Likelihood to Recommend Emacs is best utilized on a Unix system where it can be easily installed and accessed. It allows for quick editing of files on a system whether you are accessing it locally through the console or remotely via an ssh connection. Once users familiarize themselves with the Emacs shortcuts, it becomes a pretty efficient text manipulation program. On a standard Windows computer, it is less likely to use Emacs for code editing, especially if you have a local repository on your host machine.
Read full review well suited for 1) Coding and Development - Writing and editing code, Quick prototyping and testing of code snippets, Debugging and inspecting code using syntax highlighting and line numbering, 2) web development - Creating and editing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other web-related files .Managing and organizing web projects with multiple files and directories. Not suited for - 1) processing huge files 2) graphic designing 3) complex gui designs 3) Data Analysis and Manipulation - Editing and cleaning up text-based data files before importing them into analytical tools. Applying regular expressions to extract, transform, and manipulate data. 4) System Administration and IT - change system configuration file
Read full review Pros GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available. It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works. Read full review Notepad++ allows us to keep open files in tabs. Like in a web browser, these tabs let us access these files quickly and easily. Furthermore, even if we forget to save the files when closing the program or shutting down the PC, Notepad++ retains them in the open tabs when we reopen it. Notepad++ supports many different file types. We usually save our files created in Notepad as normal text files, but sometimes as JSON, PHP, and HTML files. Notepad++ is lightweight and requires little resources. Using it is snappy and responsive. The developer of Notepad++ frequently updates the software with bug fixes, performance improvements and new features. Read full review Cons Emacs is old, so it's a little crufty and not too easy to pick up and start using. There is a community package called Spacemacs that simplifies a lot of things that you do with Emacs. It is probably better suited to beginners. Sometimes, the choices that were made to integrate certain functionality change the basic models for that functionality. This is seen primarily in the version control system support, where multiple version control systems are supported and "unified" to a standard Emacs-y way of doing things. This can be confusing to the new user not familiar with the Emacs way. Emacs has, as its foundation, a lisp interpreter. This means that the extension language for Emacs is emacs-lisp. Some people find lisp hard to understand and have difficulties writing Emacs extension code, or understanding existing code. Read full review UI looks a bit dated. Sometimes the number of options are overwhelming and require a quick search to figure out where to locate a particular function. Some way to do a diff between files would be great. Still need to resort to another paid app for that - unless it is a buried function I don't know about or there's a plugin for it. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I use it every day for 13 years already and it never disappointed me
Read full review Usability Many of the features are not out of the box. We have install them separately
Read full review Support Rating Everything that you need to know about Emacs can be found on the internet. There are many Emacs "cheat sheets" that list out all of the shortcuts for Emacs. There are videos on how to use Emacs. Emacs is easily installed using the standard Linux package managers and can also be easily updated through them as well. There are tutorials on how to customize Emacs to your liking.
Read full review I haven't needed to utilize any support related to Notepad++. I guess this is a good thing because I found it to be quite intuitive. There are almost infinite features you can tweak and plugins you can download but I haven't had to do that because Notepad++ is really good right out of the box.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Of course, Vim is a good contender for comparison as well, so I'll include it. I find Emacs much easier to learn, which will help speed up productivity for newer users. It seems much faster than VIM and VSCode, especially under load. It's highly highly customizable, in ways other editors don't stack up against. Its lack of bloat also is a nice addition to a great product.
Read full review Notepad for Windows, Microsoft Word...LibreOffice Writer....I have used all of these for code writing and editing. Once again I like the universal feel of Notepad++. Basic Notepad, is just that, basic...and kind of clunky for what it is. This is a cool that I have installed on all my computers and also keep it on a thumb drive if I need it elsewhere.
Read full review Return on Investment Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all. It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched. Read full review Productivity has increased for developers. It's free so instead of buying a piece of software, you can use this to replace many of them that may only specialize in one thing. It gives our developers confidence knowing they have such a reliable, free tool at their disposal. Read full review ScreenShots