Tech 28 Aug 2003 01:56 pm
Editors
In one of the Macromedia weblogs today, Christian Cantrell brings up the age-old question: which editor do you use, and why ? A little surprisingly (to me), he says that vim is the one he uses the most.
For a programmer, the choice of a text editor is very personal, and usually it says something about the person, unless he/she is being forced (by his/her employer, the environment or something else) to use something that is not his/her first choice.
Me, I’m with Chris: my editor of choice is vim, everywhere I can use it. It’s great because it gives me a consistent look-and-feel and set of commands in any platform (including Windows), can be used over relatively slow links and won’t result in any surprises in the file content. I can even use it to edit binary files, if the need arises.
Other editors I use on occasion include jEdit (mostly for Java) and HomeSite (for HTML; the set of features it gives me is, basically, everything I need).
All in all, if I have a philosophy for choosing editors, it is: the best tool for the job at hand. I’m not religious about any editor, but I know some people are.
