IDE / text editor of choice, Q4 2020 edition

gaekwad · 2020-10-05 10:39:55

Good day to you, web developer type people.

I have the now-annual urges to get back into website development now the daylight hours are getting shorter in the northern hemisphere.

What’s your preferred IDE / text editor of choice at the moment, please? I need to look beyond Atom since development has slowed somewhat since GitHub was acquired. Bonus points for: works on macOS, open source (or buy once), extensible.

I’m drawn to Nova since Panic are great at what they do, but the $ is beyond me at the moment considering how little dev-ing I do.

Thanks in advance.

phiw13 · 2020-10-05 11:14:54

BBEdit, it still does not suck. free or subscription in the App Store, free or one time buy from their site (till the next major upgrade, roughly every 2 years)
SubEthaEdit, free in the App Store

I am not interested in those applications that update every other day to add… nothing (looking at your Firefox of late).

philwareham · 2020-10-05 11:33:28

I’m using Panic Nova now – very nice so far (it’s basically Coda updated for 2020 with all the modern features I could hope for – such as multiple cursors, finally!). The HTML syntax plays pretty well with Textpattern templates too (although someone with good regex skills could probably build a proper TXP code completion extension).

All my old Coda clips carried over perfectly as well.

code365 · 2020-10-06 03:35:53

I am using VS Code very lite weight editor and free.

Algaris · 2020-10-06 08:00:50

I’m using Panic’s Nova as well. I love the fact that it’s a native macOS app and not built on Electron.

Before Nova I used to use Espresso

gaekwad · 2020-10-06 10:36:37

Perfect – thank you very much!

philwareham · 2020-10-06 12:26:47

Algaris wrote #326235:

I’m using Panic’s Nova as well. I love the fact that it’s a native macOS app and not built on Electron.

Yeah, agreed on Electron apps. We choose an operating system for a reason. 😀

michaelkpate · 2020-10-06 17:02:06

code365 wrote #326231:

I am using VS Code very lite weight editor and free.

VS Code is my editor of choice, too – I’ve tried some of the others but I gravitate toward this one.

bici · 2020-10-07 00:32:51

michaelkpate wrote #326241:

VS Code is my editor of choice, too – I’ve tried some of the others but I gravitate toward this one.

VS Code

phiw13 · 2020-10-07 00:58:59

Algaris wrote #326235:

[…] not built on Electron.

Yes, that is the condition sine qua non for any editor worth its weight[*]. Nova does not look bad, a tad pricey maybe. Especially as I have absolutely no need for a new editor, BBEdit works perfectly.

BTW, this is amusing: 5GUIs

Algaris · 2020-10-07 08:01:25

phiw13 wrote #326245:

BTW, this is amusing: 5GUIs

Haha. That is amusing. I especially like the comments on Electron Apps. It’s interesting that the app can’t figure out what framework Google Chrome is using.

phiw13 wrote #326245:

Yes, that is the condition sine qua non for any editor worth its weight.

I could go off on a rant that people don’t build proper native macOS apps that look and feel like they belong on macOS these days. I won’t though because I know there are some companies that still thankfully do and I don’t want to feel like I’m yelling “Get of my lawn” at all of the non native app developers. Also it’s somewhat off topic for the thread ;-)

Last edited by Algaris (2020-10-07 08:09:15)

philwareham · 2020-10-07 09:24:00

Really, Atom is the worst though, in large part because of Electron. Messy UI, bad general performance, reliance on Chromium engine, etc. And ~750MB of disk space for a text editor, hmmm.

The only Electron app I use now is GitHub Desktop, and that’s only because I’m lazy.

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#1 2020-10-05 10:39:55