Alternatives to BBEdit logo

Alternatives to BBEdit

TextMate, Sublime Text, Atom, UltraEdit, and Visual Studio Code are the most popular alternatives and competitors to BBEdit.
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What is BBEdit and what are its top alternatives?

BBEdit is a powerful text editor for Mac users that offers features like syntax highlighting, code folding, and project management tools. However, it comes with a high price tag and may be overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive feature set.

  1. Sublime Text: Sublime Text is a popular text editor known for its speed and flexibility. It offers features like multiple cursors and split editing, making it a versatile choice for developers. Pros: fast performance, extensive package ecosystem. Cons: paid license required for continued use.
  2. Visual Studio Code: Visual Studio Code is a free and open-source text editor developed by Microsoft. It offers integrated debugging, Git control, and extensions support. Pros: extensive customization options, active community support. Cons: can be resource-intensive for larger projects.
  3. Atom: Atom is a free text editor developed by GitHub. It offers features like a built-in package manager and smart autocompletion. Pros: highly customizable, open-source. Cons: can be slow to start up.
  4. TextMate: TextMate is a lightweight text editor for Mac users. It offers features like project organization and powerful search capabilities. Pros: simple and intuitive interface, frequent updates. Cons: limited plugins compared to other editors.
  5. Brackets: Brackets is a free text editor focused on web development. It offers features like live preview and preprocessor support. Pros: tailored for web designers, open-source. Cons: can be limited for non-web development projects.
  6. Notepad++: Notepad++ is a free text editor for Windows users. It offers features like syntax highlighting and macro recording. Pros: lightweight, extensive language support. Cons: Windows-only support.
  7. UltraEdit: UltraEdit is a text editor known for its extensive customization options and large file handling capabilities. Pros: powerful search and replace features, multiple cursors support. Cons: paid license required for advanced features.
  8. Vim: Vim is a highly customizable text editor available on various platforms. It offers features like modal editing and support for a wide range of languages. Pros: efficient keyboard shortcuts, extensive plugin ecosystem. Cons: steep learning curve for beginners.
  9. TextWrangler: TextWrangler is a free text editor for Mac users, offering features like syntax coloring and code folding. Pros: easy-to-use interface, no cost for basic features. Cons: no longer actively maintained by the developer.
  10. Nano: Nano is a simple and lightweight text editor available on Unix-based systems. It offers features like line numbering and search functions. Pros: easy to use for beginners, minimal resource usage. Cons: lacks advanced features compared to other editors.

Top Alternatives to BBEdit

  • TextMate
    TextMate

    TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike. ...

  • Sublime Text
    Sublime Text

    Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform. ...

  • Atom
    Atom

    At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it. ...

  • UltraEdit
    UltraEdit

    It is a powerful, fast, and secure text editor whose helpful features make every day life easier for any user type and programming language. Windows, Mac, Linux. ...

  • Visual Studio Code
    Visual Studio Code

    Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. ...

  • Brackets
    Brackets

    With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser. ...

  • Xcode
    Xcode

    The Xcode IDE is at the center of the Apple development experience. Tightly integrated with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks, Xcode is an incredibly productive environment for building amazing apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. ...

  • Vim
    Vim

    Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware. ...

BBEdit alternatives & related posts

TextMate logo

TextMate

122
56
The Missing Editor for Mac OS X
122
56
PROS OF TEXTMATE
  • 17
    Syntax highlighting
  • 5
    Javascript
  • 5
    PHP Developer
  • 4
    Native UI
  • 4
    jQuery developer
  • 3
    Ruby
  • 2
    Bundles
  • 2
    Snippets
  • 2
    MacOS native
  • 2
    Commands
  • 2
    Low Energy Usage
  • 2
    Starts fast
  • 2
    Keyboard shortcuts
  • 2
    Open Source
  • 2
    Clean ui
CONS OF TEXTMATE
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    related TextMate posts

    Lungu Alexandru-Mihai
    Shared insights
    on
    VimVimSublime TextSublime TextTextMateTextMate

    Well you can try for a while MacVim because it is already configured with tons of plugins. My favourite text editors are Sublime Text and TextMate which are lightweight and speedy. My feeling is that JetBrains IDEs are making you brainless.

