i am rather opinionated about text editors. some of that was leaking to other posts so i am going to
consolidate complaining about text editors to this page. i hope that this page serves as validation for
someone else out there.
arduino ide (transplanted from the pomodoro box post)
the arduino ide is such a failure of a program. it is a blatant visual ripoff of vs code with next to no functionality. it has everything that the old ide had but with a less cool startup screen. when i saw they updated the ide, i was hoping that it would improve literally anything about the old version. there is no discernable positive difference. the syntax highlighting is god awful, color scheme is painful and the serial console/plotter interface is demonstrably worse than the old version. i was also reminded that writing code without vim keybindings is hellish. the arrow keys are so far out of the way and everything nice is gone. i would have used avrdude and foregone the god forsaken 'ide', but the ide has a library manager and i just didn't care enough to figure out how to compile the libraires through avr-gcc. that will be a learning experience for a future project.
visual studio code
i kind of hate visual studio code. first off, it is hypocritical in its "open source"-ness. calling the visual studio code that everyone uses open source is a joke. the available source is called microsoft's "Code - OSS" repository, and they have this statement on the README of the repo: "Visual Studio Code is a distribution of the Code - OSS repository with Microsoft-specific customizations released under a traditional Microsoft product license". visual studio code is not open source, "code" is open source. the version used by millions of developers contains "microsoft-specific customizations" and is distributed under a proprietary software license. when you get to the actual editor, being an electron app instantly pisses me off. the last thing i need when i am trying to compile a project is another instance of electron consuming resources. the extension availability is the only redeeming feature of vs code. it parades itself as a lightweight text editor but what it has evolved to try to be is a fully fledged IDE. it doesn't do its job anymore. it is heavy and telemetry-filled, closed source, and antithetical to its original purpose.
notepad++
this is a great program, but i don't use it to write code, i use it for writing notes and things. this is mainly because the 64 bit version of notepad++ doesn't have a working vim keybind plugin, and to be quite honest i can't be bothered to write one myself. the one thing i wish it had when writing essays in it is that it had a word count feature, but i can't fault it for this at all because notepad++ is for developers, not essay writers. either way, this is probably a really easy plugin to make. it is actually on my list of mini projects, although pretty low. who knows if i'll ever get around to it. i'm told the plugin availability for the 32 bit version is better, i should probably just download that one.
notepad++ only releases windows binary, and is closed source, so on my OSS-only linux machine i looked for an alternative. there's a bunch, i used notepadqq for a while, but it appears to be an abandoned project and i don't do a ton of writing of this type on linux anyways. just neovim for me on the void box.
updates come sporatically.
arduino ide (transplanted from the pomodoro box post)
the arduino ide is such a failure of a program. it is a blatant visual ripoff of vs code with next to no functionality. it has everything that the old ide had but with a less cool startup screen. when i saw they updated the ide, i was hoping that it would improve literally anything about the old version. there is no discernable positive difference. the syntax highlighting is god awful, color scheme is painful and the serial console/plotter interface is demonstrably worse than the old version. i was also reminded that writing code without vim keybindings is hellish. the arrow keys are so far out of the way and everything nice is gone. i would have used avrdude and foregone the god forsaken 'ide', but the ide has a library manager and i just didn't care enough to figure out how to compile the libraires through avr-gcc. that will be a learning experience for a future project.
visual studio code
i kind of hate visual studio code. first off, it is hypocritical in its "open source"-ness. calling the visual studio code that everyone uses open source is a joke. the available source is called microsoft's "Code - OSS" repository, and they have this statement on the README of the repo: "Visual Studio Code is a distribution of the Code - OSS repository with Microsoft-specific customizations released under a traditional Microsoft product license". visual studio code is not open source, "code" is open source. the version used by millions of developers contains "microsoft-specific customizations" and is distributed under a proprietary software license. when you get to the actual editor, being an electron app instantly pisses me off. the last thing i need when i am trying to compile a project is another instance of electron consuming resources. the extension availability is the only redeeming feature of vs code. it parades itself as a lightweight text editor but what it has evolved to try to be is a fully fledged IDE. it doesn't do its job anymore. it is heavy and telemetry-filled, closed source, and antithetical to its original purpose.
notepad++
this is a great program, but i don't use it to write code, i use it for writing notes and things. this is mainly because the 64 bit version of notepad++ doesn't have a working vim keybind plugin, and to be quite honest i can't be bothered to write one myself. the one thing i wish it had when writing essays in it is that it had a word count feature, but i can't fault it for this at all because notepad++ is for developers, not essay writers. either way, this is probably a really easy plugin to make. it is actually on my list of mini projects, although pretty low. who knows if i'll ever get around to it. i'm told the plugin availability for the 32 bit version is better, i should probably just download that one.
notepad++ only releases windows binary, and is closed source, so on my OSS-only linux machine i looked for an alternative. there's a bunch, i used notepadqq for a while, but it appears to be an abandoned project and i don't do a ton of writing of this type on linux anyways. just neovim for me on the void box.
updates come sporatically.