons of features, compliance checking and shortcut code pastes.
Jim
March 27th, 2009
I have been using UltraEdit since 2001 it is pretty killer. Tried a bunch of others – Eclipse was great with the CFEclipse plugins but kind of bloated I thought. Dreamweaver I just despise. The new UltraEdit Studio is really killer I downloaded the trial version… currently have lifetime upgrades for just regular UltraEdit… it is my workhorse. Macros, snippets, templates, sybtax hilite just about whatever you want it has – mine has UltraCompare built into it for file compare. Anyway, can’t say enough good things about it. Notepad ++ comes prolly a close 2nd… also JEdit was not on the list (did not use that much tho).
Thx for posting this list.
– Jim
Jax, FL
Two Socks
March 28th, 2009
howdy hoe,
Nice list, certainly a couple there I need to try as everyone is singing its praise *cough* textmate *cough*
BTW you have a typo on the dreamweaver review it says “on-they-fly” should be “on-THE-fly” ;)
Simmessa
March 28th, 2009
I Love Notepad2, very simple, not quite powerful as others on this list, try it:
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
All the Best!
Simmessa.com
naspinski
March 28th, 2009
as always, Microsoft was left out because they are Microsoft…
Visual Web Developer Express is better than most of these and is not mentioned… even though it is 100% free.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
Schoschie
March 28th, 2009
BBEdit and TextWrangler (free, “light” version of BBEdit) are missing from this list. Both OS X only.
Though not a user of them, I second naspinski’s comment that the MS IDE (Visual somethingsomething) should be included as well.
Thirdly, XCode (for OS X) is a free (after registration with Apple Developer Connection, which is free) and very powerful IDE with an excellent editor. Missing as well.
Lastly, Eclipse and NetBeans. Don’t know exactly off the top of my head now, but Aptana, Komodo, Eclipse and NetBeans are all variants/derivatives of each other in some way, iirc.
It would be interesting for the reader to include the price with each of these apps.
Jacob Gube
March 28th, 2009
@Two Socks: Thanks for the catch, I’ve fixed it.
Cindy Sue Causey
March 28th, 2009
Popping in to thank those who first highlighted Notepad++ on that other thread last week’ish.. It fit snuggly right in with the various other software I’ve been collecting to date..
@naspinski , I, for one *as one* who travels a highly eclectic cyber swath across the Net, have never seen Visual Web Developer Express mentioned *anywhere*, well, obviously that it stood out anyway.. They might need to broaden their advertisement of it.. Will certainly check it out, possibly test drive since it’s been proffered.. Here’s hoping it is *cognitively friendly*, of course, something even high profile products have been known to lack..
Cyber hugs from Talking Rock.. :)
chris
March 28th, 2009
Top Style Pro is by far and away the best text editor out there IMHO. http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/topstyle/default.aspx
Michael
March 29th, 2009
Is this an ordered list, meaning is NP++ the winner in number of votes?
Jacob Gube
March 30th, 2009
@Michael: Yes it’s ordered, and yes, Notepad++ is the winner by votes, it garnered almost 25% of the total votes.
Ben
March 30th, 2009
Half of these are IDE’s and NOT text editors. An IDE provides many more features than a text-editor, making this list misleading.
Notepad++ is TOO SLOW.
Sometimes I need to work on large XML files (10MB-150MB). Notepad and Dreamweaver crash when opening such large files – SciTE opens them instantly :)
Jacob Gube
March 30th, 2009
@Ben: I’m aware of that, but I also published the results of the votes. Also, IDE’s do have text/source code editors in them. Then we get into the gray areas like Vim, which is, in essence a text editor, but to some, considered as an IDE. Where do you draw the line, and who gets to draw them?
Mike
March 30th, 2009
Great list Jacob.
I’m been using Dreamweaver CS4 (code-view only) and I’m very happy with it. However, once I transition to a Macbook I’d like to check out Coda or TextMate.
Ben
March 30th, 2009
Personally I think of IDEs and text-editors as separate, distinct software applications (although every IDE includes a text-editor).
I consider the “best” text-editors to have syntax highlighting, code-hinting/completion and possibly basic project management.
An IDE should provide all of that plus more. E.g. debugging tools and extras like an SSH client, database client, FTP client, etc.
Maybe it’s time for a “Best IDE for Web Developers” vote? :)
ZigBie
March 30th, 2009
Notepad++ is not creative.
Jacob Gube
March 30th, 2009
@Ben: That’s coming sometime in the very near future, I’ve wanted to do an IDE vote for a while, but wanted to start with text/source code editors. I think Komodo, Dreamweaver, Aptana, and Coda all fall under IDE’s but these are the items that got the biggest number of votes and I can’t discredit them. You’re right though.
