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Vim is a great text editor
Vim is a text editor (evolved from Vi) that originated on the Amiga. Starting out as a command line only tool, all text editing was carried out via key strokes rather than via mouse and GUI. I first came across Vim on Linux servers, it was confusing and I struggled with the simplest editing tasks.
Today Vim has become my primary text editor. I love it. I use it on Windows and Linux as a standalone app and embedded into the Eclipse IDE.
What makes it so good? In short, once you have mastered a few basic commands (similar to shortcuts) you find yourself working with text in a more efficient/involved way. Your hands rarely leave the keyboard, you can complete complicated tasks in fewer steps resulting in a greater feeling of involvement with the code. The physical task of writing code hasn't changed a great deal over the years and Vim has been refined, over the last 18 years, to suit this task. Basically: "it doesn't get in the way".
If you want to get to know vim a little better here are a few links that I have found really helpful:
- Find the appropriate version of Vim for your OS and install.
- Start learning the ropes with these tutorials:
- Vim is very customisable, the settings are stored in the vimrc file which resides in the install's directory (C:\Program Files\Vim\_vimrc on my version of windows). These links helped me out:
There may be a steep learning curve but the rewards are well worth it!
Notepad-Plus-Plus Plus Erlang
My primary dev environment is Windows, my main IDE is Eclipse or Aptana (leaning slightly towards Aptana's flavour of Eclipse lately, especially for PHP and Ruby on Rails), and for quick code edits, messing about and text editing I use Notepad++.
Notepad++ has served me well over the years: it's free, loads up fast (unlike the big IDEs) and gets the job done. I know that there are quite a few alternatives (In Type looks particularly appealing), but NP++ does what I need nicely.
However, I was quite surprised and disappointed that there was no inbuilt support for my new favourite language: Erlang! A quick Google around revealed that I'd have to add a user defined language to my installation, less quick was tracking down an example file for Erlang. I eventually discovered this old mailing list post. I then built my own variation that suites dark backgrounds, you can download it below.
To install you will need to replace or merge with the *path-to-AppData*/Notepad++/userDefineLang.xml
file. If you don't use a dark background alter the WordStyle tag properties: fgColor and bgColor to suit.Download the userDefinedLang.xml
Let me know if you know of any better versions or edits, I'm sure mine is incomplete.
