Text Editors vs. IDEs, Differences, Pros, and Cons

Text Editors vs. IDEs, Differences, Pros, and Cons

Text editors are not the same as IDEs. There are some differences every developer should know!

Text editors are not the same as IDEs. There are some differences every developer should know! In this post, I will explain how to choose the right one for your projects based on the pros and cons of both an IDE and a text editor.

Test Editors:

There are a lot of text editors, some of which are popular, such as VS Code, Sublime Text, Atom, and lots more. It is an excellent choice if you are working on small projects, but as your project grows in size, tasks become more complex, so an IDE becomes a better option.

Pros:

  • Text editors are free and accessible to everyone.
  • Text editors are lightweight and fast because fewer plugins are installed rather than an IDE that comes with pre-installed plugins.
  • The UI of a text editor is simple and has fewer features, which means it is easier to use.
  • Text editor becomes more powerful with extensions if it is configured properly this is especially true for VS Code, if you configure a code editor by finding and installing the right extensions for things you need, this will make your text editor very close to an actual IDE.
  • VS Code is built by Microsoft, which means there is a bigger community, more tutorials, and a rich plugins ecosystem.

Cons:

  • A text editor requires much time to configure properly that's including find the right extensions, install them and make sure they work.
  • The performance of a text editor becomes worse with large projects, especially if you have lots of plugins installed. It may also let you down when working on complex tasks like refactoring code across the entire code base, not just a file.
  • Not every extension is great while some plugins are built by Microsoft, especially for VS Code and they are also updatable and compatible with VS Code but there are a lot of plugins that are built by a third party, and they are not compatible with the latest VS Code versions so it may be causes issues.

IDEs:

IDEs are considered a professional tool that makes you work efficiently, saving you the time you need to set up your code. Some of the popular IDEs are WebStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, and PyCharm.

Pros:

  • IDEs are set up for you with technologies and frameworks support with all plugins that you need, including tools with debugging, unit-testing, working with terminals and so much more.
  • IDEs are good for large and complex projects this is because an IDE can analyze the entire project and provide more liable coding assistance such as navigation code assistance across files renaming and auto-completion, etc.
  • IDE specializes in one specific technology stack. For example, an IDE can have all the tools necessary for JavaScript, such as react props, code snippet shortcuts and so much more.

Cons:

  • Because of the all support and features, the IDEs are often paid.
  • IDEs are slower than text editors because the analyzing process for large projects takes time.
  • An IDE is hard to get used to, this is because they have more features which means more options that are maybe hard to use for beginners.

Based on these and what you are learning or what your journey is, I hope you can decide what suits you best, a text editor or an IDE.