[Tutor] Good Text Editor/IDE for Python

[Ben Finney]

Juan Christian <juan0christian at gmail.com> writes:

> What [text editor] do you guys use to code?

I use GNU Emacs primarily, and sometimes Vim.

My recommendations have been posted in a different forum; I'll repeat
them here.


You can write Python code using any text editor.

You will do well to use a text editor which is deliberately designed for
programming and other related editing tasks.

I would also recommend that a programmer's text editor should:

* Be licensed as free software — the tool should be able to be improved
  and maintained and distributed to you by any party sufficiently
  motivated, not locked up by any single party.

* Work the same on all major platforms — you should not need to abandon
  a tool you like merely because you switch to a different machine for a
  while.

* Be mature with a strong track record — a text editor which has been
  around for some decades, and still has a large following, has
  demonstrated it can survive many different trends in programming
  tools.

* Have good support provided by its own vibrant community — you don't
  necessarily need to join such a community, but you will greatly
  benefit from the fact that a tool has robust community support. That
  the tool is free software is a significant contributor to this.

* Be indefinitely customisable to meet new needs — this ensures that
  anyone sufficiently motivated can allow you to use the tool you
  already know for new tasks that come along. Having a strong community
  of support will mean that most tasks are already supported in the tool
  by people who came before you.

* Properly support many programming languages and related formats — this
  is an outcome of the tool being community-supported, mature, and
  highly customisable. The tool should, in its standard installation,
  already support major programming languages and formats, and have a
  simple way to add supporting plug-ins as you need them.

I know of two obvious text editors that meet these criteria:

* Vim <URL:http://www.vim.org/>
  <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_%28text_editor%29>

* Emacs <URL:https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/>
  <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs>

If you're using a *nix style operating system such as GNU+Linux, you
will have both of these available for installation from the operating
system. On other desktop operating systems you can install them easily
too.

I hope that helps. Familiarising yourself with a strong, free-software,
cross-platform text editor is an essential investment in programming.
Good hunting!

-- 
 \      “Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious |
  `\     people give to one another to believe things strongly without |
_o__)      evidence.” —Sam Harris, _Letter to a Christian Nation_ 2006 |
Ben Finney