Originally posted by: Atheus
LOL WFT? I don't know a single programmer who doesn't use some kind of programmer's editor with highlighting... yea sure I might have seen the odd kid use notepad to make his little homepage, but no one with a computer science degree would touch it with a 10 foot pole.
And what do you do, save to a different file name after every alteration? Because otherwise you have no way to undo your changes in notepad... or maybe you just never make a mistake? Again I say - LOL.
Well, now we're talking different stories here. I'm talking web development, but for software development I tend to use IDE's for the integrated compilers. Although, I have absolutely no qualms with editing a cpp source file in notepad and compiling it. Hell, throughout college I wrote files in nedit and compiled them using g++. Is it really that hard to simply not make a mistake?
😛 I mean, if you have even the slightest idea of what you're doing, you're usually fine.
Originally posted by: jjones
I really don't care that you code in notepad, but honestly, you're handicapping yourself by doing so. Multiple undo/redo, tabs, automatic tag closure, search and replace, spellcheck, convert, auto indent; these are just a few of the many useful functions you're doing without that even the most basic of decent code editors will have. It's just silly to be using notepad for anything but the quick fix.
Let's go through these:
Multiple undo/redo - Don't need it. I honestly rarely make a mistake and if I do, I know what I typed before as I only replace something for a reason. Also, if I wish to try out an entirely new function (as an example)... guess what I do... I open a fricken notepad and paste the old function inside. This also allows me to reference the old function if it had numbers or pick apart an output line that I may want.
tabs - Depends. Sometimes I like tabs, sometimes I don't. For web browsing, I enjoy them for the most part, I just wish some browsers would give me the option of breaking tabs off. But for web design... unless I'm editing multiple files (usually just 1-2 at a time), it may not be necessary. Also, I use two monitors while doing anything on my PC, so having more than one instance of an application open for development allows me to put one on each screen (if I want that).
automatic tag closure - Don't need it. I can close my own tags/functions/whatevers.
search and replace - Eh, I get the "replace" functionality in Notepad and I don't end up using it that often. A good programmer will not place a solitary value throughout a program multiple times without setting it to be a constant (depending on how it's used) so changing it is as simple as changing it once.
spellcheck - Don't need it... my proofreading skills are above needing a spell checker for most occasions.
convert - From what to what?
auto indent - I find this to be more troublesome than helpful. I use Dev-C++ and it has a smart auto-indent in it and let me tell you... that feature is soooooo annoying sometimes.
Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Notepad is fun just to say that you coded X or Y in it, but something with a few basic features like a line counter. Not to say that I've ever used a line counter for HTML, but it sure beats manually counting from the top when you hit a compiler snag in anything else. 😉
- M4H
C'mon, Merc, don't be like these people and not realize the POWER of notepad!
😛 Just turn off Word Wrap and hit CTRL+G and type in the line number.
Originally posted by: ElDonAntonio
The notepad thing was of course a joke.
Heh, in the beginning it was. Now I'm staving off the attackers one-by-one! Although it was made as a joke since I wouldn't suggest notepad to a new HTML'er with absolutely 0 coding experience and 0 aspiration to learn how to code. If they wanted to learn, it might be good to actually learn the basics... the only thing I tend to not use notepad for is really complicated table work as I'm way too lazy to do that :laugh:.
