My husband, who mostly codes in assembly these days (he's mostly retired so his hobby is old atari, amstrad, and spectrum computers), went from VSCode, to Sublime, to now Kate. He prefers to use 100% open source apps, without strings attached. VSCode is nice, but it has lots of weird stuff in it that aren't necessarily up to the spirit of open source. So Kate works perfectly for him, although VSCodium would do well as well (it's just that Kate has better syntax highlighters for his weird assembly). Also VSCode/ium is using about 250 MB of RAM, while Kate about 45 (and Sublime only about 32).
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(he’s mostly retired so his hobby is old atari, amstrad, and spectrum computers)
Your husband is an absolute legend.
without strings attached
How does he read??
vim/nvim is really great
Neovim! Here is a good video to get started TJ DeVries. If you just want to give it a shot there are a lot of preconfigured options like lunar vim or NVchad.
LunarVim is dead I think. In the issues section the (main?) dev says they recommend switching to something else and that they have gone over to Astronvim.
Codium. It's VSCode without the proprietary stuff
Also Eclipse Theia, it has the same interface and functionality and it is compatible with most VSCode extensions (probably over 98% of them?).
I find codium is pretty great overall. It's become my daily driver now.
I'm a big fan of vim/neovim with nerdtree and airline added in.
I've also been tryingourt Zed recently, it natively supports vim keybindings, so my workflow hasn't changed, but its lightning fast (programmed in rust) compared to vs-codium (an electron app)
Vim/neovim
I'd suggest going with LazyVIM / SpaceVIM as a starting point, though, as configuring vim from blank state is an art itself and requires quite some time and dedication.
I really like Kate as an advanced editor with syntax highlighting, auto-completion, plugin support. I would then use the Terminal pane at the bottom to run my code during development.
However, if you want a full IDE with included dependency management, test runner, and debugger it's probably not enough.
One of my professors said you don't need an IDE, the Linux system already is a development environment. Not sure that I fully agree with that, especially thinking of things like Android Studio that include the virtual machine smartphone, but it's still an approach thing that is worth trying out.
Nobody needs an IDE. After all, you can just open a blank file and get straight to work. I could also just use Linux without a DE. Who needs all those graphics, amirite? I could also use a can with some string instead of a phone—or better yet, just shout really loud!
(/j)
One of my professors said you don’t need an IDE, the Linux system already is a development environment.
Considering "the Linux system" is literally anything you throw on top of the kernel called Linux, it can be a development environment or anything you want it to be. But I think part of the appeal of an IDE is how all the parts integrate (the "I" in "IDE") so a bunch of packages thrown together might not provide the same cohesive feeling.
Considering “the Linux system” is literally anything you throw on top of the kernel called Linux, it can be a development environment or anything you want it to be.
I'd just like to interject for a moment...
Considering “the Linux system” is literally anything you throw on top of the kernel called Linux, it can be a development environment or anything you want it to be.
Yeah I thought about the same thing when posting, if anything it would have to be the the combination of tools available on Linux. Like GNU binutils, GCC, GNU emacs, GDB, Git. But that's how I remember him saying it. Either my memory is wrong, or he just wasn't that precise in his language.
But I think part of the appeal of an IDE is how all the parts integrate (the “I” in “IDE”) so a bunch of packages thrown together might not provide the same cohesive feeling.
I agree, it may not be what you want if you're looking for an IDE.
But, like me back then, if you're new to the Linux ecosystem, it's good to hear at least once that you don't strictly need to look for an IDE. And that you can instead use disparate CLI tools together, to make for an experience that some people end up preferring.
I use Helix. It's kinda like a preconfigured Neovim. I really like it, my only complaint is that it (currently) doesn't have a filetree
I use Yazi and its amazing. Here's their docs on how to set it up as a file picker in helix.
I wanted to try to use this with yazi, to get the file picker without having to rely on zellij (or any other terminal multiplexer)...
I came to the conclusion that a fuzzy finder (SPC-f) + goto definition (g-d)/implementation (g-i) is better than a filetree in all my usecases...
I'm slowly learning Emacs, I'd say I like it but it's a lot of config work and I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who hasn't programmed before.
I agree. I learned and used emacs and org mode for several years. With age, I now want simpler tools that do not need extensive configuration. Using mainly Spyder and VS Code for python coding
It pains me to admit this but VSCodium has become my de facto standard
Agree. Codium goes brrrr, honestly.
Don't be ashamed, I think a lot here secretly like it, it's just very extensible because so many use it in the form of VSCode and it's just great for what it is, despite being Microsoft's for all intents and purposes
Because people ask for an IDE, rather than an editor, I will say :
Vim + terminal(s) + containerization (e.g. Docker CLI, Python venv) + live reloading (e.g. nodemon or inotify or in the browser using e.g. server side events) + repository management (e.g. git in CLI to juggle between branches, push/pull local/remotely)
IMHO this is very VERY light (0 wait even on a RPi Zero) and yet very flexible.
Also most of that can be "saved" via e.g screen
the CLI tool, allowing to have named windows in a terminal and a lot more than to e.g. screen -raAD
, locally or remotely.
I use PyCharm for work but it's not FOSS or beginner-friendly. PyCharm does have a free community edition which is awesome if you're mostly into FOSS for the $0 aspect.
- https://thonny.org/ - for the first few days of learning and easy setup
- https://www.spyder-ide.org/ - especially good for data science
- https://eric-ide.python-projects.org/ - full-featured general purpose IDE
Codium is fine and technically FOSS although it's association with Microsoft taints it for anyone who still hates MS from the bad old days. Also it's an Electron app.
Codium is fine and technically FOSS although it’s association with Microsoft taints it for anyone who still hates MS from the bad old days.
"New" Microsoft isn't really any better, and although Codium itself is perfectly fine (Electron notwithstanding) many of Microsoft's extensions only work with/are only licensed for the official VSCode build and include proprietary parts.
PyCharm community is FOSS
with the rise of LSP, i feel that ides have become less necessary. get an editor that you like, add an LSP client if there's not one built-in, then install the server for your language.
I use Vim ;)
Python itself provides IDLE, which is good enough for beginners. https://thonny.org/ is another good one for beginners.
As mentioned by others, Jetbrains is good for many languages. https://www.kdevelop.org/ is another option.
Honestly, just try a few of the big ones and see what you like, I feel like with IDEs it's all about personal preferences and rarely about actual amount of features.
Good ones to start with can be PyCharm and vscodium, but try a few, that's the best option.
Zed
Zed is full of AI rubbish, though, which is a shame as I was looking for a code editor built with Rust.
You can check out Lapce, which is written in Rust: https://github.com/lapce/lapce
It's not too hard to disable all of it
{
// Disable Telemetry
"telemetry": {
"metrics": false,
"diagnostics": false
},
// Disable Assistant:
"assistant": {
"enabled": false,
"button": false,
"version": "2"
},
// Disable Copilot:
"features": {
"inline_completion_provider": "none"
},
// Disable Collaboration Features:
"collaboration_panel": {
"button": false
},
"chat_panel": {
"button": false
},
"notification_panel": {
"button": false
}
}
Rust doesn’t buy you anything interesting in this space.
Not really, all the AI stuff is off by default and doesn't really nag you all too much...