 Recently, I did a video where I ranked various telling window managers that I have used in the past and I did a tier list ranking of like 11 telling window managers and that was a really fun video. That was the very first video I had ever done in that tier list format. So today I thought I would do another one. This time I'm going to do a tier list ranking of text editors. I have 14 text editors that I've used enough that I feel comfortable that I can break them down into appropriate tiers. So let's get started. So let me switch over to my desktop and once again, I'm just going to do this using GIMP because GIMP of course is free and open source software and I've already got my tier list image that I created the other day for the Tiling Window Manager list. We're just going to use that exact same tier list. So we're going to have five categories, great, good, okay, meh and yuck. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer and I'll call this the list. I'm going to create a list of the text editors here and let's pick a different color. Let's go with white for the text and let me paste those there. Oh, that's a really big text. Let me make that quite a bit smaller. So these are the text editors I'm going to be ranking. I'm going to be ranking Adam, Ed, Emax, Genie, G-Edit, GVim, Kacoon, Kate, Micro, Nano, Neo, Vim, Notepad, QQ, VI, and Vim. And of course I picked these 14 text editors because I've actually used these. I know these well enough that I feel like I can rank them. Of course, there's many text editors out there. There's a hundred of them, right? And I haven't used many of them or if I have used them, I haven't used them enough to where I would feel comfortable giving them a ranking. But I feel pretty good with these. So let's start in alphabetical order here with Adam. Let me go ahead and create a new layer here in YMP. And what layer is Adam going to go in? I have to put it in this Yuck category here. So let's go ahead and add Adam to this category. Let me make the text a little bigger here so you guys can see that. So why is Adam going in the Yuck category? Well, for me, it is here for one reason. Mainly, it is an electron app and it is very, very slow and buggy. When you launch Adam, it can take forever and a day for the program to actually open. I'm talking about 30 seconds to a minute and, you know, that's just not acceptable for people that use text editors all the time, you know, just having to wait a minute every time you want to open a text editor that that's just not going to fly, right? The fact that that it's an electron app is an issue when, especially being a text editor, why does it need to be an electron app? I know a lot of people write these things in electron because cross platform compatibility, it makes writing your application for Windows, Mac, and Linux all three platforms easier. But at the same time, you do sacrifice a lot when you create these applications using electron. So for me, Adam is mainly in the Yuck category because of speed and performance and stability, right? As long as it's as slow and unstable as it currently is, it has no choice but to be in the Yuck category. Moving on to the next editor, we have Ed or Ed and we're just going to stay in this Yuck category because Ed has to be in the Yuck category because for those of you not familiar with this text editor, because most people probably aren't familiar with it, Ed was a text editor that was created back in the 1960s and computing was very different back in the 1960s. Many computers didn't even have displays, you didn't have monitors hooked up. You typically didn't edit text, you know, the way you do it now where you edit an entire file, Ed is really a line editor where you feed a line of text into Ed and then do whatever editing you need to do and then Ed back in the 1960s would actually print out those changes for you. It was really designed for a completely different era of computing. Ed is simply not appropriate for modern text editing. Can you do it? Yes. I know enough about Ed to where if I had to use it for simple editing of config files, I can do it. It is not a fun experience. And if I had to do like a massive project, like you wouldn't write your doctoral dissertation in Ed, right? You're not going to write your next novel using Ed. You just wouldn't do it. It would be extremely painful. You'd probably end up having like a whole lot of stomach ulcers by the time you get done with a project like that using the Ed editor. And the next editor we're going to rank is Emacs. So let me create a new layer. I wonder where Emacs is going to go. I'm going to put Emacs in the great layer because that really is the only appropriate place to put it because Emacs pretty much can do anything. When you talk about flexibility, customization, extensibility, Emacs literally can be anything. Whatever you can imagine, Emacs can make it happen. And in terms of extensibility, Emacs is really unrivaled with anything else in this list because of the nature of Emacs. Emacs is an eLisp interpreter, Emacs Lisp interpreter. And because it's the interpreter of its own programming language and that everything is written in that language, it makes it a very unique situation where pretty much any piece of code you write using Emacs Lisp, that particular language, well, Emacs can interpret it for you, right? So you can write your