Best Editors of 2014 – Updated

Updated 28-Jun-2024

In this case, editors means software editing tools, and 2014 means April 14, 2014. We also mean to include the three main platforms: Desktop, Browser and Android (updated: iOS).

Note: I've updated this for 24 October 2014. What a difference six months makes...

Other Articles on Editors

Best Editor of the Desktop

  • The best editor for the desktop (linux, osx, windows) is Sublime Text. Why is it the best? Lightweight, flexible, and cross-platform.
  • The second best editor is MultiMarkdown Composer. Update: Now the best is Atom and the second best is Brackets

Best Editor for the Browser

  • The best editor for the browser is Draftin. Why? Most feature rich. Works on Firefox and Chrome (and likely others).
  • The second best editor is Writebox, which is a web app and Chrome extension, as well as Android app (see below).

Update: Now the best is Stackedit

Best Editor for Android

Update: Who cares? We really care about iOS and Github now. So the question is what is the best iOS app for Github. That happens to be either iOctocat or Codehub. My wife prefers Codehub, and it does have better source code display.

To Do List Editing

To get To Do Lists working effectively, I've resorted to a non-Dropbox-focused solution using SimpleNote synchronization and nvAlt on the desktop and FlickNote on Android. Unfortunately on the desktop there can be conflicts and runaway replication if more than one computer has the app open at one time.

Update: we've moved beyond these peasant programs and 3rd party sync tools, and now just use Github Issues. Yes, to do lists are now (with the exception of a few Trello instances) embedded as Issues. Quite effective, as there are several tools that help with interacting with issues, including Waffle, Burndown and Bee.

Summary

In sum, the work of a few talented programmers (not any large company) is providing us with the best tools for the job:

Update: so much has changed and while the above people are still rockstars, there are others, many others, and other tools which are the flavor of the month, six months on...