Osblog's devtools #1: Code Editors!

Code: The fantastic beast !

From simple web programming and development to complex software suites, there are tons of exercises that happen in the back-end. These backend activities are not seen by the web users and work their magic behind the screens.

A large body of intricate codes are scripted to run them. Codes are written by web programmers, developers, software engineers and all the tech gods of open source. The format and structure codes take varies depending on what task the outcome of the code is executing. Examples are JavaScript, Java,C++, C#, PHP, Python and so on.

Code Editors: The coders' friend!

A code editor is a structured program designed for writing codes by programmers. However, based on the choice of whoever is writing a code, a code editor is mostly employed by web developers and programmers to facilitate the written codes and to make work faster, efficient and accurate. They are highly optimized and can be installed and used on Windows and Mac OS respectively .

There are so many code editors available to handle different structure of tasks. Emphasis will be placed on discussing the various code editors available to get jobs done with speed, clean user interface and inbuilt mechanism.

What are the best code editors ?

They come in two forms namely :

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) :

An IDE is a powerful programming environment that facilitates the development of various applications. They are vigorously built to carry out all programming functions in a single application. Some are intelligent enough to complete codes before they are typed. Examples of IDE's are NetBeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio, Android Studio, WebStorm, jGRASP and so on.

All IDE's are enhanced to work on all desktop platforms. However, it focuses on every important element a programmer needs to get his /her job done efficaciously.

a) Source Code editing: an IDE is built to enhance the writing of a source code irrespective of what type of code one is scripting.

b) Compilation: after the code must have been written by the programmer, an IDE then compiles and transform in such a way that the code becomes interpretable by the computer.

d) Debugging: this is one important aspect of computer programming, it focuses on debugging code
applications that have been written.

Lightweight code editors :

Liked and cherished for their stunning velocity and simplicity, lightweight editors aren't heavily built as IDE's but they are incredibly fast, efficient and easy to work with. Although some lightweight can be used to run projects but not as advanced and fully optimized as the IDE since that's the only difference between both. There are so many lightweight editors around to try out. These best ones so far are Notepad++, Sublime text, Coda, TextMate, TextWrangler, jEdit, Visual Studio Code and UltraEdit .

A choice of what code editor to pick should answer these two questions :

• do you need a fully enhanced and optimized application environment?

• what kind of problem are you solving? Are you working on a large project or a random file editing from time to time?

The response made to the above questions should clearly state what type of code editor is perfect for you .

In the next part, we will read about other useful tools that open source developers use to code the useful apps and webpages.

Thank you for reading!

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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