    See more
    Justin Dorfman
    Open Source Program Manager at Reblaze | 1 upvote 路 34.2K views

    I use TextMate because once a week I need an editor to copy/paste some HTML for StackShare's weekly newsletter 馃槒

    I don't know why I don't just use Visual Studio Code since it is already open but it's just a habit that I can't kick. Long live TextMate 馃

    See more
    Sublime Text logo

    Sublime Text

    33.7K
    4K
    A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose.
    33.7K
    4K
    PROS OF SUBLIME TEXT
    • 720
      Lightweight
    • 652
      Plugins
    • 641
      Super fast
    • 468
      Great code editor
    • 442
      Cross platform
    • 280
      Nice UI
    • 260
      Unlimited trial
    • 153
      Cmd + d is the best command ever
    • 92
      Great community
    • 46
      Package control, modules
    • 26
      Mac OS X support
    • 23
      Easy to get started with
    • 22
      Monokai
    • 21
      Everything you need without the bloat
    • 21
      Built in Python
    • 18
      Easy
    • 14
      Speed
    • 12
      Session & edit resuming
    • 10
      Package Control
    • 9
      Well Designed
    • 8
      Multiple selections
    • 7
      ALT + CMD + DOWN is the best command ever
    • 7
      Nice
    • 7
      Fast, simple and lightweight
    • 5
      It's easy to use, beautiful, simple, and plugins rule
    • 5
      So futuristic and convenient
    • 5
      ALT + F3 the best command ever
    • 5
      Great
    • 4
      Find anything fast within entire project
    • 4
      Easy to use
    • 4
      Free
    • 4
      Simple and clean design
    • 3
      Hackable
    • 3
      Pretty
    • 3
      UI + plugins
    • 3
      Sublime Merge (Git Integration)
    • 2
      Totally customizable
    • 2
      Color schemes and cmd+d
    • 2
      Material theme best theme forever
    • 0
      Const
    CONS OF SUBLIME TEXT
    • 8
      Steep learning curve
    • 7
      Everything
    • 4
      Flexibility to move file
    • 4
      Number of plugins doing the same thing
    • 4
      Doesn't act like a Mac app
    • 3
      Not open sourced
    • 2
      Don't have flutter integration
    • 2
      Forces you to buy license

    related Sublime Text posts

    Johnny Bell

    I've been in the #frontend game for about 7 years now. I started coding in Sublime Text because all of the tutorials I was doing back then everyone was using it. I found the speed amazing compared to some other tools at the time. I kept using Sublime Text for about 4-5 years.

    I find Sublime Text lacks some functionality, after all it is just a text editor rather than a full fledged IDE. I finally converted over to PhpStorm as I was working with Magento and Magento as you know is mainly #PHP based.

    This was amazing all the features in PhpStorm I loved, the debugging features, and the control click feature when you click on a dependency or linked file it will take you to that file. It was great.

    PhpStorm is kind of slow, I found that Prettier was taking a long time to format my code, and it just was lagging a lot so I was looking for alternatives. After watching some more tutorial videos I noticed that everyone was using Visual Studio Code. So I gave it a go, and its amazing.

    It has support for everything I need with the plugins and the integration with Git is amazing. The speed of this IDE is blazing fast, and I wouldn't go back to using PhpStorm anymore. I highly recommend giving Visual Studio Code a try!

    See more
    Labinator Team

    At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.

    WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.

    For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.

    Main Advantages Of Sass:

    • It's CSS syntax friendly
    • It offers variables
    • It uses a nested syntax
    • It includes mixins
    • Great community and online support.
    • Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.

    As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.

    The Benefits Of Using PHP:

    • Open Source.
    • Highly Extendible.
    • Easy to learn and read.
    • Platform independent.
    • Compatible with APACHE.
    • Low development and maintenance cost.
    • Great community and support.
    • Detailed documentation that has everything you need!

    Why PHP 7.3+?

    • Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
    • A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
    See more
    Atom logo

    Atom

    16.9K
    2.5K
    A hackable text editor for the 21st Century
    16.9K
    2.5K
    PROS OF ATOM
    • 529
      Free
    • 449
      Open source
    • 343
      Modular design
    • 321
      Hackable
    • 316
      Beautiful UI
    • 147
      Backed by github
    • 119
      Built with node.js
    • 113
      Web native
    • 107
      Community
    • 35
      Packages
    • 18
      Cross platform
    • 5
      Nice UI
    • 5
      Multicursor support
    • 5
      TypeScript editor
    • 3
      Open source, lots of packages, and so configurable
    • 3
      cli start
    • 3
      Simple but powerful
    • 3
      Chrome Inspector works IN EDITOR
    • 3
      Snippets
    • 2
      Code readability
    • 2
      It's powerful
    • 2
      Awesome
    • 2
      Smart TypeScript code completion
    • 2
      Well documented
    • 1
      works with GitLab
    • 1
      "Free", "Hackable", "Open Source", The Awesomness
    • 1
      full support
    • 1
      vim support
    • 1
      Split-Tab Layout
    • 1
      Apm publish minor
    • 1
      Consistent UI on all platforms
    • 1
      User friendly
    • 1
      Hackable and Open Source
    • 0
      Publish
    CONS OF ATOM
    • 19
      Slow with large files
    • 7
      Slow startup
    • 2
      Most of the time packages are hard to find.
    • 1
      No longer maintained
    • 1
      Cannot Run code with F5
    • 1
      Can be easily Modified

    related Atom posts

    Jerome Dalbert
    Principal Backend Software Engineer at StackShare | 13 upvotes 路 933.6K views

    I liked Sublime Text for its speed, simplicity and keyboard shortcuts which synergize well when working on scripting languages like Ruby and JavaScript. I extended the editor with custom Python scripts that improved keyboard navigability such as autofocusing the sidebar when no files are open, or changing tab closing behavior.

    But customization can only get you so far, and there were little things that I still had to use the mouse for, such as scrolling, repositioning lines on the screen, selecting the line number of a failing test stack trace from a separate plugin pane, etc. After 3 years of wearily moving my arm and hand to perform the same repetitive tasks, I decided to switch to Vim for 3 reasons:

    • your fingers literally don鈥檛 ever need to leave the keyboard home row (I had to remap the escape key though)
    • it is a reliable tool that has been around for more than 30 years and will still be around for the next 30 years
    • I wanted to "look like a hacker" by doing everything inside my terminal and by becoming a better Unix citizen

    The learning curve is very steep and it took me a year to master it, but investing time to be truly comfortable with my #TextEditor was more than worth it. To me, Vim comes close to being the perfect editor and I probably won鈥檛 need to switch ever again. It feels good to ignore new editors that come out every few years, like Atom and Visual Studio Code.

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    Julian Sanchez
    Lead Developer at Chore Champion | 9 upvotes 路 785.3K views

    We use Visual Studio Code because it allows us to easily and quickly integrate with Git, much like Sublime Merge ,but it is integrated into the IDE. Another cool part about VS Code is the ability collaborate with each other with Visual Studio Live Share which allows our whole team to get more done together. It brings the convenience of the Google Suite to programming, offering something that works more smoothly than anything found on Atom or Sublime Text

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    UltraEdit logo

    UltraEdit

    29
    2
    A multi-purpose text editor for Microsoft Windows and Linux
    29
    2
    PROS OF ULTRAEDIT
    • 1
      Performance
    • 1
      Resources Use
    CONS OF ULTRAEDIT
      Be the first to leave a con

