Over the years, I have used many text editors and IDEs. Each one was different, had unique features, but ultimately did the job it was meant to do. This article is about my experience with IDEs and text editors.

The most important text editor I used was Notepad++. It was simple to use, had some nice searching tools, and... everyone was using it. Back then, I had no need for anything more advanced while I was just writing simple HTML and CSS. No JavaScript, no backend, nothing. The only flaw I could find with Notepad++ was that it was not available for Linux. So, at work, I used Notepad++, and at home...

…I was using Vim. Yes, Vim is extremely difficult to master, but the only keyboard shortcuts I ever needed were to enter INSERT mode, save, and— the most difficult one— save and exit. Even when I used it for C coding, Vim was fine with just those simple shortcuts. Anyway, the important part was compiling the files, which I did using the command line and the gcc command.

When I started with more serious programming— not just simple HTML and CSS, but actual backend programming with PHP— I moved to Sublime Text. I don't know… back then, it seemed like a nice little text editor. Nothing fancy, but it did the job. I experimented with Visual Studio Code and Brackets, but Sublime was what I needed at the time.

The big IDE explosion in my life came when a colleague suggested I start using PHPStorm. I still remember how much I hated it. Everything was lighting up, I was trying to type, and suggestions were popping up under my typing, with curly lines under what the IDE thought was wrong. I hated it. And after a month or so… I loved it. So much so that I started using other JetBrains products like IntelliJ, DataGrip, and PyCharm. I loved it so much that I still have a subscription.

After all the changes, and despite my initial hate, I found out that JetBrains products are great for me. I like having everything wrapped in one place— my database, my debugger, my command line. I know that there are probably other great IDEs out there, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Honorable mentions: Eclipse and NetBeans when I was learning Java, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Visual Basic 6 when I was in college.