command line programs and GUI programs or whatever. You can write these Emacs specific programs and it just, it offers you a level of power that you just won't, you won't find that anywhere else. One cool thing about Emacs is you have the traditional Emacs key bindings, you know, the key chords, which usually involve the control key, you know, control X, control S, and yada, yada, yada. Then you also have evil mode in Emacs, so you can actually get Vim like key bindings. If you prefer that, and that's what I use, you can use traditional like CUA bindings. You can do even cocoon like bindings, I'm sure. There's probably ed emulation layers for Emacs if you wanted to do things the ed way. Emacs is, again, it's got so much to it that I've done plenty of videos about Emacs. I won't spend too much more time on that. The next text editor we should talk about is Genie. Now which layer is Genie gonna go in? Well, let me create a new layer, because I'm going to go ahead and put Genie in the good layer. And why is Genie going in the good layer? Because Genie is a very easy to get into IDE. It's a little more than a text editor that's got some extensions to it. It even has a nice Vim emulation plugin that you can activate if you prefer Vim key bindings. It has a syntax highlighting and line numbers and a lot of things that you would expect in modern text editors. But Genie is also very new user-friendly, right? Because it's got traditional toolbars and menu systems, and anybody on day one can figure out exactly how to use Genie. You can figure out pretty much everything there is to know about it, and it's just a fantastic program. And the next editor in our list is gEdit. Let me go ahead and create a new layer for gEdit, because this is going to be the first text editor that I place in the meh category. So why is gEdit just meh? Well, it's a very, very plain basic text editor. It has some extensions available, but there's not a lot of extensions out there, right? It doesn't have the same kind of extensibility. It doesn't have the same kind of extension ecosystem that things like Emacs and the various flavors of Vim, it's not going to have that kind of thing going on. If you're used to really plain vanilla things like Windows Notepad, for example, it's just a text editor and not much else. All it's designed to do is to give you a way to edit some plain text. gEdit is okay, but once you demand more out of your text editor, you're going to want something better than gEdit. Next up, we have gVim. Now there are three or four different vi slash vim related programs here. gVim is the first one we get to alphabetically, and it is by far the worst one. So gVim really, I have no choice but to put it down here with Adam and Ed. So the reason gVim goes in the yuck category is because unlike Emacs, which has the GUI version, which most people use the GUI Emacs, Emacs can also be run in a terminal if you need to. You know, if you don't have a graphical environment available to you, then you'd have to run Emacs, you know, at a TTY, for example, where vim is the opposite. Vim is really designed to be run in the terminal, but there is a GUI version that they also develop called gVim. But unlike Emacs, where everybody uses the GUI version because it's fantastic, you know, with the variable fonts, font rendering looks really good. You know, of course, you can display images and stuff like that because it's a graphical program. gVim, it's just really bad. It doesn't look good. Nothing looks good in it, images and variable text and all of that. And it's really kind of a gimp version of vim. It is, it's so bad. Like you never meet a vim user when you ask them, you know, what vim they use, whether it be vim or neo-vim or vim emulation and something like Emacs or Genie, you never meet a vim user and they say, well, I use gvim. Like, that would be the last thing you would expect a vim user to actually be using because, again, it's just, it's not good. And I think part of the reason it's not good is because the same people that develop gvim or the people that develop proper vim, and of course, they don't probably spend any time at all on gvim. It seems like it's more of an afterthought. Next up in the list is cacoon. Now, let me go ahead and create a new layer because this is going to be the first editor that I'm going to place in the okay layer. Now, cacoon is very similar, actually, to vim. Vim and cacoon share a lot of similarities. The one thing I will say about cacoon, the key bindings are slightly different than vim. Things are in a little different order as far as the key bindings, which makes switching between vim and cacoon kind of tough. So if you're going to learn cacoon, learn cacoon. If you're going to learn vim, learn vim, it is kind of hard to go between the two different editors because it gets really confusing. But in many ways, a lot of the really great things that vim gets right, cacoon also gets right. It's only going to be in the okay category, mainly because cacoon lacks a lot of users. And because of that, it also lacks a lot of the plug-ins that things like vim and emacs would have, where you can literally go find thousands and thousands of plug-ins and extensions for some of these other editors. Cacoon is kind of lacking in that department. But just the base cacoon package, even without really extending it or customizing it