What IDE do you use? I tried Aptana for a while, then switched back to Dreamweaver… (CS4 is amazing – though if you don’t have a fast machine, it could be a little bit sluggish).
macobex
March 30th, 2009
as what i’ve expected, notepad++ will be on the 1st place. Nice list.
rizlox
March 31st, 2009
Notepad++ just miss diff-compare that’s very important!
lexx
March 31st, 2009
On windows, intype will crush them all.
br1
March 31st, 2009
yeah! notepad++ ftw ^_^
Rob S
March 31st, 2009
No BBEdit?!
vimfanboy
March 31st, 2009
“macro-recording and playback for repetitive keystrokes, a powerful regular expression search-and-replace”
Vim has done this for decades.
henry
March 31st, 2009
i recommend trying http://intpe.info alpha stage but VERY promising!
henry
March 31st, 2009
/* http://intype.info/home/index.php */
sorry typo
Sable
April 1st, 2009
Love Notepad++ <3.
Allan
April 1st, 2009
phpDesigner is definitely my favorite but out of this list I would have to say UltraEdit && VIM.
Callum Chapman
April 2nd, 2009
Code to me is a pain in the backside whatever program I use! I like dreamweaver though ;)
jingjang
April 2nd, 2009
just another NotePad++ fan.
for almost task, NotePad++ is the best
i wish npp++ support native for linux and mac os
Nick
April 2nd, 2009
Everyone complaining that their personal favourite isn’t on the list needs to understand that this post is the result of a poll. It’s not the author’s subjective view of what is and isn’t good. So you’re favourite text-editor isn’t as popular as it should be? Get over it, that’s not the author’s fault. I’m specifically thinking of those people who think MS VWD was deliberately excluded somehow. No, it wasn’t, it just didn’t poll high enough to be on the list.
Relax people!
Also, Notepad++ all the way :)
Jacob Gube
April 3rd, 2009
@Nick: You actually read my article?! That’s a new one for me… :D
Dan
April 3rd, 2009
@basil: Aptana is Eclipse for web developers. It is based on the Eclipse platform.
Damian Herrington
April 3rd, 2009
Great article but it has to be TextWrangler for me. An excellent text editor and free.
monle
April 12th, 2009
I like dreamweaver or komodo.
Ben
April 17th, 2009
Don’t forget Kate, the advanced text editor in KDE; easy to use, tons of features, and open source.
Ozh
April 18th, 2009
I concur. A couple years ago I ran a text editor “deathmatch” with a nightmare file to test syntax highlighting and came to the same conclusion: Notepad++ > *
Daniel
April 24th, 2009
PSPad forevar!!!!!!!!
I had never used notepad+++ but I would like try use it.
TY!
anthony
April 28th, 2009
what about html kit?
besworks
May 13th, 2009
http://liquidninja.com/metapad/ is another decent one for Windows. I usually use gedit but if I am stuck working on a windoze box I use metapad. I just keep it on my flash drive.
Sean O
June 5th, 2009
Used to use Notepad++ a few years back, but *PSPad* is the new king of lightweight editors. Been using and enjoying HippoEdit lately as well – sometimes quirky, but quite powerful, and should be added to the list to make it 16.
– SEAN O
Avery
July 16th, 2009
Love Notepad++ <3.
Sahus Pilwal
July 30th, 2009
I’ve been using NOTEPAD ++ on windows for around six months and feel really used to it now! I’ve just moved over to using a mac with running vmware fusion for windows compatibility! I’m trying to migrate the use of as many apps as possible over to mac and was really disappointed when I found out NOTEPAD ++ is solely for Windows environment. So I have two choices from my research. TextMate or Coda! I like the idea of Coda sub versioning & collaboration but not sure which one to go for!? Anyone got any advice on this? Which one should I choose!?
Chris
February 4th, 2010
I vote for Visual Studio! Free. Intellisense. My two favorite words.
passingby
February 17th, 2010
desperately want to move away from DW. i has been using DW for more than 10 years. i think it offer the best code-hinting and auto-completion feature in market.
its build-in ftp isn’t that bad, but i can’t say that it good! template and library feature are fantastic for those smaller project and it doesn’t request programing.
i just hate the way adobe doing business!
and cs-suit is over price, heavy, slow and problematic installation. adobe (auto)update is outrage.
wish macromedia was still around!
all in all i really want to move away from them, but having problem finding any software that has code-hinting/auto-completion feature as good as DW!
i will have to stick with DW for now, but if any one know something offer code-hinting/auto-completion feature as good as DW, please let me know.
Dave Jones
March 5th, 2010
Nice to see Vim and Emacs still going after all these years. It reminds me of the very first folding code editor I used. It was called Origami. Anyone remember it?
I would add NetBeans to this list. Just tried it recently and I’m really impressed even though I’ve never been a fan of Java.
I use Coda a lot and TextMate, though lately I’ve been giving Espresso a go and I’m liking it too. Notepad++ is the best of the Windows bunch, but it lacks the finesse of the Cocoa apps.
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