Advanced Code Editor vs. Simple Text Editor?
The most important tool for any web developer is a good code editor. Unlike a simple text editor, a code editor has advanced features. These include, above all:
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Syntax highlighting for different languages
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Code auto completion
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a flexible Search and Replace function that can also handle regular expressions (RegEx)
Search and replace patterns across many files or entire folders is handy for quickly finding and changing content in multiple files.
Regular expressions are an effective way to search for a pattern in text. Using RegEx requires some practice, but the basics are quickly learned.
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any character encoding e.g. UTF-8
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a code snippets management
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a session management for complete projects
The Best Code Editor for Web Developers
Kate (Windows, Linux, macOS)
The modern and powerful code editor Kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor) is based on KDE and Qt, licensed under the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). It supports more than 300 languages and is therefore suitable for reading and editing source code in almost any programming language. Kate can be used to open any number of files at the same time. The file to be viewed and edited is selected with a single click. This makes this editor ideal for complex projects consisting of many files from different folders.
Atom (Windows, Linux 64 Bit, macOS
The code editor from the GitHub developers is distributed under the name Atom under the free MIT license. It is based on the Chromium web browser and the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. This makes the editor usable across platforms and very easy to extend with plug-ins and themes.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code (Windows, Linux, macOS
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code for developers, a modern tool free of charge that lets you work across platforms. The editor is also suitable for complex projects and supports more than 30 programming languages, including HTML, PHP, Java, C++. Thanks to the integrated update function, the software is always up to date.
Sublime Text (Windows, Linux, macOS)
The code editor Sublime Text has long been one of the most popular editors, although its price of 80 EUR is not really cheap. After installation, only a few settings are needed to start working. The editor can be customized quickly and easily. The editor's features leave almost nothing to be desired.