or configing it in any way, cacoon is a very capable editor. And I would be happy using it full-time if I needed to. Next up on the list is Kate. And Kate is going to go down here in the meh category, right alongside gedit. And the reason it's going to go in the category down here with gedit in the meh category is a lot of the same reasons why I put gedit there. Kate is kind of just another text editor. It really doesn't do anything special. It's kind of plain, limiting, has some extensions, kind of like gedit. You can extend it in some ways, but not the kind of ways that you can, some of the other editors on this list. And for that, Kate and gedit, they're just another text editor, right? They're really not much else to say about those particular editors. Next up on the list is micro, which is another terminal-based text editor. And micro has to go in the good category. It's not going to go into the great category because micro is still kind of your typical plain text editor. You know, it doesn't have the same kind of really cool fancy key bindings and macros and command modes and things that things like Vim and Catcun and Emacs have. Micro is a much more simplistic text editor, but it does come with some extensions as far as syntax highlighting and line numbering. Think of micro as nano, except nano, if it was actually designed to be good. Micro is nano on steroids. And if you're currently a nano user, I strongly urge you, for some reason, you need a terminal text editor and for whatever reason you've been avoiding Vim. I think you should learn Vim. But if you're a nano user, definitely check out micro because I think you're going to be amazed at what you can do with micro. I've done a video on micro in the past. Check out that video. Next up on the list is what we were just talking about. Nano, and I've already told you, it's not as good as micro, but how much worse is it than micro? I would say quite a bit worse. I think nano has to go in the Mac category. Much like G-Edit, much like Kate. Nano, it's just a text editor. Not much else to it. There's really not much to say. Yes, it has a few extensions, kind of like G-Edit and Kate. It's not extensible to the same degree as most of the other editors on the list. So it's just math. What really hurts nano, in my opinion, too, is the key bindings that are there for nano. The key bindings don't make any real sense. I've never liked the key bindings. It's confusing as hell. Now, luckily, nano gives you a cheat sheet at the bottom of the screen to tell you what some of the important key bindings are. But they're not like key bindings you've ever used in any other text editor or any other program period, right? So mentally, you're gonna struggle learning those nano key bindings. And honestly, if you're going to learn key bindings, you probably should just learn a better text editor than nano. Next up is NeoVeam. Now, NeoVeam is basically a modern version of Veam. Not that regular Veam is still being developed and probably most Veam users actually do use regular Veam. NeoVeam is a modern fork of it that is designed really to, I guess, be an improvement on Veam because instead of using Veam script, which is the scripting language that Veam invented for you to write plugins in and extend Veam, NeoVeam chooses to be extensible with the Lua programming language. So you get a proper programming language that you can actually use to extend NeoVeam. But honestly, NeoVeam and Veam, other than the different languages as far as what you're writing your plugins in, they're essentially the same editor. There's not enough difference between NeoVeam and Veam for me to really talk about them in a different way. So I'm actually just gonna go ahead and kill two birds with one stone since they're so much alike. NeoVeam and Veam both belong up here in the great category right alongside Emacs. I think that's the most appropriate place. And what makes Emacs, NeoVeam and Veam in the great category all three because they all have the same qualities is the fact that you have these fantastic key bindings that you can move around a document very, very quickly with their key bindings, the fact that you have macros available, which makes manipulating really complicated things with the text. Like if you wanna every third line do this, you can actually set a macro to do that. You have command mode where you can run certain terminal commands, for example, and get the output placed inside your document, yada, yada, yada. They're really fascinating features to all three of those in the great tier. That is why they're there. Now, moving on, we have Notepad QQ. Where is Notepad QQ gonna go? I'm gonna put Notepad QQ, and that's my surprise, some people. I'm gonna put that all the way up in the good category. Now, Notepad QQ is interesting because it is another very plain text editor. There's not a lot to it. It's not extensible, you know, which I know I docked a lot of these down here for not being extensible. But what makes Notepad QQ kinda interesting is some of the features it does have. It has this really neat feature where when you have various tabs open in Notepad QQ because you can work with tabs, meaning you have different files open. They're all tabs. But say I've got like 15 different tabs for 15 different documents that I'm editing and I just closed Notepad QQ, I don't save anything, right? Well, you