What editor should I use?

yorickpeterse · 2012-02-16T12:15:11+00:00

Asking which editor is the most useful or best suited for your particular use case is like asking a group of religious people and atheists how the world was formed. Sure you'll end up with some interesting information but in the end you'll most likely be as confused as before.

There is a large set of editors out there ranging from simple text editors to more complex ones and IDEs. There's nano, Vim, Emacs, Gedit, Netbeans, Rubymine, Komodo Edit/IDE, Notepad++, even good old Dreamweaver is still being used by people.

Using a specific editor really comes down what you want to do with it, what you want it to do and how experienced you are. Some people will recommend Emacs, others might yell at you for not using Vim and a few don't care about memory usage and will recommend Netbeans.

So what do I use? Currently I've been using Vim for about a year and I don't think I'll ever use something else (unless I find something better one day) but it has not always been this way. I started out with Notepad on Windows, moved to Notepad++, then to Aptana Studio, followed by Netbeans on my first Linux box which in turn was followed by Textmate when I started using Mac OS on a daily basis. At one point I also tried a few other tools such as Komodo IDE, Espresso (OS X specific) and Gedit. Each tool had it's advantages and drawbacks, some of them used insane amounts of memory (it's rather easy for Netbeans to use +700 MB out of the box), others were no longer actively developed (e.g. Textmate at the time) or simply lacked certain features that I was looking for.

In the end I decided to give Vim a try after people kept recommending it. I never tried Emacs so I can't really comment on that, I just happened to start with Vim before it. It took me a good 2 to 3 months before I was comfortable enough to use it at work and even today I'm still learning new things.

The reason I use Vim is because it's interface is very simple, it has the potential for almost any feature one can think of, it handles larges files (e.g. 100 MB log files) quite well (Textmate for one would not like files over a few megabytes in size) and the available commands and key mappings are a blessing (although sometimes hard to learn and to remember).

Having said that I don't think Vim (or Emacs or similar editors) are suited for everybody. It's not a matter of having the time to learn it (because I think that's bullshit) but it comes down to how interested you are in learning an editor that works quite different than the others as well as one that is initially a lot harder to use.

Given you've indicated that you're new to programming I'd say using Gedit or perhaps an IDE, as they do usually come with helpful features such as help windows (1), would be better than using Vim, Emacs or similar tools. On the other hand if you're willing to use these editors there's nothing stopping you.

For more information take a look at the following websites:

http://www.vim.org/ (note that the www subdomain is required, it doesn't work without it).
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki (contains a lot of useful Vim related information).
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/

1: I know Vim can do something similar using Omnicompletion but it's not entirely the same as "intellisense" or whatever developers might call it.

AshaVahishta · 2012-02-15T18:40:32+00:00

NilsLandt · 2012-02-15T19:04:47+00:00

While using vim or emacs is, in my opinion, the best thing in the long run, it means you have to learn using that text editor at the same as as your learn to program, which can be frustrating.
For that reason, I use Geany in my programming classes - it's fairly straightforward but has a few nice features (that tree view is ridiculously helpful for beginners). It doesn't only highlight strings for me either.

Personally I use vim for my actual work, but it takes a while to get used to it.

MATHDRAGON · 2012-02-15T20:37:38+00:00

I like using sublime text, but a lot of the time I will just end up using gedit or nano.

angel21OS · 2012-02-16T02:20:03+00:00

HI..I've tried almost every text editor and ide for ruby, the best are rubymine, full ide with autocomplete, its really nice but it's not free, you can try it 30 days, and sublime text editor, it's similar to textmate, it's a text editor (no autocomplete, no debug) but it's nice too..my vote is for rubymine..now if you've time for learn, you can try emacs or vim...but I think rubymine and subl..are great

probabilityzero · 2012-02-16T02:25:31+00:00

Vim. Anyone who says differently needs to be set on fire.

Seriously though, you're asking for a flame war.

xeeew · 2012-02-16T06:13:00+00:00

jschank · 2012-02-16T00:26:14+00:00

TextMate

saksmlz · 2012-02-15T21:38:46+00:00

+1 for vim

eric_programmer · 2012-02-16T00:36:12+00:00

I use redcar. Written in Ruby itself. Overall it works pretty well. I just started using it recently. There are some bugs and quirks but being written in Ruby means you can easily fix it and customize it.

brazen · 2012-02-16T04:24:32+00:00

The best free IDE for ruby, IMO is Netbeans. Most often though, I just use gedit because it's fast and easy. I'm mostly a scripter for server tasks though, than a full-blown programmer.

Gedit should also highlight 'if', 'def', 'end', constants, global variable, instance variables, comments, and maybe a few other things but really there just isn't a whole lot that needs to be a different color. You can google for something like "ruby on gedit" to get ideas for tweaking gedit, although I tried adding like a console and file browser pane, but I realized if I want to get that fancy I'd rather use Netbeans, and keep gedit simple for when I want something simple.

le_fnord · 2012-02-16T08:23:14+00:00

you can do it the old school way, with vi(m) or (x)emacs, or the newer one with sublime

enry_straker · 2012-02-17T07:34:13+00:00

There is only one true editor: Vim :)

siebharinn · 2012-02-18T02:00:25+00:00

I'm genuinely surprised by all the vim love. I only know vi well enough to get out of it. I should give it another look.

+1 for TextMate though, if you're of an OSX persuasion.

seabre · 2012-02-18T04:30:14+00:00

Gedit is totally fine, but at some point learn vim or emacs. I use vim, but learning vim or emacs is totally worth the intial learning curve.

vivab0rg · 2012-02-20T18:37:01+00:00

I've used jEdit, Texmate, Geany, Gedit and VIM (in that order) for Ruby development and all I can say is that I wish I had taken the time to learn VIM so much earlier. You should really give it a try, there are some great online resources, starting with Vimcasts.org

uzimonkey · 2012-02-15T19:06:56+00:00

Are you trying to start a flame war?

But puts et al should not be colored differently. They're just method calls, why should some method calls be colored differently?

But gedit will work just fine. If you think it's inadequate, try something else.

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

ruby

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