My necessities
I use Textpad and emacs.
- What are your top five must-haves in an editor?
1). Regular Expression Search and Replace. Not that crappy junk they throw into a lot of IDE's like Visual Studio. A true regexp facility. Especially helpful if it throws in a grep like utility to do search directories. For that matter, I want to be able to manipulate several hundred files in one edit session, and have the ability to do global search and replaces - and it's got to be fast.
2). Column based select, cut, paste, tab, etc... Editing code is a 2 dimensional task. Not only must you be able to insert, delete, and move on a line by line basis, but it helps tremendously when you can manipulate it on character columns.
3). Small fonts and long lines. I'd like to be able to see across some 200 characters in width, will settle for 140. I want to be able to see a lot of code (lines, properties, methods, classes) at the same time. The more I can see at any one time, the more I can manipulate. Maximum information density!
4). Syntax highlighting. It's just something that grows on you and becomes a necessity.
5). Macro facility. Lot's of repetitive stuff when you start editing text files. A good macro facility is something that gets used very often. For that matter, programmability is something that comes in extremely handy. Emacs shines in the area of programmability, whereas Textpad is limited to keystroke macros.
- Why is your editor of choice better than other editors?
Emacs because it can be tasked with anything - the swiss army knife of editors. Textpad because it is very easy to use but quite featureful
- Why is your editor better than an IDE?
The editors in most IDE's suck, not nearly packed with enough features, but not easy to manipulate text either. Most have good syntax highlighting and the fonts can be manipulated. But the regexp engines are ugly, the column based editing is clumsy, and the macro facilities are pitiful.
- Can you estimate how much more productive you are with an editor versus an IDE?
I could, but it would probably be a meaningless metric. I know I can write more code at a higher quality. The code is easier to manipulate, extend and understand with a proper set of tools. Beyond that, I don't have much tolerance for mediocre environments, so I've never benchmarked the comparison.
- Do you use plug-ins with your editor? If so, which ones and why?
Never used commercial plugins. I've written some in the past for VB and VC++ environments, but they were quite narrow in purpose.
- What would be a good editor for newbies? why?
Editors are a personal choice and preferences many times revolve around familiarity - this editor is easier because I'm familiar with the keystrokes required to do any particular task. Keystrokes are something that get burned into your brain over time. Also, you have to factor in the amount of time you are going to be spending with the editor on a day-by-day basis. Emacs, for example, has a steeper learning curve, but if you use it heavily, you find that your productivity can be orders of magnitudes higher than with the easier alternatives.
That said, I like Textpad as a choice for the best balanace between simplicity and features. Or to put it understandable terms, as easy to use as Notepad but not braindead like the MS offering.
Chris Rathman,
Consultant, etc...
