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Friday, November 22, 2013

Editors

We know that text is the basic raw material of programming. It makes editors unavoidable while discussing about the tools. 

Editors help us to create and manipulate text. It is always good to be proficient with one editor rather than playing around with many. Learning one editor or its keybinding helps us to work very fast and you’ll find yourself getting better and better with it. 

Use a single editor well

But we have to consider some points while choosing an editor. Choose an editor which is available on multiple platforms. It should be comfortable and useful to us. 

Editor Features

There are are some basic abilities that we think every decent editor should have. An editor should be:
  1. Configurable - Including fonts, colors, window sizes, and keystroke bindings
  2. Extensible - An editor shouldn't be obsolete just because a new programming language comes out. 
  3. Programmable - You should be able to program the editor to perform complex, multistep tasks 

In addition, many editors support features that are specific to a particular programming language, such as: 
  1. Syntax highlighting 
  2. Auto-completion
  3. Auto-indentation
  4. Initial code or document boilerplate 
  5. Tie-in to help systems
  6. IDE-like features (compile, debug, and so on) 

- summary of Power Editing, from The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

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