Learning how to code is not the easiest task in the world, especially if you’re just starting out. There are so many code editors, code editors for windows, code editors for android, etc. It can be confusing which one to choose. That’s why I created this guide on the best coding software.
Each of the best code editors mentioned above is free software for beginners; you do not have to buy any expensive licenses to start working on them. Just download a trial version of the said software and see if it fulfills your requirements. Afterward, you can convert to paid software for yourself or the company you are currently working for.
The best coding software for windows, the best codepen editor for mac computers, the best code editor for newbies and experts alike. Fortunately, there are a lot of great options on the market today to choose from. Below I’m going to walk through a few of them and hopefully help you find what you’re looking for.
Solve your coding problems effectively with the best coding software for beginners.
Visual Studio Code by Microsoft
Visual Studio Code (or VS Code) has quickly become the standard for software development since its release in 2015. Like most Microsoft products these days, VS Code is available on all major platforms. That means that developers on Mac, Windows, and Linux can use this incredibly powerful tool. Not quite an IDE (that’s actually a separate product altogether), VS Code can take on most of the tasks of an IDE with the right configuration and plugin library. The community for VS Code is incredibly passionate, and that works to everyone’s benefit. With VS Code being open source, that community works exceptionally hard to keep VS Code competitive with the rest of the field. Written in Node.js and Electron, you can be sure the code isn’t going to become outdated or lag behind any time soon.
Key Features
- cross-platform
- open source via MIT license (Github link)
- built-in Git (including merge conflicts, diff checking, and modified file tracking from within the editor)
- in-editor debugging
- large library of extensions and plugins
- compatible with nearly every programming language
- very lightweight in comparison to other, similarly robust editors
- quick and responsive
- specific Linux distros for Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Red Hat, and Debian
- IntelliSense highlighting and autocomplete works like a dream
Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Red Hat, and Debian in particular)
VS Code is for you if…
…you use code editors. It’s that good, and it’s that popular. While some people might be put off by the Microsoft development, that isn’t a particularly big deal with VS Code. Sure, the UI shares similarities between some of the MS products (which can be good or bad for you), but that’s purely superficial. VS Code works great on every platform we’ve tried it on, and there hasn’t been a noticeable difference in performance between the three, either. Even though VS Code does have a ton of packages you can download to customize the code editor to whatever you want it to be, you don’t have to. It works well from the moment you first run it, and the integrated Git and debugger just work. You don’t have to fiddle with them to get them configured well.
Price: FREE
Eclipse
Pros
- Great framework for building Java applications
- Includes plenty of debugging options
- Supports various build systems such as CMAKE
- Easy to get standard plugins from the marketplace
Cons
- It consumes a lot of RAM
- Sometimes it crashes on loading big projects
Price: Free
Platform: Linux, macOS, Windows
Eclipse is an IDE that supports an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. Although it is primarily used for developing Java applications, you can use it to write apps in other programming languages as well (via plug-ins).
It checks compile-time errors while writing the code. And since it provides suggestions and has a great online community to help users, you can increase your pace of coding with this tool.
Eclipse manages multiple files and projects efficiently and supports a broad range of file formats with type-specific syntax formatting. It provides connectors for multiple databases and supports common DB access methods. Moreover, project integration into GIT is virtually seamless.
Brackets
Price: Free | Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
One of the best ways to move forward in web development is to unify and create links between design and implementation. Brackets is an editor developed by Adobe for CSS, JavaScript & HTML that aims to do just that. It is a powerful yet lightweight and modern text editor.
The best function that separates Brackets from the rest of the code editors is its remarkable “Extract” feature. This feature allows you to pick colors, measurements, fonts, gradients, etc. from a photoshop file into a ready-for-web CSS.
Key Features:
- Real-time visualization with connection to your browser.
- Lightweight (only 40 MB).
- Clean and minimal user interface, making it easier to write and organize code.
- Code syntax is automatically highlighted.
- Easily customizable being an open-source platform.
- Uses Inline editors for faster access to a particular part of the code.
- Pleasant looking user-interface.
