Notepad++: Developer’s Best Friend
Like old people tend to stick to their old habits, there are many computer geeks who love the classical editors. In my last job interview, the interviewer was excited with my performance so far and wanted to know which tools I use for my development. When I said the word Notepad, his face started changing colors and he didn’t know how to comment. So I took the lead and answered the question on his face. From my experience, other editors are designed for specific tasks only and if used other wise might give unpredictable disastrous results. Forte was the first editor I used for Java, and many had the problem of compilation error times and times until we figured out the problem is with the tool it self, and normal command line compilation does work perfectly. Another worse experience is when I opened my ASP page (Old ASP days!) inside some WYSIWYG web editor, I don’t recall it’s name. Suddenly afterwards my lovely code stopped working and started going crazy. I found out the editor have encoded the ASP opening and ending tags, making ASP pcode non-executable! I had tough time fixing it. From then on, I always prefer to stick to simplest stuff that does not interfere with my work, just makes it clearer. There are some real good editors out there which might be very helpful for certain projects though. Eclipse ofcourse is on top of those editors, being an open source with huge plugins library.
Right now, and for over a year I’ve been using Notepad++. An open source editor that is as light as Notepad, but a lot more powerful. What makes this editor the best choice for me is the following:
- Open Source: Just being so means there is continuous improvement and addition to it. Also, availability of plugins gives it a great added value, though I did not utilize it yet.
- Auto-Completion: Through the available plugins, you can activate this feature for auto-completion of current language in use based on the set of available APIs.
- Tabs: That’s right. Open multiple files under tabs. Open new tab with simply Ctrl+N. Browse the tabs with Ctrl+Tab. Boosts development time a lot.
- File Update Alert: Automatically detects if an opened file has been updated or deleted somewhere outside the editor, and gives the option to restore/maintain/close accordingly.
- Search: You can search one file, or all open files. Some nice feature when you don’t know where the lines of code you are looking for.
- Languages: Based on extension type, highlighting is done automatically for variety of languages, including but not limited to: Java, ASP, Perl, PHP, SQL, Ruby, LISP and many others.
- Encoding: Support of different encoding format, with the ability to convert to UNIX or Mac formats as well.
- Settings: Rich setting functionality, like changing the tab size. For example, regular tabs are around 4 whitespaces, while Ruby recommends 2 only. You can make your choice.
- Zoom: Ability to Zoom in and out of the file.
- Recording: I never used that!
- Performance: Never it had failed me during my work. So fast and robust. as I said, just like Notepad. That’s why it is meant to be a Notepad replacement.
Notepad2 is another alternative that is so much simpler with no tab feature. Good thing about it though is it does not need installation. So even with no admin rights you can use it. As far as I’m concerned, Notepad++ is the choice for me that has replaced Notepad literally.
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Comments
Believe me, it’s TOO LIGHT. you won’t feel it. The whole application folder is 1.63 MB.
And… you remind me of my first computer days when I had to plan for the best time to use the PC. It was so overused!
I think I’ll just stick with regular stuff till college – which is when I’ll be getting a laptop and Kromsanysing it.
It’s just a nickname my mum gave me as a kid and some of my friends call me. It’s become an adjective, though, becomes there’s a lot of “That’s so Kroms” these days, lol.
A friend called me “Crumbs” back in the day, and I also got “Kwans” – but painful memories = let’s just stick with “Kroms”. And … well the Kroms is infamous. :P
I, too, stick with Notepad. Any and all mistakes done on it are yours; you start from scratch, so anything you do was worthwile, making you feel good about yourself; and there aren’t any of those horrible HTML mistakes an editor like Frontpage or Dreamweaver would make (view source for my “Link Archives” – then see the source for my “Previous Entries”).
I’ll have to give Notepad++ a try (after asking my parents – if I “improve” the PC anymore without their consent I’m dead), but frankly, what’s the point of “Zoom”?