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Jacob Herrington (he/him)
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

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What Alternative Text Editors Does DEV Use? (Not VS Code 🐱‍👓)

Hey DEV!

I'm a huge fan of VS Code, and I use it for pair programming and occasionally when I want to use one of the awesome extensions that the VS Code community has provided.

However, I'm also a fan of diverse marketplaces. I don't really like the idea that the vast majority of developers I interact with use the same text editor.

I'm the kind of person that uses Ubuntu, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo. Not just because they are great tools (I think I'm having a better time on Ubuntu than the last year I spent on MacOS, honestly), but because I don't like the idea of a single company controlling a market.

For that reason, I wanted to start a conversation about alternatives to VS Code.

I use Spacemacs, which is a set of Emacs configurations that essentially combine the Emacs and Vim text editors. I really like that I don't have to do much tweaking out of the box, but I still have a lot of the power found in both Vim and Emacs.

Spacemacs 👽

A screenshot of Spacemacs

What alternatives do you use? Or, if you don't what about VS Code keeps you from using something else?

Latest comments (152)

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vic0de profile image
Vishnu Dileesh

I love the minimalism of using NeoVim

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jplindstrom profile image
Johan Lindstrom

This is the real power of Emac's evil-mode (used by Spacemacs):

We can now look down upon both Emacs and Vim users :)

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crs1138 profile image
Honza

Youngster! 🤣The youth today has no respect for traditional feuds!

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easrng profile image
easrng

I use the EDLIN editor from MS-DOS. I run it online. For real though, I use;

  • For web stuff, I use Glitch as a dev environment, and export to GitHub, so that's CodeMirror
  • I use MS notepad/Notepad++/Leafpad/Mousepad for small things, depending on what system I'm on.
  • I use nano for most other editing
  • Also, Geany is cool, and I use it when I open it accidentally.
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itachiuchiha profile image
Itachi Uchiha

If someone teaches me how to use emacs, I will use it.

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barelyhuman profile image
Reaper

I’ll have to say, i keep switching between vscode and vim. Every now and then I gove Sublime Text a chance and it surprises me with its speed and then I see the outdated plugins and shift back to vim or vscode.

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mareksamec profile image
mareksamec

Notepad++ on Windows (I open variaues EDI formats, java, SQL etc.). It is simple, small, portable and very powerful. Ocassionally I switch to vim within Cmder or gVim as for some tasks it is faster. It is really great to start gVim with zenburn theme and airline. I even added buttons to Total Commander for this. This is myconfig:

set t_Co=256
set guifont=Consolas:h10

" Colors and themes
"colorscheme gruvbox
colorscheme zenburn
"set background=light

"### Hide gvim UI elements
set guioptions-=m  "menu bar
set guioptions-=T  "toolbar
set guioptions-=r  "scrollbar


" Directory and file settings
set bsdir=last
set lines=999 columns=999

"Airline settings
let g:airline_theme='molokai'
"let g:airline_solarized_bg='light'

" ### Some gvim specific keyboard mapping
"
"Remap double Escape to exit vim:
:nnoremap <Esc><Esc>  :q<CR>

On unix/linux environments I use mainly*vim* with pretty much bare config as I cannot change it on the servers.

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diegotoral profile image
Diego Toral

I tried a lot of editors (gedit, emacs, atom, vscode, etc) and different configurations for vim. I even used vim for a few years but where I'm really comfortable programming is on Sublime Text with the NeoVintageous plugin. I kind of enjoy mixing mouse and keyboard.

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jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

I use Vim and visual studio (without the code).

I pre-ordered onivim.io/

That looks promising. VS code support but native vim.

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mzaini30 profile image
Zen

Is Spacemacs code editor inside Terminal?

I always use Sublime

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davidrushton55 profile image
David Rushton

I spend a lot of time writing T-SQL. I love Azure Data Studio (MS fork VS Code) and mssql-cli.

I often open the same project is several editors & switch back and forth based on their strengths. Example: Azure Data Studio has a fanstasic text editor but query plans are clearer in SSMS.

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maxdevjs profile image
maxdevjs • Edited

Going to explore kak for a while.

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker

I love using tmux and vim together. They are highly configurable and super fast. Though I am using vscode on a daily basis primarily because the terminal experience on windows is so bad, most notably copy and paste. VSCode is also easier for me to reccomend to others as it works well out of the box.

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saint4eva profile image
saint4eva

Visual Studio Code

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hcardonaweb profile image
hcardonaweb

I use PHP Storm (Jet Brains IDE). I've found it to be both an intuitive and powerful tool.

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louisefindlay23 profile image
Louise

Started on Dreamweaver and settled on Brackets after trying ST, Atom and VS Code. Because I use Sublime Merge, I thought I'd prefer ST but I love Brackets because their Git plugin has a GUI panel at the bottom. I love the UI and it's great once you set up all the code hinting and syntax highlighting plugins.