Best Free Programming Text Editor

Join us in this short review of some of the most popular code editors available for web developers in 2019. Using the right code editor is the perfect way to ensure an efficient and productive development workflow. Modern code editors can not only speed up the development process but also provide you with an extensive set of tools that reduce the number of steps you need to take in order to accomplish certain tasks. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best, modern and cross-platform code editors that you can use right now. 🏊Let’s dive right in!

The 10 best free HTML editors for Windows. Each is rated by type of users, and both text and WYSIWYG editors are covered. Updated as of April 2019.

Table of Contents. Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code is a free, open-source and cross-platform code editor developed by Microsoft. Based on the (under Popular Development Environments), Visual Studio Code is one of the most popular code editors, being used by more than 34.9% of the developers. It features a comprehensive suite of editing and debugging tools, lightweight integration with other services and it’s also very extensible. The new function introduces powerful pair programming capabilities that enable you and your team to collaborate on the same codebase with ease and without the need to configure any development tools, environment settings and so on.

Additionally, VS Code features a solid Git Integration, powerful Intelisense, syntax highlighting for some of the most popular languages and many. If that’s not enough, you can easily enhance and customize VS Code using an extensive collection of provided by Microsoft or created by the community. Sublime Text 3 Sublime Text 3 is a both free and premium, cross-platform code editor, that’s not only lightweight & blazing-fast but also extensible. You can download it for free from the official website and use it as long as you want during your undefined evaluation period with the expectancy to purchase it for only $80. By default, Sublime Text 3 provides basic autocompletion, syntax highlighting and code folding functionalities.

However, using the Sublime Text you can extend it and add more features including debuggers, new themes, intellisense support and many more. The latest version of Sublime (3.1) also features improved memory usage (in some cases up to 30%), text rendering with ligatures support, user interactions, syntax definition and new color schemes. Atom Atom is yet another free, cross-platform and open source code editor that was developed and released by GitHub. By default, Atom provides syntax highlighting, code completion and code folding and has native support for dozens of different programming languages.

It also has native support for GitHub and comes packed with a built-in package manager that you can use to search, install or create your own packages to extend its default functionality. Similarly to VS Code, it also features a powerful pair programming tool called Teletype that allows multiple developers to join an isolated session and work together. Atom can also be extended using Atom-IDE which is a set of optional packages to extend and add more language integrations, context-aware language completion and more. Vim Vim is a powerful open-source terminal editor that’s considered to be the “One Editor to Rule Them All” and comes pre-installed on almost any UNIX-box. It’s 100% keyboard-driven (but you can also use the mouse if you’d like) and it’s not meant to look good, but to be functional.

While it’s extremely powerful, Vim presents a very, very steep learning curve. However, once mastered, Vim shows extreme productivity improvements like handling tasks that took a while to getting them done in an instant with just a few keystrokes. Right out of the box, Vim doesn’t do much other than handle text pretty well. However, extending it with plugins, scripts and fine-tuning it to match your own preferences, Vim will prove to be a very powerful weapon in your coding arsenal. Compared to other graphical editors like Visual Studio Code, Sublime or Atom, Vim uses just a fraction of the system’s memory and loads in an instant while delivering the exact same features (if configured well).

Emacs Emacs is another UNIX-based code editor written in Lisp that’s battling Vim in terms of usability and extensibility. By default, it features content-aware editing modes, including syntax highlighting for many file types, complete built-in documentation and an introductory tutorial for new users. It’s highly customizable and it has first-class support for Lisp and other functional languages and if you’re familiar with Lisp, you can get your hands dirty and extend it yourself as it’s completely free and open-source. You can customize Emacs as you see fit and introduce functionality beyond code editing including project planning, using it as a mail client, news reader, calendar and more. Similarly to Vim, Emacs presents a steep learning curve that can take a while until you get comfortable using its full power.

However, unlike Vim, Emacs does not come preinstalled on every Unix box and the memory usage is slightly higher than of other editor’s available, especially if you’ve extended it with plugins. SpaceMacs SpaceMacs is a community-driven code editor based on Emacs that features syntax highlighting for major languages, testing and debugging tools. It tries to bring the power of both Vim and Emacs by allowing users to choose their own preferred editing style. SpaceMacs is built on top of four important principles: Mnemonics, Discoverability, Consistency and the ability to be “Crowd-Configured”.

This way, using SpaceMacs you can be sure that each key-binding is organized using consistent, mnemonic prefixes ( p for project, etc) that can be intuitive and easily discovered. SpaceMacs also has a very active and helpful community that you can join, contribute and get help from other members. Notepad Notepad is an advanced code editor that was released in 2003 and is available only for the Windows platform. It not only stood the test of time, but also became the 2nd most popular code editor in the being used by more than 34% of web developers. It’s blazing-fast and supports various programming languages out of the box, but it’s best known for being a brilliant HTML editor. Some of its features include tabbed editing, supporting external plugins such as macros, smart syntax highlighting, compiler integration, autocomplete and indentation among many others. Brackets Brackets is an open source, cross-platform code editor developed and released by Adobe under the permissive MIT license.

