04 Text Editors

Atom is free text editor, especially well-suited for editing code. It is, in our opinion, the best completely free editor for Windows.

Download Atom

Atom requires .NET Framework 4.5.2, which will install automatically if you do not already have it.

Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is also open source and rapidly improving. If you're a fan of Microsoft's IntelliSense and the like, you might prefer VS Code. I do not recommend using full-on Visual Studio for JavaScript projects, and it makes managing file unnecessarily complicated.

If you're used to an IDE, WebStorm might be more up your alley. Be warned: It's subscription-based, and is $12.90/month, or $129.00 the first year.

I will be using Atom in class, so I can show you themes and plugins that I like if you give it a shot. I haven't spent enough time with VS Code to know many tricks, and I've never used WebStorm.

Whichever editor you use, you'll use it enough that I recommend keeping it in the Dock as well.

Recommended Packages for Atom

Atom is very extensible, and there are a few packages that I highly recommend.

• linter-eslint checks for JavaScript errors and style violations on the fly.
• language-babel adds support for the latest JavaScript features.
• react adds support for React's JSX language.
• file-icons shows icons in the sidebar that correspond to the file type.
• Sublime-Style-Column-Selection is really handy when you've pasted something in with a bunch of junk at the beginning of each line.
• autocomplete-plus and ternjs combine to do pretty nice autocompletion for JavaScript. TernJS even provides inline documentation for functions.

Since I'm always asked, I use the Atom Dark UI theme, and the Kobalt syntax theme (with some personal customizations).

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