A Roundup of Code Editors

Note: this post is from 2012, and is now somewhat out of date. It’s been left here for legacy purposes.

There are lots and lots editors available for writing code, some of them free, others not. Some are better than others, for various reasons; but which one you choose depends a lot on how you like to go about your work.

I haven’t set out to judge these editors or comment on them, but rather just to list them for your convenience. They are also not ordered in terms of preference (many of them I haven’t used). Feel free to comment on which you prefer (but make sure to say why.) I’ve also left a lot of editors off the list that see less popular or a bit obscure. After all, too much choice can be overwhelming … and you only need one editor, after all.

I’ve also sorted the editors into PC and Mac applications. (Where they work on both systems, I’ve listed them twice, but added an asterisk as well. It just seemed easier.)

One thing I’m not keen on is WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editors. (These are editors that create code for you while you look at a visual representation of the page.) These editors tend to create a lot of messy code behind the scenes, so I don’t encourage their use. However, I have included them below if they offer a code view option. Dreamweaver is an example: while it produced lousy code as a WYSIWYG tool, it’s great as a code editing tool.

Editors for Windows

These editors work on Windows systems. First I’ve listed the free ones, then the commercial ones.

Free Windows editors

• Notepad2
• Notepad++
• Crimson Editor
• DocPad
• NoteTab
• Komodo Edit*
• Aptana Studio*
• NetBeans*
• CoffeeCup*
• Bluefish*
• Amaya*
• KompoZer*
• EMacs*
• Vim*
• Intype
• PSPad
• CodeLobster
• ConTEXT
• EditPad Lite
• Brackets* (by Adobe, but still in development: an open source code editor for the web, written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS)
• CodeMirror*, an in-browser, JavaScript code editor.

Commercial Windows editors

• Sublime Text 2*
• Komodo IDE*
• UltraEdit*
• Dreamweaver*
• Visual Studio
• WeBuilder

Editors for Mac

These editors work on Mac systems.

Free Mac editors

• TextWrangler
• Komodo Edit*
• Aptana Studio*
• NetBeans*
• CoffeeCup*
• Bluefish*
• Amaya*
• Vim*
• KompoZer*
• Crea:text
• macVim
• Fraise
• EMacs*
• Brackets*
• CodeMirror*, an in-browser, JavaScript code editor.

Commercial Mac editors

• Coda
• TextMate
• Sublime Text 2*
• Dreamweaver*
• Espresso
• BBEdit
• Taco
• Komodo IDE*
• UltraEdit*
• Tex-Edit Plus
• PageSpinner
• Aquamacs
• SubEthaEdit

Editors for Linux

These editors work on Linux systems.

Free Linux editors

• Bluefish*
• Vim*
• Komodo Edit*
• EMacs*
• KompoZer*

Commercial Linux editors

• Sublime Text 2*

Postscript

I didn’t mention FTP clients in this post, some of which are included with code editors. I’ve saved that for my Roundup of FTP Clients.