5 Best Code Text Editor For Developers and Designers

Best Code Text Editor for Developers and Designers

Whether you are a college student or a full-time employee, if you are a developer then you will need a great code editor. It is where you will be writing your code whether for your college project or a clients’ necessities. Thus, having a good code editor makes it efficient to code, edit and customize per projects or your own personal preferences.

There are dozens of code editors, IDE and text editors to select from. So how do you choose what is the best code editor for you? Fear not for we will help you by providing information regarding top code editors that are currently available.

Visual Studio Code / VS Code

Visual Studio Code or VS Code is a code editor from Microsoft. It is open-source software and is free to use. It is very robust although being a little slow during startup. VS Code has integrated terminal and git support which are very useful and essential for developers and designers. A quick terminal command or a git commit is a very handy tool in a code editor. It is definitely one of the Best Code Text Editor out there right now for developers.

VS Code also supports various extensions that can be installed for various languages. The code editor can be customized based on a project or language. It also has an autocomplete feature as well as information about the parameters for functions. It is a highly customizable, packed with a lot of features that will help in your coding and make it a lot easier.

Key Features

• cross-platform
• open source via MIT license (Github link)
• built-in Git (including merge conflicts, diff checking, and modified file tracking from within the editor)
• in-editor debugging
• large library of extensions and plugins
• compatible with nearly every programming language
• very lightweight in comparison to other, similarly robust editors
• quick and responsive
• specific Linux distros for Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Red Hat, and Debian
• IntelliSense highlighting and autocomplete works like a dream

Platforms

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Red Hat, and Debian in particular)

 

Sublime Text 3

Sublime Text is one of the most popular code editors for a lot of developer communities. It is lightweight and super fast relative to other code editors. It opens the file at lightning speed and removes that loading period that other editors have. Sublime also has a lot of available extensions that can be added for your conveniences such as themes for better appearance, code lines, git plugins and many more.

Even with such great features, it has a dark side. Sublime is not free per se as it can be downloaded and used as evaluation with no time limitation for now. It costs $80 for a license and they remind you to buy the license from time to time.

Key Features:

• Goto Anything (lightning-fast search/shortcuts)
• Command Palette
• Keyboard shortcuts make everything smoother
• Split Editing
• Highly customizable
• Multiple selections
• Distraction-free writing mode
• Instant project switch
• Plugin API
• And more

Platforms:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux

 

Atom

Atom is an open-source code editor developed by GitHub. It is primarily based on the Sublime Text style code editor with the key difference being free, open-source and easy integration of Git and GitHub. Atom has not been the most stable of the code editors but it has been doing better and it matures. It also has to load period that persists on many code editors but after that, it is just as good as any other.

Key Features (out of the box):

• File system browser
• Teletype
• Fuzzy finder for quickly opening files
• Fast project-wide search and replace
• Multiple cursors and selections
• Multiple panes
• Snippets
• Code folding
• A clean preferences UI
• Import TextMate grammars and themes
• Highly extendable
• Highly theme-able
• Incredibly passionate community

Platforms:

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux

 

Brackets

Brackets is Adobe’s very own code editor for designers and developers. Although being very young compared to other code editors, Bracket has picked up the pace and is a well-rounded editor. It is primarily focused on front-end technologies with the support of CSS preprocessors like LESS and Sass. Brackets is very friendly and easy to use. The customization on Brackets is done through the menu.

Key Features:

• Extract
• A constantly growing library of extensions
• JavaScript refactoring
• Git integration
• W3C validation
• Massive extension library
• Inline editors
• Live preview
• Preprocessor report
• And a whole lot more

Platforms:

• Widows
• Linux
• macOS

 

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for use with Microsoft Windows. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. The project’s name comes from the C increment operator. Notepad++ is distributed as free software.

Key Features:

• Syntax Highlighting
• Syntax Folding
• Search/Replace
• Highly customizable
• Auto-completion
• Multi-document tab interface
• Zoom in and out
• Multi-language environment supported
• And more

Platforms:

• Windows
• Linux (a forked version exists)