List of Text Editors and IDEs

Vim and gvim - a cross-platform vi-derivative editor (with many enhancements) with a Windows-conventions-emulating configuration (:source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim). Has many plugins available on the site, supports Unicode and encodings, syntax highlighting, has both console and a GUI versions. Vim licence (open-source and GPL-compatible licence).

• Neovim - a fork of vim that aims to aggressively refactor it and improve extensibility and usability. Cross-platform and open source.

GNU Emacs - a cross-platform Emacs derivative, with console and GUI versions. Is mostly written in and extendable with the built-in Emacs Lisp scripting language. Very hard to get used to from my experience. (GPLed).

There is also XEmacs, which started as a fork of GNU Emacs and has become unmaintained since 2009 as of May 2015.

gedit - a text editor for the Gtk+/GNOME environment, with many plugins and extensions, and good unicode support. (GPLed) Its GNOME 3.x version removed the menu bar and made the interface much more minimalistic.

geany - another Gtk+-based programmer’s editor. (Open-source, GPLed)

jEdit - a cross-platform programmer’s text editor written in Java, with many plugins. (Open-source, GPL 2.0).

Atom - an open source text editor for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X based on the Chromium browser, by GitHub. It is reportedly inspired a lot by Sublime Text. (MIT/Expat-licensed.)

Komodo Edit - a cross-platform text editor for dynamic programming languages from ActiveState. Also see Komodo IDE. (Open-source, MPL).

Kate - a programmer’s editor for KDE (the K Desktop Environment). Contains syntax highlighting, good support for Unicode and bi-directional scripts, and other features.

Bluefish - an open-source (GPLed) editor geared towards web-designers. Also see an LWN.net review of Bluefish 2.0.

Visual Studio Code - a text editor developed by Microsoft and others based on the Electron framework in TypeScript and other languages with MIT licensed source and freeware downloads. (Windows, Linux and macOS.)

• VSCodium - free and open source binaries for Visual Studio Code.

Brackets - an open source editor with a primary focus on web development, written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (MIT/Expat-licensed). Originally by Adobe Systems, it is currently maintained on GitHub.

GNU nano - an open source (GPL) console/terminal text editor which emulates Pico and extends its functionality. Still very limited in functionality, but easy to use.

JOE - an open source (GPL) and feature-rich, but not really programmable, console/terminal text editor with the default key-bindings reminiscent of WordStar.

Kakoune - an open source modal text editor, which is inspired by Vim, but which aims to improve and rethink on its philosophy.

Eclipse - an open-source IDE written in Java. Very comprehensive and contains intellisense, automated refactoring, code completion, and enhanced browsing tools for Java and other languages.

NetBeans - a Java IDE from Sun and the Apache Software Foundation which uses SWING (and thus has a non-native and quirky look-and-feel) with good support for Java and support for other languages, including C and C++.

SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop - open-source IDEs for Microsoft .NET / Mono.

The Eric Python IDE - a “full featured Python and Ruby editor and IDE, written in Python”.

Padre, the Perl IDE - an open-source IDE written in Perl, and intended primarily for Perl development.

Lazarus, the Free Pascal IDE - an IDE written in the Free Pascal Compiler (FPC), and primarily intended for writing using it. Emulates Delphi, but allows cross-platform and cross-UI development. (open-source, GPL/LGPL and other licences).

Anjuta: the GNOME IDE - an IDE for the GNOME environment. (open-source, GPLed).

KDevelop - an IDE for the KDE desktop environment, written in Qt/C++ and primarily intended for C/C++. As of this writing (February, 2010), may have stability problems on Windows. (open-source, GPLed).

Qt Creator - a cross-platform IDE written in Qt/C++, and primarily intended for developing Qt applications. Part of the Qt SDK from Troll Tech (now part of Digia). (open-source, LGPLed).

Code::Blocks - an IDE written in C++ (and primarily for it) using the wxWidgets toolkit. Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X and supports multiple compilers.