      related UltraEdit posts

      Visual Studio Code logo

      Visual Studio Code

      180.4K
      2.3K
      Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft
      180.4K
      2.3K
      PROS OF VISUAL STUDIO CODE
      • 340
        Powerful multilanguage IDE
      • 308
        Fast
      • 193
        Front-end develop out of the box
      • 158
        Support TypeScript IntelliSense
      • 142
        Very basic but free
      • 126
        Git integration
      • 106
        Intellisense
      • 78
        Faster than Atom
      • 53
        Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
      • 45
        Great Refactoring Tools
      • 44
        Good Plugins
      • 42
        Terminal
      • 38
        Superb markdown support
      • 36
        Open Source
      • 35
        Extensions
      • 26
        Awesome UI
      • 26
        Large & up-to-date extension community
      • 24
        Powerful and fast
      • 22
        Portable
      • 18
        Best code editor
      • 18
        Best editor
      • 17
        Easy to get started with
      • 15
        Lots of extensions
      • 15
        Good for begginers
      • 15
        Crossplatform
      • 15
        Built on Electron
      • 14
        Extensions for everything
      • 14
        Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
      • 14
        All Languages Support
      • 13
        Easy to use and learn
      • 12
        "fast, stable & easy to use"
      • 12
        Extensible
      • 11
        Ui design is great
      • 11
        Totally customizable
      • 11
        Git out of the box
      • 11
        Useful for begginer
      • 11
        Faster edit for slow computer
      • 10
        SSH support
      • 10
        Great community
      • 10
        Fast Startup
      • 9
        Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
      • 9
        Great language support
      • 9
        Powerful Debugger
      • 9
        It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
      • 8
        Can compile and run .py files
      • 8
        Python extension is fast
      • 7
        Features rich
      • 7
        Great document formater
      • 6
        He is not Michael
      • 6
        Extension Echosystem
      • 6
        She is not Rachel
      • 6
        Awesome multi cursor support
      • 5
        VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
      • 5
        Language server client
      • 5
        SFTP Workspace
      • 5
        Very proffesional
      • 5
        Easy azure
      • 4
        Has better support and more extentions for debugging
      • 4
        Supports lots of operating systems
      • 4
        Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
      • 4
        Virtualenv integration
      • 3
        Better autocompletes than Atom
      • 3
        Has more than enough languages for any developer
      • 3
        'batteries included'
      • 3
        More tools to integrate with vs
      • 3
        Emmet preinstalled
      • 2
        VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
      • 2
        CMake support with autocomplete
      • 2
        Microsoft
      • 2
        Customizable
      • 2
        Light
      • 2
        Big extension marketplace
      • 2
        Fast and ruby is built right in
      • 1
        File:///C:/Users/ydemi/Downloads/yuksel_demirkaya_webpa
      CONS OF VISUAL STUDIO CODE
      • 46
        Slow startup
      • 29
        Resource hog at times
      • 20
        Poor refactoring
      • 13
        Poor UI Designer
      • 11
        Weak Ui design tools
      • 10
        Poor autocomplete
      • 8
        Super Slow
      • 8
        Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
      • 8
        Microsoft sends telemetry data
      • 7
        Poor in PHP
      • 6
        It's MicroSoft
      • 3
        Poor in Python
      • 3
        No Built in Browser Preview
      • 3
        No color Intergrator
      • 3
        Very basic for java development and buggy at times
      • 3
        No built in live Preview
      • 3
        Electron
      • 2
        Bad Plugin Architecture
      • 2
        Powered by Electron
      • 1
        Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes
      • 1
        Slow C++ Language Server

      related Visual Studio Code posts

      Yshay Yaacobi

      Our first experience with .NET core was when we developed our OSS feature management platform - Tweek (https://github.com/soluto/tweek). We wanted to create a solution that is able to run anywhere (super important for OSS), has excellent performance characteristics and can fit in a multi-container architecture. We decided to implement our rule engine processor in F# , our main service was implemented in C# and other components were built using JavaScript / TypeScript and Go.

      Visual Studio Code worked really well for us as well, it worked well with all our polyglot services and the .Net core integration had great cross-platform developer experience (to be fair, F# was a bit trickier) - actually, each of our team members used a different OS (Ubuntu, macos, windows). Our production deployment ran for a time on Docker Swarm until we've decided to adopt Kubernetes with almost seamless migration process.

      After our positive experience of running .Net core workloads in containers and developing Tweek's .Net services on non-windows machines, C# had gained back some of its popularity (originally lost to Node.js), and other teams have been using it for developing microservices, k8s sidecars (like https://github.com/Soluto/airbag), cli tools, serverless functions and other projects...

