(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?
Kate, though it gets a bit IDE like.
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).
- Large files or no formatting required: EmEditor (Windows only, proprietary, expensive, but fast :D)
- Formatting some file: VsCode
- SqlLite queries over CSVs: Notepad++
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.
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.
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Vim for everything
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.
You don’t enjoy a plugin like gutentags? You’re missing out. Don’t let your principles get in the way of your productivity.
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.
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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.
Yeah absolutely. I only use the graphical version (gvim) on Windows.
It’s the best solution for editing huge text files in Windows. The other text editors slow to a crawl with big files, but gvim has no problem.
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
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.
Yeah, I’d call Emac and Vim both IDE’s. They’re definitely not “just” text editors.
Vim can have some IDE-like qualities, if you bolt enough plugins in to it, but by default it affords buttinx text in a file and manipulating it.
I woudn’t classify it as an ide though.
Neovim can can certainly be an IDE, but its complexity comes from having a lot of features to rapidly edit text. d5d deletes 5 lines, vwwy selects two words and yanks them, gg returns to the beginning of the file, etc. It’ll maybe do some code highlighting out of the box but its featureset is about never needing to touch a mouse or leave home row.
It’s about like notepad++ on Windows in that it’s very good for quick edits of a file or otherwise manipulating plaintext but it isn’t good out of the box for actual writing meant to be read by other human beings.
As the old (bad) joke goes: Emacs is a great operating system. Shame it lacks a good editor.
The biggest irony is it’s often told by vim fanboys, who apparently don’t realize a very comprehensive emulator of vim it is one of the editors Emacs offers. But mostly it seems to be told by people who don’t even know what Emacs is, they just know they’re meant to disapprove of it.
Frankly, I’ve seen it more often from Emacs users themselves, including while I used it myself for ~20+ years.
Kate on Linux, Notepad++ on Windows.
Also, Kate on Windows (it’s really good)
Didn’t know there’s Kate for windows, nice
KWrite/Kate or Neovim, depends on whether I’m using a graphical interface or terminal.
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
You make a good case. I’ll check it out
For anyone trying it out for the first time: If you aren’t sure how to do something, it’s probably hitting the spacebar in normal mode. That will bring up a list of shortcuts, including the debugging, file chooser, and actions (for the lip)
There is also a pretty good interactive tutorial. Just run the
:tutorcommand.
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.
npp for sure
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.
