A text editor is a program used to edit lines of raw code. It’s where interesting programs originate from. It is important to choose one before you start to code a new website or game.
This is the first text editor we used. It originally comes with a dark background, but you can change its settings and customize it. Made by the famous GitHub, this program features multiple panes to edit and auto-completion, a very useful perk when hard-coding long lines of code.
This customizable text editor has one unique feature: the Live Preview button, which shows you the front-end of the website/program you are making. If you’re accustomed to the dark theme in Atom, go to View -> Themes -> Brackets Dark. You can also change the text size and font. Another feature convenient to have is being able to hover over a Hex Color Code or picture source to view the color or picture.
Like Atom and Brackets, Notepad supports tab editing, where you can open multiple files at once. Notepad supports over 50 languages and has a very useful highlighting feature to point out some code you need to go back over. Like Atom, it also has auto-completion.
This text editor has many of the same features as the other ones such as customization (except with more features). In addition, you can edit multiple lines of code at the same time and use something called the Goto function, where you can visit any file and any line by using commands. Another interesting feature is the Distraction Free Mode, where the text editor becomes full screen and there’s nothing but your code in front of you.
This is a more advanced text editor that, once you get the hang of it, you can greatly increase your productivity. You can write and edit code without ever touching your mouse. This is for a more advanced CS student. It is open source, fast, and highly portable.
This text editor has similar capabilities to Vim. Like Vim, it also has a steep learning curve and is for more experienced CS students. Emacs is extensible and can take future growth into account. Try to use this text editor if you are looking for a challenge.