Code editor might be the best choice for your next development with easy customization and more profound development options. Not only that, the perfect choice of a code editor enables you with a productive and effective development workflow. Moreover, with an extensive set of tools, modern code editors make your life easy at an increased pace to accomplish specific tasks. This comes as both offline and code editor online. In this blog, I have mentioned the most popular free offline code editors, which you may find useful for your next development.
Code editor #1 Atom
Developed and released by GitHub, atom code editor is a free, cross-platform, and open-source code editor. With native supports for almost all programming languages, it provides various unique features like code completion, syntax highlighting, and code folding. Additionally, you can install your custom-built package to extend its default functionalities. Its Teletype, a sturdy pair programming tool, allows multiple developers to join and work together through an isolated session. Besides using Atom-IDE, you can add and extend more languages, including context-aware language completion.
Key features:
Cross-platform support: Atom works across operating systems like Windows and Linux.
Built-in package manager: You can choose from thousands of open source packages and add new features and functionality to Atom. Otherwise, you can build a custom package from scratch and publish it.
Smart auto-completion. Atom provides a code auto-completion option that expedites your development. Besides, it makes coding more flexible.
Find and replace: You can easily find, replace, or preview text as you type in a file or even across all your projects.
File system browser: It has a versatile browser with the option of opening a single file, a whole project, or even multiple projects in a single window.
Themes: Themes matters a lot when you are in web design and development activities. Atom comes with four preinstalled UI and eight syntax themes consisting of both dark and light colors.
Multiple panes: Atom gives you the option to split your interface into multiple panes. It helps to compare and edit code across files.
Code editor #2 Vim
Vim is an open-source terminal editor that comes pre-installed with almost all UNIX boxes. It is considered to be the “One Editor to Rule Them All.”If you think a good looking editor, then probably Vim is not for you! This 100% keyboard-driven editor is meant to be functional. Though extremely powerful, Vim needs a very steep learning curve to master it. However, Vim is exceptionally productive in handling tasks, which took a while to get them done instantly. If you can extend it with plugins, scripts, you can easily fine-tune Vim as per your own preferences, and Vim will prove to be a mighty weapon in your coding arsenal. From an operational efficiency perspective also, Vim consumes very less system memory and loads in an instant.
Key features:
– It is multi-level and persistent
– Provides powerful search and replace
– It gives an extensive plugin system
– Capable of integrating with many tools
– It supports hundreds of programming languages and file formats
Code editor #3 Visual Studio
https://code.visualstudio.com/
A Microsoft – Visual Studio Code editor has redefined and optimized the code building and debugging space in modern web and cloud applications. Visual Studio Code editor download is free and cross-platform supportive. Hence, you can use it in Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. Also, it goes best with Visual Studio for web platforms.
Key Features
IntelliSense: This feature provides auto and smart completion based on function definitions, variable types, and imported modules. Thus with IntelliSense, you can go beyond syntax highlighting.
Built-in Git: This product easily integrates with Git and other SCM providers. Thus reviewing diffs, making commits, and staging files right from the editor become very easy. Also, you can push and pull from any hosted SCM service with no hassle.
Debugging: With an interactive console, you can smoothly debug code right from the editor. You need to attach the running apps and debug with breakpoints, call stacks, etc.
Better Syntax Highlighting.
Code refactoring.
Extensions: If you want to add custom features, install extensions. With this option, you can add new languages, debuggers, themes, and connect to additional services. Interestingly, you can run the extensions separately to ensure they won’t slow down your editor.
Customization.
Code editor #4 Brackets
The Brackets code editor is a modern lightweight text editor and made with JavaScript and makes it easy to design in the browser. It’s ground-up technicalities for web designers and front-end developers have made it the best tool for Front-end web designers. One of the main reasons behind this is its integration capability with other Adobe products like Photoshop. It is one of the most used code editors used for PSD to HTML conversion.
Key Features:
Live Preview: Want to get a real-time connection to the browser? Then using Brackets, you can instantly preview the changes you have made to Html and CSS in the browser. Also, by simply putting your cursor, you can identify where your CSS selector is being applied in the browser.
Inline Editors: Brackets will show you all the CSS selectors within an inline window. Thus, you need to jump between file tabs and work on code side-by-side without any view obstacle.
JS Refactoring: Brackets provide JavaScript specific code refactoring functionality.
Preprocessor Support. Brackets works with preprocessors leveraging you to use Live Highlight and Quick Edit with your LESS and SCSS files. This will make working more straightforward than ever.
Code editor #5 Emacs
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
Yet another UNIX-based code editor, Emacs, is written in Lisp. This editor is in high competition with the Vim editor in terms of usability and extensibility. This highly customizable editor has first-class support for Lisp along with other functional languages. So, if you are familiar with Lisp, you can quickly get your hands dirty with Emacs as it’s completely free and open-source. Emacs also need a steep learning curve. However, Emacs does not come preinstalled on every Unix box. Furthermore, its operational efficiency lags behind Vim as it has high memory usage, specifically with extended it with plugins.
Key Features
– Content-aware editing modes. Also, it includes syntax coloring for many file types.
– It comes with complete built-in documentation, which includes a tutorial for new users.
– Full Unicode support for almost all human scripts.
– Highly customizable, using a Lisp code or graphical interface.
– An entire ecosystem includes text editing, debugger interface, a project planner, calendar, mail and newsreader, and more.
– Provides a packaging system for installing and downloading extensions.
Code editor #6 Notepad ++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
Notepad++ is a free source code editor and supports several languages. Governed by GPL License, and ideal as code editor Windows environment. Notepad++ is written in C++ and based on Scintilla. Also, it uses STL and Win32 API. These components ensure a smaller program size and higher execution speed. From an operational perspective, it uses less CPU power, ensuring a greener environment.
Key Features:
– Syntax Folding and Syntax Highlighting
– Perl Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) Search/Replace
– Entirely customizable GUI with minimalist, multi-line tab, tab with close button, vertical document list and vertical tab
– Document Map
– Multi-Document Tab interface
– Auto-completion features for Word, Function and Function parameters hint
– Multi-View option
– Zoom in and zoom out
– WYSIWYG (Printing)
– Supports multi-Language environment
– Bookmarking
– Launch with different arguments
– Records and playbacks Macro
Code editor #7 Light Table
Light Table is an open-source editor in ClojureScript with a Node-webkit wrapper. Though it came in the market late, the light Table has started at a good pace and enlisted it in the list of best free code editors.
Features
– A lightweight, elegant, beautifully designed layout.
– Easily customizable so you can completely tailor to your specific project.
– You can embed anything you want in it.
– Supports cross platforms.
– Good-looking, fast minimalist interface
– Lightweight installation
– Inline evaluation and watches
– Auto-complete everywhere
– Split views and instant feedback
– A good selection of themes provided
– A command palette and fuzzy finder
– Application auto-update
– A plugin manager which provides a reasonable selection extension and an open API
Final verdict:
Choosing the best code editor among the mentioned ones is definitely a personal choice. However, without giving each of them a try, it isn’t easy to decide which one works best for you. Also, it will make you the best code editor. So, why late? Download the code editor of your choice and try that!