Which editor you choose depends on how much experience you have with computers, what you need it to do, and on which platform you need to do it. If you are new to text editors, I here offer some suggestions on which editor you might find most useful for the tutorials on this site:
- Windows: TextPad offers a straightforward user experience with a few features to help you along. Some software companies use TextPad as the standard editor for programming interpreted languages.
- Mac: BBEdit is the most popular editor for the Mac. It is known for offering a bevy of features but otherwise staying out of the user's way.
- Linux/Unix: GEdit or Kate offer the most straightforward user experience and are comparable to TextPad.
- Platform Independent: Naturally, the Python distribution comes with a perfectly good editor in IDLE, and it runs everywhere Python does. Other user-friendly editors of note are Dr Python and Eric 3. Naturally, one should never forget about vi and Emacs.
Other tutorials in this series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8