Leo - an IDE written in Python, using PyQt, for Python and other languages that takes the unusual approach of also integrating project management, a rendering engine, and a music and video player. (MIT licence).

Notepad++ - a free source code editor for Microsoft Windows with syntax highlighting, scripting and many extensions. (open-source, GPLed).

• Notepadqq - an open-source (GPLv3) Notepad++-like editor for Linux written using the Qt framework.

TextMate, E Text Editor and E Text Editor for Linux/UNIX - TextMate is a commercial programmer’s editor that has become popular on Mac OS X. It used to be non-open-source, but the source code for its 2.0 version was made available under the GPLv3 licence. E Text Editor is a commercial version of it for Windows, with source available for compiling on Linux and other systems.

Glade - a User Interface Designer for the GTK+ toolkit and the GNOME desktop environment (GPL).

wxGlade - a GUI Builder for wxWidgets. (MIT/Expat-licensed).

Okteta - a feature-rich and easy-to-use hex editor/binary editor for KDE. (GPL).

GHex - a hex editor for the GNOME environment. (GPL).

wxHexEditor - a cross-platform and feature-rich hex editor for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. (GPL).

Bless - a “high quality, full featured hex editor” written using Mono/Gtk#.

DHEX - an ncurses-based hex editor for UNIX-like systems. (GPL)

HT - a “file editor/viewer/analyser for executables”. (GPL)

xxd - a utility that ships as part of the Vim text editor distribution that allows dumping to hex display or reconstructing the binary, and can be used in conjunction with a text editor such as Vim.

GNU Emacs has an hexedit mode.

Data Display Debugger (DDD) - an open source (GPLed) GUI for several popular command line debuggers including gdb, the Perl debugger, jdb, and the Python debugger based on the Motif GUI toolkit. Under-maintained.

KDbg - an open source (GPL) debugger front-end based on the KDE environment.

Nemiver - an open source (GPL) front-end for gdb based on the GNOME project and its components.

gdbgui - a "modern browser-based frontend to gdb". Open source (GPL).

gdb-frontend - another open source (GPL) GUI for gdb.

Textpad - a proprietary programmer’s text editor for MS-Windows.

UltraEdit - a commercial, proprietary, text editor for MS-Windows, and x86-Linux.

BBEdit - a proprietary text editor for Mac OS X.

Coda - a proprietary and commercial text editor for Mac OS X, whose motto is “one-window web development” - i.e: put everything (text editor, file browser, web preview, etc.) in one window.

Sublime Text - a commercial text editor for Windows, x86 Linux and Mac OS X.

Microsoft Visual Studio - the Microsoft IDE for Windows with support for C, C++ and .NET-based languages. (Proprietary and commercial.)

Embarcadero Delphi (formerly Borland Delphi) and C++Builder - Windows IDEs for Object Pascal and a variation of C++. (Proprietary and commercial.)

Wing IDE - a proprietary and cross-platform IDE for Python. (Proprietary and commercial.)

Komodo IDE - a proprietary and cross-platform IDE for dynamic languages, from ActiveState, based on the Mozilla platform. (Proprietary and commercial.) A free, open-source, and limited, version of it is available as Komodo Edit.

IntelliJ IDEA - a proprietary and commercial IDE for Java. Has an open-source version with more limited functionality.

PyCharm - a proprietary and commercial IDE for Python, with a focus on Django development. (Proprietary and commercial.) A “Community Edition” is available under the open-source Apache License.

Xcode - a proprietary (but free of charge) IDE by Apple intended for developing software for Mac OS X and iOS. Runs only on Mac OS X.

Notepad.org - “Notepad - the Internet’s most versatile HTML editor”.

"Ed, man! man ed"

Vigor - a version of vi with an MS Office-like paperclip assistant, based on a UserFriendly.org story arc.

xkcd: “Real Programmers”.

• Follow-up on IRC

“Building Vim from 1993 today”

“Eclipse is Emacs for the 21st Century”.

“Eclipsed” IRC conversation.

“How many clicks?” - IRC conversation.

"An IDE that does not suck"