Text editor question...

Hello guys!

I want to know, does it really matter which text editor (Notepad++, Atom io, Sublime text, Brackets etc...) I use for html/css for beginning? I've installed sublime text.

Thanks!

 

No, it doesn't matter. You can use any text editor you like.
I use Notepad++ because it highlights syntax.

 

Thanks for advice!

 

I have found NetBeans to be a good HTML and CSS editor. It will alert you to any errors in your code so you can find your problems early.

 

I totally recommend sublime text 3.
Is the best of all. Remember the sublime allows addons installation, saving 50% of your time.

 

Hello! As I mentioned before, now I've installed sublime version 2. Is there any big difference between v3 and v2? How you think, does it worth installing version 3 for the beginning or it doesn't have a sense to have isntalled version 2...?

Thanks!

 

It really is more a matter of personal preference and how your workflow goes. Personally I think sublime is crap due to it's UI (like the menu) ignoring the host OS font settings, it feeling like a really lousy SWING based Java Crapplet (when it allegedly isn't), and it being tab based.

But I have very specific requirements based on my workflow and experience, and find MOST of the 'aids' people seem to think are helpful just make code harder to work with. Autocomplete just leaves be manually correcting crap it adds I didn't want, Colour syntax highlighting is an illegible acid trip, tabs are a colossal step BACKWARDS in functionality since cramming everything into one window is pretty much useless (when developing I'm a three or more monitors kind of user) -- it's all crap that if I can't turn off or disable I'm just going to get pissed off.

IT's like the outright idiotic halfwit BS of "preview panes" that buggy useless disasters like "brackets" seems to think serves a legitimate purpose. Brackets is such a laundry list of how NOT to make a web developer editor you'd almost think it was made by the same dipshits who made the perfect storm of stupidity known as Dreamweaver.

It's why my own preference keeps it pretty simple. Flo's Notepad2. Single independent editor windows with none of that tabbed bullshit so I can actually do things like put my PHP next to my HTML next to my CSS next to my JS to see them all at the same time, no goofy auto-completion crap, lets me turn off the useless illegible acid trip of colour syntax highlighting, but DOES provide useful aids like a a long-line ruler, word-wrap indicators, indentation guides, visual brace matching... and of course proper character set translations and regex search/replace since it's based on scintilla. Without it being a total piece of scite!

I used Crimson editor before I found notepad2, and Win32pad before that.

But again, just try a bunch of them and see which one fits your workflow the best. Programmers editors are like Soylent Cola. How's it taste? Well, it varies from person to person.

 

I will always go through phases where I want the "perfect" editor. I will download program after program and I always end up uninstalling and going right back to my SciTe editor.

You need to identify what is important to you. For me I want syntax coloring, regex search & replace, quick debugging tools, ability to execute code from the editor, and also the ability to do a convenient preview of a web page I may be editing. Code completion at a basic level can be handy too. All of the other bells and whistles I rarely (if ever) use. I find the more bloated the editor the less you will actually do with it. The less options it has the more you will do with it.

My favorite editors are:

Scrite as an all around editor. OR notepad++ OR sublime.
PHPStorm is nice for PHP.
IntelliJ is nice for Java.

As for NetBeans and Eclipse...they are great editors... but I never really cared for them. Those modular framework like editors pollute the work area.

 

That's been my experience from the day code editing got more complex than using a gutted copy of wordstar; you actually really hit it on the head with that part as it's quite true.

Like the people I know who use emacs for code editing; they seem to waste more time dicking with configuring emacs and making macros than they do actually developing anything of value! Kind of like on the OS side how Gentoo users spend more time compiling than they do actually using the computer to do real work.

The more complex the editor, the more it just seems to get in the way of letting me do what I'm actually trying to do; sit here and write code.

 

I use Sublime3. Took a while to switch over, I was on Vim and Emacs for years before that. If I look around the office here (where everyone uses their editor of choice), most of Rails back end devs use Vim (but I would not recommend that for a first editor), a couple on Emacs (not a good first editor either), and a couple on Sublime. All the front end guys are on Sublime. That said, almost everyone runs OSX here, apart from a couple on Linux. Sublime is a great editor to start with though to advanced users.

I'd disagree with @deathshadow on almost every point (fonts, autocomplete, syntax hiliting, tabs/spaces, split views, and so on are all very easily configurable to whatever you prefer is Sublime). That said, the points I agree with are:

• It's not great to use on multiple monitors at once with the same project or file. That said, I run it full screen on my main monitor with multiple panes, and rarely want to use it on other monitors - they're for browsers and twitter
• Use multiple editors and try them out. Everyone has their own preferences, and there is no one answer.

Good luck, and have fun!