CodeHub
CodeHub is an excellent, simple-to-use coding app available only on Android devices. The free CodeHub app has lessons on web fundamentals, HTML, and CSS. This makes the app a great starting place for those learning web development.
Atom
Atom, a project started by Github and thus now owned by Microsoft, has established itself as one of the premiere code and text editors out there. The best part is that Atom is totally free, open-source, and highly customizable. Built around a minimal core, Atom comes with multiple language-specific packages built-in, and the library of community-written ones has exploded over the years since the editor was first released. Atom is as robust as you need it to be – if the editor doesn’t do something you need, you can create that feature yourself. The Teletype features have been embraced by users, too. It allows multiple developers to work on the same code from remote locations.
It does directly compete with MS’s poster child VS Code, but they are maintaining both editors as a gesture of good faith to the communities surrounding each.
Key Features (out of the box):
- File system browser
- Teletype
- Fuzzy finder for quickly opening files
- Fast project-wide search and replace
- Multiple cursors and selections
- Multiple panes
- Snippets
- Code folding
- A clean preferences UI
- Import TextMate grammars and themes
- Highly extendable
- Highly theme-able
- Incredibly passionate community
Platforms:
- MacOS
- Windows
- Linux
Atom is for you if…
…you’re the kind of person who likes to have your software be exactly what they want it to be and do exactly what you want it to do. With the growing library of mods and add-ons, Atom is one of the most customizable code editors out there. It works great out of the box, but its real power comes from the open-source community around it and the almost infinite customizations you can add to it yourself. Some folks are put off by the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub, but in the months since, Atom has continued to flourish.
Price: FREE
Geany
Pros
- Lightweight and fast
- Comes with a built-in plugin manager
- Code completion and syntax highlighting
- Extensive file-type support
Cons
- Not as advanced as some other text editors
- Windows version doesn’t properly support 2-byte characters such as Japanese and Chinese
Price: Free
Platform: Linux, macOS, Windows
Geany is an open-source, lightweight text editor, specifically designed to have short load times with limited dependencies on external libraries or separate packages.
It supports many programming and markup languages, including C, C#, C++, PHP, HTML, CSS JavaScript, Python, Perl, Haskell, and Pascal. Other common file types like Diff-output, SQL files, and ini-style config files are also supported.
Unlike other code editors, you don’t have to search through numerous syntax styles just to be able to change the used font. And since it features Real Syntax Parsing (not just coloring), it can display inner classes and methods in source code.
Netbeans
Price: Free | Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Whether it is for writing PHP, CSS, HTML, or other languages, we all want to have to use only one, a simple-to-use editor which looks great and has good features to boot. If this is what you are looking for, you may find it in Netbeans.
It is an open-source code editor tool for developing applications using many languages. If your applications were developed in the recent past, NetBeans allows you to upgrade all your applications to benefit from the new and improved Java 8 language constructs.
Key Features:
- Powerful debugging options.
- Offers fast and smart code editing.
- Cross-Platform support.
- Static analysis tools.
- Easy & efficient project management.
- Multiple language support.
- Provides expert assistance for optimizing your application’s speed and memory usage.
Enki
The Enki app offers a variety of coding courses. With Enki, you can study everything from Python and JavaScript to spreadsheets and Airtable. Enki is very similar to other coding apps, like SoloLoearn. But Enki has one of the most accessible and attractive interfaces I’ve seen. Much of the content on Enki is available for free, but the cost of the pro plan might just be worth it. You’ll get access to all the content on the learning platform, and it only costs $7.99 a month.
Conclusion:
You will find a full variety of approaches on how to start a new journey on the internet. Coding is a language, currently dominating the world today. As every functional application is developed using this language, coding has gained immense popularity across the globe. Therefore it becomes important for programmers to constantly improve their coding skills.
Coding is one of those things that can be done on any computing or mobile gadget. As such, coders need the best coding software for almost every computer platform available. This article has discussed how to learn coding online and offline as well as what the best coding software is. Some online resources will include free tutorials and websites dedicated to learning how to code.