Emacs is an interactive text processing environment built on top of a lisp interpreter. You just happen to get text editing along for the ride.

M-x compile and M-x gdb are quite nice though, as is M-x shell. I use them a lot. I think it's fair to say that it has basic IDE features because of those, along with the language specific editing modes, auto-indentation and syntax highlighting.

I don't know if vim has similar features, as I don't use it much.
I still use vi for quick edits of system files, but I do all my programming (mostly C) in emacs.

What's the difference between Android Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm? They're pretty much the same IDE but for different languages

That’s the difference.

Of course geany.

My work got me into VSCode, and it is *nice*. I finally have an IDE I like

Because "none" is not an IDE, it's a lack of an IDE, and this poll is for what is the best IDE.

It's like asking: "What's the best car?" and you say "none". "None" is not a car, so it can't be the best car.

To get something along the lines of what you're looking for would be a different poll question. Maybe something like:

What do you prefer to use for software development?

• IDE
• plain text editor w/o syntax highlighting
• plain text editor w/ syntax highlighting
• other (please specify)

But then you might have people ask why "I don't develop software" isn't an option... :shrug:

Voted Geany.

The Perfect software suite (Writer, Calc, etc. bundled with my Columbia XT-clone) used Emacs key bindings and they are permanently burned into my synapses. It was natural to rely on MicroEmacs as an IDE when I began switching to UNIX via Coherent. Nowadays I'd really miss time not having Emacs' Tramp mode available when needing to work on multiple systems.

I did NOT vote on this pole, but if there was a "least favorite" poll, I would pick android studio.
That thing was so big, so slow, and so upsetting, it sure did not get me to like Java or Android development.
Since I primarily work in Lua, I don't have much use for a build system. when I worked with NASM (And I LOVE assembly) I used a shell script. I still use shell scripts to do setup things. I should probably learn Makefile, but I haven't needed it yet. Once I share my creations with the world, they might resent me for it... I recently echoed code to Lua and piped that to SQL in a shell script. Karma has yet to catch up with me. Maybe that is why people have IDES.
TL;DR
My favorite IDE is: nil

My favorite build system: nil

My favorite revision control system: mkdir

As the only difference between VSCodium and Visual Studio Code is the absence of telemetry/tracking in the first, differentiating this 2 choices would be sociallly and politcally meaningful.

hi there - awesome thread

thx for coming up with this!

well - i am changing from Atom to VSCode/VSCodium,


i use VSCode on Win and VScodium on Linux.

I love VSCode for its fast & sustainable development. it is one of the biggest projects at github.

I loved ATOM for its great Github-integration - but over the years i thoguht - i should test a new system.


VSCode has got a superlarge userbase -- this is a great thing and ensurey the fast & sustainable development

Visual Studio Code + VSC

Mine is LiteIDE, an IDE for golang. Quite nice and to the point, which I like.

An up-to-date version of it isn't available in any Ubuntu repositories that I use, including the Snap store, so I'm using Gedit and a terminal for now. I don't like installing software directly from the Web.

Unfortunately I don't see any IDE that I use, neither vim/neovim, nor JetBrains CLion... 8((

Vim is in the text editors poll.