Category Archives: Editors

Use Multiple Editors

Contrary to Dave Thomas’s maxim, pick a text editor and know it well, I think sometimes multiple text editors are more productive than just using one for everything.

Some of the reasons you may need to use different text editors:

  • Different Programming Languages
  • On different systems (remote SSH vs. Local)
  • Multiple Computers (Home, Work/Client Site)
  • Something fast and easy vs. something large and complicated

Personally I use the following editors:

  • Eclipse – PHP, Java, Groovy, Some Ruby
  • Notepad++ – ColdFusion, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, C
  • VIM – Bash, on the fly edits for PHP, Java, Groovy, Ruby
  • Visual Studio – C++, C#, VB

Do I know everything about all the editors, no, but for the amount of time I spend in each of these different languages, I know enough about each editor to be the most productive in the time I have.

Whatever combination you pick follow this rule: Pick the editor with the 20% of features that are easiest  to use that allows you to do 80% of your work. Here is a list of text editors in Wikipedia to help you decide.