Notepad++ is a popular free and open source text editor available under the GPL license, featuring syntax highlighting and folding, auto-complete, multi-document management, and ac customizable GUI.
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Overleaf
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Overleaf is a collaborative writing and publishing system designed to make the process of producing academic papers much quicker for both authors and publishers, from Writelatex Limited in London.
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
Overleaf is good to use in a lot of scenarios where something is to be written as a group. However, I believe that it is only good up to a certain amount of people working on the document at once. While I am unsure when it becomes too much, I got no doubt that there is a limit for when it is that good. Though normally, our group size of up to six people has been fine to work with in Overleaf.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Overleaf promotes collaboration and has much better scientific formatting, which makes it great for research papers. It allows for much smoother and more professional looking documents, with easy to change and configure formatting. It is very difficult to insert mathematical formulas and long complex derivations in Microsoft Word, and formatting in Microsoft Word is also very finicky.
