Text Editors for Programmers

If you have done much programming in HTML, XML, JavaScript, C++, Perl, PHP, or any other language, chances are you have used at least one text editor. The ones I have used include Notepad, Simple Text, Text Pad, Edit Plus 2, and the text editors included with the Microsoft.NET, Dreamweaver, and FrontPage programs. One of the first text editors everyone who uses PCs uses is Notepad, the free text editor always included with any Microsoft operating system. The only good thing about Notepad is that it's free. Notepad can't "remember" anything. Every time you save an HTML file you have to select Save As > All Files and add the extension .htm or .html to the file name. Years ago when I was using Apple computers a lot I used Simple Text some. The only thing I can remember about it is that you can record short sound files in it.

I used to use TextPad a lot. It is very inexpensive, under $20, and it has some features Note Pad does not have. For instance, it lets you save files as text files, C/C++ files, HTML files, or Java files. It also has a command on the menu that lets you view your HTML file in a web browser. TextPad is still pretty limited compared to the better text editors such as Edit Plus 2.

For the past few years Edit Plus 2 has been my favorite text editor. It costs about $30. It offers support for the following languages:

HTML
C/C++
Perl
PHP
Java
JSP
VBScript
CSS
XML
C#

Until I started learning Perl, I thought Edit Plus 2 was the last text editor I would ever use, until this morning, that is. I have been learning how to write Perl scripts that display foreign language characters that are supported by the UTF-8 Unicode format. I wrote a short scipt that was supposed to display the Spanish word for morning, and Edit Plus 2 would not display the script. I went to my favorite website finding software, Tucows.com, and searched for a text editor that could handle UTF-8 and found one called EditPad Pro. EditPad Pro supports all these file formats;

Text Documents
HTML
XML
CSS
Delphi (Pascal)
Javascript
Java
J#
C#
Visual Basic
VBScript
ASP
C/C++
Eiffel (never heard of this language)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
SQL
Batch Files
Configuration Files
RSS Feeds
Binary Files

This text editor costs $50, but I am sure that the support it offers for so many file types, plus its many other features, make it well worth the money.

You may want to check out these links;

TextPad

Edit Plus 2

EditPad Pro