So you’re just arrived here because the headline looks cool for grabbing top 5 JavaScript IDE ? Glad you found it interesting. Now the little voice from your mind whispering you to jump straight to the list and glance all names of IDE’s & leave? Well don’t ever do that mistake! Whenever you’re on the hunt for development tools & tricks, it’s always best to go through all the nooks and corners of tools to capture the best in everything. And trust me! The ideas whatever you grab will definitely turn out to be a salvage one day and it will surely help you out whenever you got puzzled with some optimistic logic. Let it be aside, moving to the blog, it’s really hard to find right one among crowded tools so I have also updated the strength and downside of each tools along with the list so it would be easier for you to make the right choice.
Quick View Of IDE
IDE is the integrated Development Environment kit which is ideally developed to help out with debugging, code editing and automation and one of the biggest advantage of choosing IDE is, it has the most promising debugging feature which has the ability for allowing us to perform testing so instantly we can test the code and run whereas other JavaScript editors are mostly failed to give this support unless the inputs are produced in a text format.
5) Komodo Edit
Komodo Edit is developed by ActiveState, they have a paid version of Komodo IDE but this is open source and this will get you through most of your day to day job routines. The main features are as follows,
- Multi-language support
- Multi-cursor and Multiple selections
- Code Mini-Map
- Full keyboard navigation (Commando)
- Search Scopes
The one thing I like in Komodo over other IDE is its project and places manager, which makes it a breeze switching between projects and working in two projects at the same time. This is a good option if you can’t afford the paid version of Komodo Edit and needs a native application instead of an electron-based editor.
4) Sublime Text
Definitely, Sublime was my favorite IDE before I landed with my current IDE setup, The main selling point of sublime was its plugin echo system. Sublime will be the second top in the number of plugins available ( First would go to Vim). Some would argue that sublime is not an IDE its a text editor and I have to agree with them. But when you have sublime its almost easy to configure it to use with any language by installing a couple of plugins. The main selling points for sublime are as below.
- Performance
- Plugins & Customization
- Split Editing
- Command Palette
- Goto Anything (Code and Editor options)
- Multi-selection and Cursor
If you are the kind of person who doesn’t want all the heaviness of an IDE and just like your tailored setup, sublime is your best bet. You can install it and add a few plugins and then you can start working like working in an IDE. Though sublime is paid tool there is a free version without any time limit.
Beware some of the sublime text plugins won’t play nice when installed together, which could ruin your setup. This is freemium software which means you can use it as long as you wants but it’ll bother you with little ‘Buy me’ alerts here and there.
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3) Atom
Atom is designed as a text editor but it can work quite well as an IDE and its a great choice for front-end development. It shares many of the same qualities that sublime has like lightweight, faster startup time, etc.
You can change this into an IDE or on par with an IDE using simple configurations which are built within the editor, Notable features of the atom are,
- Teletype – Allows you to share your code and collaborate in real-time with others
- Atom IDE – set of packages which turn the text editor into a powerful IDE
- Github Integration – Do almost everything you do in GitHub right from your editor.
- Built-in package manager – Aids in installing plugins easily
Atom is built on top of Electron which is an excellent cross-platform framework. But some people notice that to be resource hungry, But you can definitely try Atom and find out yourself.
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2) Visual Studio code
VS code is introduced around 3 years ago and within the short time its gathered a lot of users and built a strong community around it. Visual studio is primarily focused on web development and has built-in support for Typescript, Javascript and CSS. It can be extended with plugins to gain support for other languages such as Python, C++, C#. The main features of visual studio code are,
- Intellisense – Context-aware auto-complete and suggestions
- Terminal – Integrated terminal so you don’t have to switch windows
- Debugging – Probably this is one of the best integrated debugging experience on a free IDE
- VCS – Built-in support for git & SCM
- Plugins – A loads of plugins are available for VS Code and it’s highly customizable
- Community – The community around VS code is great and growing rapidly, so you’ll get instant help on anything.
VS Code also built on top of the electron framework, which can be memory hungry sometimes.
1) Webstorm
This is the only paid IDE in this list and there is a reason this is included here, JetBrains did an amazing job at their line of products that it is almost impossible to find something on par with webstorm for front-end development. This my current IDE and I’ve been using it for almost 4 years now and you will never have to look for an alternative if you can afford this. It has all the bells and whistles that the other IDEs has and it has much more.
- Integrated Terminal
- Integrated Version control system – Git, SVN, and Mercurial
- Intellisense (Context-aware autocomplete)
- Completely customizable (Almost every bit of the IDE can be tailored to your needs)
- Vim mode – If you love vim but need an IDE
- Automatic code inspection and reporting – Trust me, this will save you from a lot of issues
- Built-in Refactoring support
- Integrated debugging
- Integrated REST Client
Though this is a paid IDE, its worth every penny you pay for it. If you can afford it or your company is providing you with a license for any preferred IDE this will be a great choice. You can try it for one month and if you’re a student or an Open-source organization then chances are for you to get a free license from JetBrains, more on it here.
We’ve finished our comparisons and Webstorm is the actual winner here, but since it is a paid one so we can declare VS code as the winner because it is free and it’s almost on par with Webstorm. Hope you find it helpful then do share with your friends, On the go, don’t forget to subscribe us to receive more technical blogs & latest updates on your favorite frameworks and from diverse technologies straight to your inbox .
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