Which text editor do you use and why?

[iwantatrophy]

It is Sublime for me because of its easy usability. I tried learning vim and emacs but both are just strange to me.

[algernon]

Emacs user here for nearly 17 years now, Spacemacs user for about a year and a half. I'm an Emacs user, because it is the most powerful, most customisable thing, ever. It's not just a text editor, it is an IDE, an IRC client, an Email and RSS feed reader, a music player, and whatever else you can imagine. I live inside Emacs. The only thing I do outside of it, is browsing.

This way, I have all the familiar key bindings, and the full power of Emacs at my fingertips, no matter what I do. It is consistent, powerful, and doesn't care that I have thousands of buffers open. Being able to reach everything, from anywhere, pretty much effortlessly, is an incredible boost to both productivity, and comfort.

[Kilonzi]

When I was working a lot with Sun Solaris systems I used plain VI and also VIM all the time and on all operating systems.

Now I switched to Sublime Text too. It's a great text editor. A lot of good functions, cross-platform and really, really fast.

At work I do some coding here and there. I'm currently trying out Visual Studio Code. And it's not bad. I quite like it too. But sometimes I think that a lot of things are just copied from Sublime Text.

[lancre]

I use emacs because of the support for R through ESS mode.

I also like org mode, and the ability to use shells in buffers, and it has nice support for Clojure which I want to learn.

I also like how I can remap keys in init.el.

[nmur]

notepad++. it's really fast and i'm used to it

i've been meaning to try out vs code though, it's improving very fast

[joey]

vim, picked it first over emacs and never tried to switch.

[yuppie]

I use Vim because it's on every server in production and beyond.

[dgneo]

Sublime, favorite by far once customized.

[jal]

Vim, the One True Editor. Learned vanilla vi when I was a wee sysadmin farming Solaris and Irix boxes; kept using it because once the vi worms are your brain, you no longer want to escape. (Or rather, it is a Hotel California - you escape all the time, but never leave.)

The first "real" text editor I used was Eve, on VMS.

[Flyersfan1]

I really like Atom.

I'm very new to programming in general, but I like it for it's very user friendly interface and all the nice extensions that come along with it.  I don't have a ton to compare it to, but for now it's very comfortable for me to use.

[Krakob]

I use Atom, came from Sublime Text. It's a lot stronger than Sublime Text and does some things a lot better, like package management. Open source is a plus too. I've considered switching to VS Code since it's supposed to be faster, but I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft and I don't code enough right now to care. If I switch to Linux later I would very much like to learn Vim, largely thanks to its omnipresence, allowing you to use it over ssh.

[ErgoMacros]

BBEdit. l mostly live in Mac OS X. Been using it for years, haven't needed to switch.

[pr0ximity]

vim for essentially everything, I immediately miss it when I have to use something else. I'll probably switch to emacs with evil mode at some point when I do more Lisp'ing

This way, I have all the familiar key bindings, and the full power of Emacs at my fingertips, no matter what I do.

That is super compelling to me, basically sold me om switching with just that statement.

[Sniping]

i'm a sublime boi

[rowdy]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=4482.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=48499.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=73366.0

[iMav]

I've always been a vi/vim guy.  I was a UNIX admin for many years...so that is where I picked it up.

I do use textmate on my Macs on occasion.

[iLLucionist]

Vim all the way. Been using it since 2006, invested a lot of time in writing plugins / streamlining setup / finding plugins.

I like spacemacs as well and I am attracted to it because it seems more streamlined / unified approach. Plugins all seem to have more predictable behavior, whereas vim plugins can vary greatly in terms of default shortcuts / UI layout (temporary buffer or not, opening in the same buffer or opening another window, allowing remap or having to set config parameters for the plugin etc).

[Findecanor]

I use Nano for all those small editing tasks, with the alias "pico".
Nano is GNU's clone of Pico which came with an early email client called Pine, which was the first email client that I used. Pine and Pico or Nano has been available on every Unix and Linux system that I have ever had a user account on. You can almost always count on it being installed.
It has very few commands. Nano has syntax highlighting but bogs down if source files are larger than a couple hundred lines or so, so ...

For programming, I use either GEdit or whatever is in the IDE that I have to use. I prefer the Mac/Windows hotkey set for heavy editing. Notepad++ on Windows.

[chuckdee]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=4482.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=48499.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=73366.0

I knew this was a really popular question around here, but that's ridiculous

[rowdy]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=4482.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=48499.0
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=73366.0

I knew this was a really popular question around here, but that's ridiculous

That's all I could find after a very brief search - there are probably a few more threads with more obscure titles.

FTR I use vim mostly, and TextWrangler on Mac.  ConTEXT on Windows on the rare occasions that I suffer under Microsoft these days.

[pixelpusher]

SublimeText all the way

[daerid]

I used to be completely Vim, but TBH VS Code has everything I could want, and the extensions for anything it doesn't have out of the box. Super lightweight, fast, cross-platform, and performs well under HiDPI on Windows (which GVim fails at hard)

[chuckdee]

Realized that I didn't answer the question.    I've gone through SlickEdit, UltraEdit,  Zeus,  Emacs,  and Atom,  but have Settled into Sublime Text,  and it's sublime text all the way now, though I dabble in VS Code. Extensions,  support for Markdown, speed, projects out of folders, split screen,  and the ability to sync the screens are my reasons.

