A major part of programmers and developers lives is spent on editors, while they are in quest for making best Joomla templates. Therefore, it must be ...

A major part of programmers and developers lives is spent on editors, while they are in quest for making best Joomla templates. Therefore, it must be a good one and include all the facilities one deserves. In Joomla or WordPress development sector, everything is about productivity – and it might hamper due to several reasons. One reason can be using bad code editor.

You start your development in a code editor, everything you develop is written within it. If you choose the wrong editor at the very beginning, it will surely take more longer period to develop yourself than usual time. A good one will provide you several functionalities and options, which will save your time along with the increase in your productivity in your Joomla or WordPress career.

Since editors play a big role on both Joomla developer and WordPress developers life, a good one can dramatically increase their productivity. It's one of the most important yet underrated things in the world of programming. So we're going to talk about nine best code editors in this article that can boost your productivity.

These code editors will give you full freedom to develop your Joomla and WordPress site. These free and premium code or text editor for programmers were not chosen randomly. Every item that is listed in the best code editors, were chosen based on functionality, popularity and ease of access.

Let's begin.

It is a very lightweight but powerful source code editor developed by Microsoft for all Windows, Linux, and macOS platform. When you are using this code editor, you don't need to switch to other editors for language support. You will get built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js with Visual Studio Code. 

It has also a rich ecosystem extension for other languages such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, GO and runtimes such as .NET, unity. Visual studio code helps you to go beyond autocomplete and syntax highlighting with Intellisense. It gives you automatic competitions based on function definition, variable types, and imported modules. 

Key Features of Visual Studio Code includes:

  • Embedded Git Control
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Intelligent code completion
  • Streamlined debugging
  • Powerful & Fast Editing
  • Code Navigation & Refactoring
  • Customization

You got everything you need to edit your code in one pack. So get Visual Studio code and start development now.

Besides coding, if you're also a fan of great design and premium user experience, you'll love Sublime Text. It is a beautiful, clean, simple, yet feature-rich source code editor with a python application programming interface.

Get the most out from your wide screen with the help of split editing support. Edit files by keeping side by side, or edit the way you prefer. Take full advantage of multiple monitors by editing in multiple windows and spliting in each window. 

Major features of sublime text includes

  • Very fast search and shortcuts for navigation
  • Distraction free writing mode
  • Command palette
  • Split editing
  • Multiple selection capability
  • Switch projects easily
  • Plugin API
  • Customizability

You can use both of its free and premium version as you need. Premium version will cost you only for $70, and it's available for Windows, Mac & Linux, all 3 computing platforms.

Atom is a relatively new text editor developed by the folks at Github. It's a free, open-source and complete with a file system browser. Atom is highly customizable as well and comes with feature list as follows:

  • Fuzzy finder that allows you to open files quickly
  • File system browser
  • Find and Replace
  • Smart Autocomplete
  • Built-in Package Manager
  • Code folding
  • Snippets
  • Cross Platform Editing
  • Multiple cursors that allow multiple selections
  • Multiple panes
  • Highly extendable with 50+ open source packages

These features make Atom the most customizable, clean and feature-rich, text editor for coding. It's way better than any other free solution because it has been developed for coding specifically. Besides, it's available for all major computing platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

When a text editor is released by some leading brand as big as Adobe, we can certainly expect it to have at least a few tricks up its sleeves, right? Trust me; Brackets code editor will not disappoint you. 

It's an open sourced code editor available for all three computing platforms (Mac, Windows, and Linux) and Brackets code editor has got some really cool features which make it unique in this league.

It comes with:

  • With its Extract feature it can extract information from Adobe format files (i.e. colors, fonts, gradients etc. from PSD files) and use it to help you develop code
  • A wildly increasing extensions library
  • Inline editing
  • Live preview
  • Open sourced
  • Cross-Platform compatibility
  • Theseus Integration
  • Split View
  • Multiple File format support

With Brackets live sync you will be able to push your code edits instantly with browser and you will also able to go forward and backward between your browser view and real source code.

