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What's your editor journey like as a developer?

Kristian Quirapas on March 26, 2022

I stumbled upon this amusing thread on twitter where people were discussing different editors. // Detect dark theme var iframe = document.g...
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Richard Guay

I started on a Commadore 64 with the editor for the Basic language that came with it, to punch card typewriter in college, to Emacs, then Notepad++ since I couldn’t find an Emacs on Windows then, Sublime Text on a my first macOS system, back to Emacs with Spaceman’s, then to Neovim, and now I’m going back and forth from Onivim 2 and LunarVim on neovim.

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Kristian Quirapas

Wow you go way back! Haven't had the chance to test Onivim 2 and LunarVim, but I might soon. Thanks for sharing, Richard!

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Richard Guay

43 years of programming and you use a lot of different things! Those were just my highlighted editors.

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Kristian Quirapas

Wow! If you distill some of your lessons / realizations from those 43 years, what are they? Mind sharing them? 💪

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Shrikant Dhayje

For Me It Was VSCode Because It's Just that of Size Nearly 70 MB That Time and I Can Install It in College's Windows Computer and Library's Ubuntu Computer both easily.

Before I Thought of trying the Atom Editor but there website did not had the Build Of 64 Bit Windows to Direct Download So I gone to alternative option.

After using VSCode and Using there Variety of Plugins helped the most for web development that time.

I Also Fascinated by VSCode Because My College Syllabus had C and C++ in it and College PC had Turbo C++ Compiler and they still use it to teach that language because the book had instructions related to Turbo C and Borland C++ I think, They Still Use that Compiler.

My Advice is that if you ever use that compiler you will gonna get depressed dude.

I Support Modern Programmer Should avoid the Turbo C As Much As Possible.

Bye 👋,
Turbo C Antagonist

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Kristian Quirapas

Turbo C's a classic, but it's okay for it to stay that way.... a classic. Thanks for sharing

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Naufan Rusyda Faikar

My journey:

  1. Gedit for C/C++ during the first days at university
  2. Atom for PHP after I got my first laptop
  3. Visual Studio Code since my thesis (for Python) until now (for PHP/JavaScript), because it just awesome
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Kristian Quirapas

I agree, VScode's awesome indeed. I would've used VScode for all my development workflow if I hadn't started with Vim and got so used to the keyboard center navigation. Thanks for sharing, Naufan!

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geraldew • Edited

Ah yes, "journey" is the right word.

On CP/M:

  • ed (was a CP/M port of the DEC line editor I think)
  • WordMaster (predecessor to WordStar)
  • Turbo Pascal (used the WordStar control keys, I'm not counting WordStar as a code editor but I used it a lot for word processing)

On MS-DOS:

  • edlin (Microsoft's version of ed I think)
  • Borland Pascal (yep, still used the WordStar control keys)

On Windows:

  • PFE (Programmer's File Editor)
  • Jedit
  • Notepad++

On Linux:

  • JOE (used the WordStar control keys)
  • Gedit (for GUI editing just because it was already there)
  • Geany (my current Python coding)
  • Notepadqq (my goto tackle anything editor)

Probably worth noting that while I remember looking at Emacs and Vim in the 1980s I just never took to using them anywhere. I know just enough Vim to let me edit a line or two when I've got a remote terminal mode into something that only has that.

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Kristian Quirapas

The tweet lacked details, but its my editor progression from when I started coding until today that's the reason why I used 'journey' as the term. I started from Notepad with Vim as my editor for almost everything today which made me interested in how devs progressed with their editors. I hope that clears it.

On the other hand, your editors give me the idea that you're some sort of veteran. Thank you for sharing

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Dhanush N

Turbo C >> Code Blocks >> Eclipse >> VsCode

And now only VS Code 🎉

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Kristian Quirapas • Edited

YOOOOOO turbo c was lit.... before! I'm glad there are better editors now.

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Ajinkya Borade

Dreamweaver 🥰

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Kristian Quirapas

Those were the days

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Ben Sinclair

Hmm.
DOS -> debug for asm, Borland C IDE
Windows: Notepad, Netbeans

--
Until I reached the age of reason and joined the cavalry.

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Kristian Quirapas

Welcome my fellow Knight! You may lead the charge!

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Mohamed

Brackets->Sublime->VSCode;

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Ikechukwu Mbakwem

I think your editor of choice depends on the programming language. I use PyCharm whenever am developing with Python. For JS projects, i switch between VS Code and Atom. Buh VS Code mostly

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Kristian Quirapas

Love the flexibility on this one! I just find less mental overhead when I stick to one. Thanks for sharing

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Ben Halpern

Textmate -> Atom -> VsCode

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Kristian Quirapas

Atom was really popular back then. I'm not so sure about it now. Thanks for sharing!

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Sherry Day
  1. Eclipse
  2. Emacs
  3. VsCode
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Kristian Quirapas

I tried eclipse for 30 minutes... never went back

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Ali Navidi • Edited

I started with online editors for c language to complete university homeworks and then used eclipse for java till someone told me about vs code. also used proteus and pgadmin4 couple of times.

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Kristian Quirapas

Doing hws with online editors sounds tough, but glad you made it 💪 Thanks for sharing!

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Jon Randy 🎖️

SublimeText every time

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Kristian Quirapas

I appreciate the simplicity of this comment and the consistency of your editor. Thanks for sharing

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KyleReemaN

I don't understand why it's often Ide X vs vim I use every Ide with a vim plugin :)

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Kristian Quirapas

True. We can all just agree to choose whatever works for us 💯

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Stephanie Handsteiner

Notepad -> Notepad++ -> Dreamweaver (back before Adobe bought Macromedia) -> Sublime Text -> (neo)vim -> PhpStorm (with vim bindings, to keep my hands on the keyboard :D)

vim is still used though, first of all it's my set editor in git to resolve conflicts and such, also I use it for quick edits in a file, and of course via ssh on servers. :D

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eboye

Hmm, it's a very long journey for me, but I'll try to sum it up to most important ones:

Notepad++
Adobe DreamWeaver
Adobe Flash
3ds max script editor
Eclipse
Aptana
Android Studio
Adobe Brackets
Sublime
Atom
Geany
Gedit
PHPStorm

There were A LOT in between, but these are the ones I sticked to the most.

VSCode never felt right for some reason.

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Jakub T. Jankiewicz • Edited

My begining:

  • TurboPascal TUI
  • VisualBasic IDE
  • Front Page (HTML editor from M$)

When I was at college I was using:

  • CodeBlocks
  • Nodepad++ (I stoped using it about 2 years ago, when I was able to use GNU/Linux also on work laptop)
  • Borland C++

And since more than 15 years I use (and from 2 years on work laptop):

  • GNU Emacs
  • For quick edits GEdit and Mousepad (first on Work laptop, the second on private one), depending on Window Manager. I yet not fully use GNU Emacs as I could.
  • Nano for editing in terminal and over SSH
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Ole Petersen

{Eclipse, Notepad, whatever I forgot} -> VSCode
Nothing beats VSCode

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Ray Caballero

Turbo C > Notepad++ > Sublime Text 2/3 > VS Code 😁

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official_dulin

Sublime Text => WebStorm => Atom => VS Code