[Findecanor]

I knew this was a really popular question around here, but that's ridiculous

It's interesting to see how usages change, though.

[Coreda]

Interestingly Vim and Sublime Text listed as being used by the CIA in the latest WikiLeaks release. While curiously Notepad++ is targeted using a DLL hijack, as part of a section on exploiting portable versions of apps.

[Puddsy]

libreoffice for most of my stuff

scrivener if it's november

[xtrafrood]

Just a hobbyist here. VIM to jot down ideas. NANO for quick .conf edits. Mousepad/Geany/Gedit for everything else. I'll most likely d/l Sublime again to help with Python; I know enough to edit things but not enough to write things.

[clacktalk]

sublime, notepad++

so good

[Blanched_Almond]

For me its a Sublime text because I am able to customize shortcuts available for my needs.  It’s remarkably good! On one hand, I'm also using a notepad, though it is only suitable for windows.

[iri]

Vim of course.

[wangledorf]

Neovim and Vim when neovim isn't an option; once you learn Vim, relying on a mouse feels extra cumbersome. On Windows will occasionally use Notepad++ for non-programming stuff like editing markup. The alt-click (vertical select) functionality is pretty much the only reason I have it installed. 

[bmmcwhirt]

VIm with line numbers and Penumbra color theme. I actually find myself often wishing that the forum editor was VIm.

I learned VI way way back and it's just what I've always used, it works and unless you uninstall it almost every *nix style OS has some version of it installed by default.

[jal]

VIm with line numbers and Penumbra color theme. I actually find myself often wishing that the forum editor was VIm.

If you use the Chrome browser/spyware, there's Vimium for forms. I have to use Chrome for some things at work, and Vimium's pretty nice.

[iri]

VIm with line numbers and Penumbra color theme. I actually find myself often wishing that the forum editor was VIm.

If you use the Chrome browser/spyware, there's Vimium for forms. I have to use Chrome for some things at work, and Vimium's pretty nice.

Is there spyware in Chromium?

[bmmcwhirt]

VIm with line numbers and Penumbra color theme. I actually find myself often wishing that the forum editor was VIm.

If you use the Chrome browser/spyware, there's Vimium for forms. I have to use Chrome for some things at work, and Vimium's pretty nice.

Is there spyware in Chromium?

Thats true for all browsers if you read the license agreement the parent company is allowed to collect anonymous browser habits and statistic. There are usually opt-outs but you can never be 100% sure, it's the nature of being online. When I'm president I will abolish licenses, companies will either sell you the software w/o ****ty ass licenses or they wont sell anything. Tear down the walls not build new ones. 

[KnightDX]

Notepad++ for its plugins and ease of use, as well as its syntax highlighting.

[digi]

MS-DOS_Editor, works well in Windows 10.

[riotonthebay]

I used to be completely Vim, but TBH VS Code has everything I could want, and the extensions for anything it doesn't have out of the box. Super lightweight, fast, cross-platform, and performs well under HiDPI on Windows (which GVim fails at hard)

Never thought I'd use a MS product, but I've actually been using VS Code with Vim mode instead of Emacs over the last week and am liking it a lot. Previously had used Emacs for ~6 years.

[iri]

VS Code is nice. Its Vim modes are crap.

[SpecTP]

I've been using Ultra-Edit for over a decade. fantastic for handling really big data files too. very customizable too.

[riotonthebay]

VS Code is nice. Its Vim modes are crap.

You're right, but I'm not using the Vim mode for the sake of Vim emulation, just to have slightly nicer keyboard navigation. There are definitely lots of little parts of it that don't work well -- macros seem to be particularly bad. I periodically revert to Emacs just for macros and then switch back to VS Code.

[iri]

Makes sense.

[chuckdee]

libreoffice for most of my stuff

scrivener if it's november

Hey, another writer... cool!

[iwantatrophy]

A genuine question : is Vim like editor really viable for those who have to work on files in multiple directories? It seems way easier for me to use a GUI to browse and open the file rather than type :b and browse to the file manually.

[xtrafrood]

You could just launch vim with the file in question straight from your CLI. Well, there are probably loads of plugins for file browsing that I'm not aware of just yet

[rowdy]

A genuine question : is Vim like editor really viable for those who have to work on files in multiple directories? It seems way easier for me to use a GUI to browse and open the file rather than type :b and browse to the file manually.

I use vim to edit files in multiple directories fairly often.  I just invoke vim and pass a list of filenames (or a wildcard) on the command line, then :n to cycle through all the buffers in turn.

[northpark]

Notepad++ on Windows... that alt-select functionality... O_O

[user 18]

Windows: Notepad++
Linux GUI: Geany
Linux CLI: Nano

I have fairly light requirements for a text editor. I like having auto-indent and syntax highlighting. Geany's search/replace is quite powerful compared to others I've used, which is nice.

[drakche]

Long time Sublime Text user, but some months ago I switched to VS Code, and I'm really loving it.
out-of-the-box NodeJS debugger is amazing (I'm a JS developer)

[iwantatrophy]

Long time Sublime Text user, but some months ago I switched to VS Code, and I'm really loving it.
out-of-the-box NodeJS debugger is amazing (I'm a JS developer)

I like VS Code too, but Sublime is very fast and it feels soo wrong using MS VS Code in Linux.