The best part of Brackets code editor is - You get this amazing source code editor at price of 0$. 

​You might have already heard about Notepad++, because it's a widely popular source code editor in the community. A major reason behind its popularity is - it's free yet highly functional

Its major features include:

  • Syntax folding/highlighting
  • Auto-complete functionality
  • Tabs for editing multiple documents side by side
  • Zoom in/out
  • Multi-language environment
  • GUI Customizability
  • Macro Reading & Playback
  • Bookmark
  • WYSIWYG (printing)
  • PCRE Search/ Replace.

In short, it has comes with everything any beginner or even a full-fledged developer might need. Though it doesn't come with many advanced features which you'll find in some other premium editors, but what it offers is enough for most of the coders. The only disappointment with this powerful free editor is it comes only for windows platform. 

Another piece of premium text editing programs is Coda. It's slightly more expensive than UltraEdit at $99, but again the price tag has been completely justified by the wide range of features.

Major features include:

  • A fantastic file management system that allows local as well as remote file editing with tightly integrated support for Amazon S3, WebDAV, SFTP and FTP
  • Code folding
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Project wide auto-complete functionality
  • Automatic tag closing
  • Fast commenting
  • Fast shifting
  • And an iPad companion called Diet Coda.

In short, Coda has pretty much everything that you'll need to develop your website. And they tout it very proudly. However, it's available only for Mac.

PhpStorm is smart php IDE by Jetbrains, that lets you enjoy while coding. It has got support for popular programming languages but specially built for PHP. When you use this tool you do not need seperate tools for HTML5, CSS, Sass, Less, Typescript and Javascript as everything is available with it.

This smart tool comes with intelligent coding assistance, hundreds of inspections is taken care as you type code. You will never feel alone with PhpStorm. To ensure you write neat code, PHPDoc support, code rearranger and formatter, quick fixes, and other features are there.

PhpStorm Features:

  • Advanced front-end technologies included
  • Built-in developer tools
  • Intelligent Coding Assistance
  • Smart Code Navigation
  • Fast and Safe Refactoring
  • Code Quality Analysis
  • Smart PHP Code Editor
  • Debugging, Testing and Profiling

PhpStorm is packed with WebStorm, PHP, DB/SQL, so you can easily edit your Javascript as well. WebStorm got support for Angular, React, Vue.js, Ionic, Cordova, React Native, Node.js and lot more.

Everything you need for your Joomla website development is here. For this amazing tool, you need to spend $199 per year or $19.90 per month.

UltraEdit costs $79.95 per year – something that most people will shrug off for a text editor. However, once you look at its features and how they can improve your coding productivity, you'll probably want to shell out that amount. It's got a very long list of features, so I'm going to talk about the biggest ones only:

  • Tightly integrated FTP, SSH, and Telnet
  • Data/file sorting functionality
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Block editing
  • Multi-select/ multi caret
  • Lucrative themes
  • A highly customizable editor with different themes

Available for all major platforms - Windows, Linux, and Mac.

  • Finally, we'll talk about one more free solution, but a slightly different one. ICEcoder is a browser-based online code editor, which means that you don't need to leave your browser to develop websites with it. So it can be very handy for those who're working on a netbook or any other low-end computer. And its features include:
  • Online and offline functionality
  • Ability to manage MySQL databases
  • Type boosters
  • Secure login functionality
  • Themes
  • Broken tags indicator
  • Being a browser-based online code editor tool it can be used on any platform, whether it's Windows, Mac or Linux. There might me other online code editor tools available but you will not find one like ICEcoder.

Conclusion

If you are a newbie, try or atleast look at every editor. Listed editors are not sorted as best to worst form. It depends on your need and your working environment to choose the most suitable one for you.

If you ask me for a recommendation, I would recommend Sublime Text editor. But if you want to start with a free one go for Brackets or notepad++. Rest is up to you and your developing preferences. Though, whatever your preferences are, this list will serve as a good starting point.

For any kinds of Joomla templates or WordPress themes, you can always checkback our site themexpert.