There is also a great new user guide for Atom that’s easy to follow as a new coder, and we’ve found much of its documentation relatively easy to follow as well.Ītom also has some nice customization options, including extensions you can download from within the app (instead of finding them separately like with Vim and Emacs), and themes you can utilize to make your windows more fun to look at and work in.Ītom is great for new coders, but its system is as robust and hackable as Vim and Emacs, so it’s a text editor you can grow with as you learn. Atom also allows you to easily find and replace text in your code, as well as work in multiple panes. The autocomplete feature can help you remember code syntax you might have forgotten, as well as help you write code faster. Atom has a very user-friendly GUI, and many features that are helpful to first-time coders. But it’s worth figuring out if you want to make the effort!įor Mac users newly learning to code, we’d highly recommend the text editor Atom. For those still learning, Vim will be harder to grasp right away, and you might prefer a different text editor app on this list. In our opinion, if you already code, Vim is a great editor to work on your code without any unnecessary frills. But you have to be willing to put in the legwork and learn the program. It also doesn’t have a very robust Graphic User Interface, or GUI, if you’re used to those-though MacVim has more of a GUI than Vim for other operating systems.Īt least it’s a widely used program, so if you have questions, you’re likely able to find answers with a web search. Vim automatically color-codes syntax so your code is a bit easier to read, but it doesn’t make suggestions or point out bugs or typos to you.

Often called the “Programmer’s Editor,” Vim can handle pretty much any project and programming language you throw at it.Īs a program that’s great for programmers, though, Vim comes with a bit of a learning curve if you’re new to coding. If you want a text editor on your Mac with a ton of power and not too many bells and whistles, you want Vim.

Notepad for mac os