Select a text editor 🌱

So you want to do technical work and write something, programs, text or web applications.

You will definitely need a tool like a text editor, but which one.

First of all, you may be limited to what is available on your platforms of choice.

Then depending on the content you want to write there may be some editors targetted more towards coding or writing specific things.

I recommend trying to find a text editor that can support more use-cases and multiple platforms. At least it should support themes for coloring, syntax highlighting and the most popular formats for text like HTML, MarkDown and the programming languages you use.

I started out using Emacs while studying, then later when I was using Mac OS X a lot Textmate and later when I moved back to Linux as my daily laptop ended up with the Github Atom Editor. This editor was abandoned by Github (Microsoft), but development has continued in a community project as Pulsar https://pulsar-edit.dev/

This is my weapon of choice for editing all sorts of files, from MarkDown notes over slides in LaTeX to large business reports in LaTeX, and the notes this garden.

Others are very happy with other editors, so try out different ones:

• Emacs, still going strong and available in multiple versions https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
• Vim is a pupolar version and continuation of the old VI editor, https://www.vim.org/
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code, often shortened as VS Code https://code.visualstudio.com/

To some people it is a very personal choice, but select what works for you.

You can find more information about text editors on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor

A final recommendation, make sure to spend some time learning features:

• Searching - and replace
• Fuzzy search for files - so you can quickly open them,, ctrl-t in my Pulsar will allow me to type _potest and find filenames like _post/test.md quickly