      See more
      Simon Reymann
      Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH | 30 upvotes 路 11.8M views

      Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

      • GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
      • Respectively Git as revision control system
      • SourceTree as Git GUI
      • Visual Studio Code as IDE
      • CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
      • Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
      • SonarQube as quality gate
      • Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
      • VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
      • Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
      • Heroku for deploying in test environments
      • nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
      • SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
      • Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
      • PostgreSQL as preferred database system
      • Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

      The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

      • Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
      • Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
      • Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
      • Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
      • Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
      • Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
      See more
      Brackets logo

      Brackets

      450
      202
      A modern, open source text editor that understands web design
      450
      202
      PROS OF BRACKETS
      • 51
        Beautiful UI
      • 40
        Lightweight
      • 25
        Extremely customizable
      • 20
        Free plugins
      • 14
        Live Preview
      • 13
        Free themes
      • 8
        Clean
      • 7
        Easy
      • 6
        Integration with photoshop
      • 4
        Perfect for web development
      • 4
        Simple
      • 4
        Fast
      • 2
        Awesome UI
      • 2
        Clean UI
      • 2
        Code suggestions
      CONS OF BRACKETS
      • 3
        Not good for backend developer
      • 1
        You have to edit json file to set your settings.
      • 1
        Bad node.js support

      related Brackets posts

      Chidumebi Ifemena
      UI/UX Designer, Web Developer | 2 upvotes 路 89.9K views

      For a beginner developer, what tool is most suitable for coding, Brackets or Visual Studio Code?

      I am having some issues doing some inline CSS coding using Vscode but it is possible with Brackets. Polls have it saying Vscode is the most suitable for web development, so which is the best?

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      Xcode logo

      Xcode

      19.2K
      213
      The complete toolset for building great apps
      19.2K
      213
      PROS OF XCODE
      • 130
        IOS Development
      • 33
        Personal assistant on steroids
      • 29
        Easy setup
      • 17
        Excellent integration with Clang
      • 3
        Beautiful
      • 1
        Built-in everything
      CONS OF XCODE
      • 6
        Massively bloated and complicated for smaller projects
      • 3
        Horrible auto completiting and text editing
      • 1
        Slow startup
      • 1
        Very slow emulator

      related Xcode posts

      Julien DeFrance
      Principal Software Engineer at Tophatter | 8 upvotes 路 449.5K views

      As a Engineering Manager & Director at SmartZip, I had a mix of front-end, back-end, #mobile engineers reporting to me.

      Sprints after sprints, I noticed some inefficiencies on the MobileDev side. People working multiple sprints in a row on their Xcode / Objective-C codebase while some others were working on Android Studio. After which, QA & Product ensured both applications were in sync, on a UI/UX standpoint, creating addional work, which also happened to be extremely costly.

      Our resources being so limited, my role was to stop this bleeding and keep my team productive and their time, valuable.

      After some analysis, discussions, proof of concepts... etc. We decided to move to a single codebase using React Native so our velocity would increase.

      After some initial investment, our initial assumptions were confirmed and we indeed started to ship features a lot faster than ever before. Also, our engineers found a way to perform this upgrade incrementally, so the initial platform-specific codebase wouldn't have to entirely be rewritten at once but only gradually and at will.

      Feedback around React Native was very positive. And I doubt - for the kind of application we had - no one would want to go back to two or more code bases. Our application was still as Native as it gets. And no feature or device capability was compromised.

      See more
      Sezgi Ulucam
      Developer Advocate at Hasura | 7 upvotes 路 962.2K views

      I've recently switched to using Expo for initializing and developing my React Native apps. Compared to React Native CLI, it's so much easier to get set up and going. Setting up and maintaining Android Studio, Android SDK, and virtual devices used to be such a headache. Thanks to Expo, I can now test my apps directly on my Android phone, just by installing the Expo app. I still use Xcode Simulator for iOS testing, since I don't have an iPhone, but that's easy anyway. The big win for me with Expo is ease of Android testing.