don't get a warning or anything. Hey, you wanna save before you close? No, Notepad QQ doesn't care. You know why it doesn't care? It's because when you open up Notepad QQ the next time, it still has those documents with all the changes there, even though you never really saved them, it still has how they were when you last edited them. That's a really neat feature. Really for that feature alone, I can understand why a lot of people love this particular program. A lot of people also with Notepad QQ, the reason they use it, it's only got one D in that dummy. The reason a lot of people use Notepad QQ is essentially it is our Linux fork for Notepad Plus Plus because Notepad Plus Plus is a Windows-only program. So someone wrote Notepad QQ for Linux and in many ways it mimics Notepad Plus Plus pretty faithfully. And we're nearing the end of the list. All we have left is Vi and Vim. Vim I've already placed. Vi will be the last one. Where does Vi go? And for me, Vi kinda has to go in the okay tier here. So, let's see. Vi, you know, that's the old OG editor, right? It's almost as old as Ed. Ed came out in the late 60s. I wanna say 68, 69 Vi came out in the very early 1970s. So again, very ancient text editor. So Vi is actually designed to be a proper text editor where again, Ed is designed to be strictly a line editor. So Vi you can actually use. Now the reason I dock it and say it's just an okay editor is because Vi does not have the same kind of features that proper Vim has, right? Because Vim remember actually stands for Vi Improved, right? It's a better Vi. So if you're gonna use Vi really just use Vim or Neo Vim if you prefer if you wanna, you know, config using the Lua language or Evil Mode and Emacs, right? That's all much better options than Vi. Vi typically is not something people choose to use. Vi typically is the editor you use on Unix-like operating systems when it's the only editor there. Which is often the case. You will often remote into a server and when you get there, the only system text editor that's actually installed is Vi because Vi is almost always installed on a Unix-like operating system. So if it's there, if it's the only thing available, I'll use it. Do I like it? No, I would much prefer if Vim was installed out of the box on servers but most distributions don't do this. I know for example, the Boontoo server, they don't install Vim out of the box. I believe Vi, Vi might be there. I know Nano is there, but Nano, Nano's even worse than Vi in my opinion. But yeah, again, these are more of like emergency editors. Like if you have to use them, it's a good idea to know how to use them but you know, the great tier, right? These are the editors you actually go and install if you can, right? Now just briefly, because I know I'm gonna get some comments in the comments section below and why I chose these particular editors and why there's some notable exceptions missing from the text editor list here. It's because I don't know enough about these to comment on them. So I know people are gonna ask me specifically about Sublime Text, the IntelliJ Editors and VS Code. Well, let's start with Sublime Text and all of the IntelliJ stuff. All of that stuff is proprietary software. I use free and open source software. Everything here is free and open source software. That's what I try to stick to in my personal use and it's what I try to promote on this channel. Sublime Text, I know has millions of users out there and I know Sublime Text is probably a fantastic product. It is proprietary software. Therefore, I've never used it. I don't know anything about it. I don't plan on ever using it. Now VS Code is a Microsoft product and in its early days it was proprietary. Now it is actually open source software but the proper VS Code that Microsoft distributes the binaries that they distribute from their website are actually licensed under a proprietary license rather than free and open source licensing. Also, proper VS Code has some telemetry which may or may not be an issue for you. For me, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I know it's a big deal for a lot of people but there is a fork of VS Code called VS Codeium which removes the Microsoft telemetry and it's actually proper free and open source software. I would have no problem actually using VS Code or one of the free forks like VS Codeium but I never have and having never actually used it, obviously I can't give yet a proper ranking on this list. So this is my ranking here of these 14 text editors that I've used enough that I feel pretty confident that I can give them a fair ranking although I know many people are gonna disagree with my rankings in the comments below and that's fine if you got some thoughts or if you wanna share your rankings on your favorite text editors, share it with us in the comments below. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. Dustin Gabe James, Matt, Maxim, Michael, Paul, Wes, Wanya Ball, Homie, Alan, Armored, Dragon, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Diokai, Dylan, Marstrom, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Maduro, Polytech, Realiteats, Perlust, Red Prophet, Steven, Tools, Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want more videos about free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right guys, peace. I really trolled you guys with that thumbnail.