The editor you selected should have in your arsenal:
- Syntax highlighting.
- Autocompletion
- “Folding” (from the English. Folding) – the ability to hide-open the code block.
IDE
The term IDE (Integrated Development Environment) – “integrated development environment”, means an editor that is expanded by a large number of “bells and whistles”, can work with auxiliary systems, such as bugtracker, version control, and much more.
As a rule, the IDE loads the entire project as a whole, so it can provide auto-completion by the functions of the entire project, convenient navigation through its files, etc.
If you have not thought about the choice of IDE, look at the following options.
- IntelliJ products: WebStorm , as well as depending on the additional programming language PHPStorm (PHP) , IDEA (Java) , RubyMine (Ruby) and others.
- Visual Studio, combined with the development under .NET (Win)
- Eclipse-based products, in particular Aptana and Zend Studio
- Komodo IDE and its light version of Komodo Edit .
- Netbeans
Almost all of them, with the exception of Visual Studio, are cross-platform.
Sorting in this list means nothing. The choice is made to taste and other technologies that need to be used with JavaScript.
Most IDEs are paid, with the ability to download and use for some time for free. But their cost, compared with the salary of a web developer, is small, so you can focus on convenience.
Light Editors
Light editors are not as powerful as IDE, but they are quick and easy, they start instantly.
The main area of use of the light editor is to instantly open the file you need to fix something in it.
In practice, “light” editors may have a large number of plug-ins, so the border between the IDE and the “light” editor is blurred, arguing that it is the editor and that IDE does not make sense.
Worth attention:
- Sublime Text (cross-platform, shareware).
- Visual Studio Code (cross-platform, free).
- Atom (cross-platform, free).
- Brackets (cross-platform, free).
- SciTe is simple, easy and very fast (Windows, free).
- Notepad ++ (free Windows).
- Vim , Emacs . If you know how to cook them.
My Favorite Editors
Personally, my favorite editors are:
- Like IDE – editors from Jetbrains: for pure JavaScript WebStorm , if there is some other language, then depending on the language: PHPStorm (PHP) , IDEA (Java) , RubyMine (Ruby) . They have other editors for different languages, but I did not use them.
- As a quick editor – Sublime Text .
- Sometimes Visual Studio, if the development goes under the platform .NET (Win).
If you do not know what to choose – you can look at them;)
Conclusion
The IDE’s in the above list are that I use or my friends use them for their development. Of course, there are other great editors, if you like something, use it.
The choice of the editor, as well as any tool, is in many respects individual and depends on your projects, habits, personal preferences.
Related Javascript Tutorials
| Introduction to JavaScript |
| Reference and Specifications |