      The Expo SDK also provides convenient features like Facebook login, MapView, push notifications, and many others. https://docs.expo.io/versions/v31.0.0/sdk/

      See more
      Vim logo

      Vim

      27.4K
      2.4K
      Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing
      27.4K
      2.4K
      PROS OF VIM
      • 347
        Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing)
      • 328
        Fast
      • 312
        Highly configurable
      • 297
        Less mouse dependence
      • 247
        Lightweight
      • 145
        Speed
      • 100
        Plugins
      • 97
        Hardcore
      • 82
        It's for pros
      • 65
        Vertically split windows
      • 30
        Open-source
      • 25
        Modal editing
      • 22
        No remembering shortcuts, instead "talks" to the editor
      • 21
        It stood the Test of Time
      • 16
        Unicode
      • 13
        VimPlugins
      • 13
        Everything is on the keyboard
      • 13
        Stick with terminal
      • 12
        Dotfiles
      • 11
        Flexible Indenting
      • 10
        Hands stay on the keyboard
      • 10
        Efficient and powerful
      • 10
        Programmable
      • 9
        Everywhere
      • 9
        Large number of Shortcuts
      • 8
        A chainsaw for text editing
      • 8
        Unmatched productivity
      • 7
        Developer speed
      • 7
        Super fast
      • 7
        Makes you a true bearded developer
      • 7
        Because its not Emacs
      • 7
        Modal editing changes everything
      • 6
        You cannot exit
      • 6
        Themes
      • 5
        EasyMotion
      • 5
        Most and most powerful plugins of any editor
      • 5
        Shell escapes and shell imports :!<command> and !!cmd
      • 5
        Intergrated into most editors
      • 5
        Shortcuts
      • 5
        Great on large text files
      • 5
        Habit
      • 5
        Plugin manager options. Vim-plug, Pathogen, etc
      • 4
        Intuitive, once mastered
      • 4
        Perfect command line editor
      • 1
        Not MicroSoft
      CONS OF VIM
      • 8
        Ugly UI
      • 5
        Hard to learn

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      Denys
      Software engineer at Typeform | 13 upvotes 路 1.9M views
      • Go because it's easy and simple, facilitates collaboration , and also it's fast, scalable, powerful.
      • Visual Studio Code because it has one of the most sophisticated Go language support plugins.
      • Vim because it's Vim
      • Git because it's Git
      • Docker and Docker Compose because it's quick and easy to have reproducible builds/tests with them
      • Arch Linux because Docker for Mac/Win is a disaster for the human nervous system, and Arch is the coolest Linux distro so far
      • Stack Overflow because of Copy-Paste Driven Development
      • JavaScript and Python when a something needs to be coded for yesterday
      • PhpStorm because it saves me like 300 "Ctrl+F" key strokes a minute
      • cURL because terminal all the way
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      Jerome Dalbert
      Principal Backend Software Engineer at StackShare | 13 upvotes 路 933.6K views

      I liked Sublime Text for its speed, simplicity and keyboard shortcuts which synergize well when working on scripting languages like Ruby and JavaScript. I extended the editor with custom Python scripts that improved keyboard navigability such as autofocusing the sidebar when no files are open, or changing tab closing behavior.

      But customization can only get you so far, and there were little things that I still had to use the mouse for, such as scrolling, repositioning lines on the screen, selecting the line number of a failing test stack trace from a separate plugin pane, etc. After 3 years of wearily moving my arm and hand to perform the same repetitive tasks, I decided to switch to Vim for 3 reasons:

      • your fingers literally don鈥檛 ever need to leave the keyboard home row (I had to remap the escape key though)
      • it is a reliable tool that has been around for more than 30 years and will still be around for the next 30 years
      • I wanted to "look like a hacker" by doing everything inside my terminal and by becoming a better Unix citizen

      The learning curve is very steep and it took me a year to master it, but investing time to be truly comfortable with my #TextEditor was more than worth it. To me, Vim comes close to being the perfect editor and I probably won鈥檛 need to switch ever again. It feels good to ignore new editors that come out every few years, like Atom and Visual Studio Code.

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