HACKER Q&A
📣 parentheses

Any programmers use non-standard editors?


Any programmers here use non-standard IDEs/editors?

How's the experience been? Editing? Language integration? Special/refreshing features?

Ones I can think of at this moment include Xi, OniVim, Kakoune and some of the ones listed here:

https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis#editors


  👤 Froedlich Accepted Answer ✓
For writing code, I still use an ancient 1986 text editor that runs under DOS. I run it under DOSEMU now. After all those years, it's pretty much a direct mind-to-text interface.

For debugging code, almost all compilers come with some default editor or "build environment." I just use whatever is there, for convenience.


👤 armchairhacker
i use Neovim if that’s considered nonstandard.

I’m pretty sure even with plug-ins it’s light on resources. Without plug-ins it’s just a text editor, but with plugins you can get a language server (code analysis, auto completion, etc.), file tree, debugger, and anything else you need to basically make it an IDE.

The only issue is that there’s definitely a learning curve. Not just to learn vim, but also to figure out which plug-ins to use, and debug any issues (because they expect you to have more experience hacking stuff). Most operations are shortcuts, they’re not immediately clear like in an IDE.

I recommend Lunar-vim or NvChad as those seem easy to install, and neovide (GUI for neovim, aka a window you can run it in instead of a terminal which should also support all of neovim plugin’s weird features like displaying images).

Alternatively there are lots of mini-IDEs designed to be like VSCode but smaller. You can find some on past threads.


👤 cutthegrass2
Russ Cox (one of the Go core team) uses Acme I believe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)

👤 Hublium
Anyone using SlickEdit or any editor with "BRIEF"-style key bindings? I am not, but I am interested what people have to say.

👤 AA-BA-94-2A-56
Carry-on question; is there any editor for ARM Mac OS that uses less RAM than VSCode and Webstorm but offers Intellisense?

👤 tmdh
Does anyone have any experience with Kate?