It was designed from scratch to serve web designers and front-end developers that are working primarily with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Brackets also comes with basic standard features, including auto-completion, syntax highlighting for many programming languages and support for quick editing and various pre-processors. Another powerful native feature is the Live Preview option that allows developers to open current HTML documents inside Chrome and get a real-time preview of how the document is rendered in the browser. It also includes an “extract” feature that allows developers to pull colors, measurements, gradients, fonts and other important data from a PSD file into a ready-made CSS file. Finally, Brackets is highly customizable being able to extend its core functionality with the use of extensions available in the official.

TextMate TextMate is considered to be “the missing editor” for Mac OS by brigding UNIX underpinnings and a graphical user interface. Even though it’s, TextMate is still a commercial product released under the BSD license and has a decent price tag of $60.

It comes by default with powerful native features including find and replace, column selection, foldable code blocks, code completion, basic syntax highlighting for dozens of programming languages and many others. TextMate also stands strong in terms of community and the available documentation and both are great places to find official plugins, themes or even submitted by other users. Coda 2 Coda 2 is a powerful code editor for Mac OS and iOS developed and released by Panic Inc, the same company that brought us Transmit, Prompt and more recently Firewatch, the game set in the Wyoming wilderness. It’s currently priced at $99, but you get to use it for free during a 7 days evaluation period. Coda is a powerful code editor engineered for performance and efficiency. It showcases a modern and intuitive UI and comes packed right out of the box with utilities like code completion, syntax highlighting for various languages, MySQL support, local indexing and many more.

It also features a powerful built-in way to open and manage your local and remote files and an integrated terminal for quick access. In terms of documentation and support, Coda and has a very active community. If Coda’s default functionality is not enough, you can also choose to install and extend it using an developed by both Panic Inc. And the community. Conclusion Choosing the best code editor is definitely a subjective topic.

However, I think it’s best to give each of them a try for a few days and see which one works best for you. Once you find the right one, make sure to stick to it, master all its ins and outs and in time it will definitely prove to be your best code editor that makes you most productive.

What is your favorite code editor and why? Is there any other code editor that you think should make the list? Let me know in the comments below!

A bit of a heavyweight, slower start-up. Other Programming Editors., a Scintilla-based text editor with source code syntax highlighting, runs out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.

It is small and fast, but unfortunately lacks the tabbed Windows. is based on the UNIX 'Vi' editor and aimed at programmers but can be used for many purposes. It supports multi-level undoes, syntax highlighting for over 170 languages and runs on many different OSes.

This editor has a learning curve but if you have spent most of your time in the UNIX world and chose 'Vi' over Emacs, then it is a familiar face. Sure, Vim is friendlier than the command line Vi, but all the features you are used to seeing are there. supports unlimited open files and editing file size, with other features including syntax highlighting for many languages, normal and columnar text selection, file compare, macro recorder, customizable color printing with print preview, etc., fast in loading and small in size, provides syntax highlighting for programming languages such as C/C, Perl, Java, Matlab, LaTeX and HTML.

Other features include custom syntax support, redo/undo, user tools, macros, spell checker and more., unlimited number of schemes supported, powerful syntax highlighting supporting both user-defined and built-in schemes. Related Products and Links You might want to check out these articles too:. Editor This software category is in need of an editor. Ttx tech wireless controller driver. If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out for more details, or contact us. Please rate this article. Hi, thanks for the excellent review.

I'm just a little surprised that jEdit gets such a low rating (I know, I know, everyone has their favorite programmer's editor). I use a linux platform (ubuntu 12.04) and I've tried a several other editors, Bluefish for one, but the one I use now for an extensive web site development is jEdit. I noticed that one post referred to saving file problems (bugs) with jEdit in a multi-platform scenario.

All I can say is that I've found jedit to be rock solid on linux. And its fantastic configurability is a big plus for me too. Best wishes. or to post comments. I've looked at all the editors mentioned in the comments as well as the article. RJ TextEd (mentioned in comments) and PSPad are about equal. Each has some features lacking in the other, but both are better (in my opinion) than Notepad.

But I was shocked to see that neither the main article, nor the comments, mentioned. This editor stands head and shoulders above the others, with a full compliment of features. The author is very responsive; new features get added; bugs get fixed. Please consider reviewing this editor. Your readers will be glad you did. or to post comments. Notepad2 Bookmark Edition Bookmark Edition Changes: - Bookmark lines with Ctrl+F2 and jump between bookmarks with F2 - Added wildcard search to Find/Replace dialogs - Added help buttons ?

to the Find/Replace dialogs with quick syntax references - Assigned F12 hotkey for 'Save as' - Number of selected lines is displayed in the statusbar - Tweaked 'Convert to Title Case' (based on my experience with Flash Renamer) - Find/Replace dialog will automatically be filled with clipboard content first time used. or to post comments. Enki is a text editor for programmers. It is:. User friendly. Intuitive interface. Works out of the box.

You don’t have to read a lot of docs. Hacker friendly Code as quickly as possible. Without mouse. Lighweight.

Some IDEs show splashscreen. Enki will never do it. It just starts quickly.

Extensible. Operating systems are designed for running applications. Enki is designed for running plugins. Cross platform. Use your habitual editor on any OS. Currently has beeen tested on Linux, MacOS X, Windows. High quality.

No long list of fancy features. But, what is done, is done well. Open source. This is our religion. How to install it on Windows:. or to post comments.