Text Editors

• Vi (or Vim now-a-days) is a standard text editor on all Linux systems. It is specifically tailored for programmers, but requires getting used to. Tends to be neglected by new programmers, used to windows GUI editors. Vim is fully scriptable, using its internal script language, or perl.
  
  
• Emacs and XEmacs are much more sophisticated then Vi. Very easy to start working with them, yet hard to really master their advanced features. They are also very scriptable (using e-lisp), making it possible to turn them into whatever one wishes. They also can be used, out-of-the-box, as IDEs, from which one compiles their program, runs the debugger, etc.
  
  
• On the graphical side, NEdit is an example of a rather nice GUI editor, very easy to get started with, yet supports basic features such as syntax highlighting.
  
  
• I will NOT have a good word for PICO programmers - the evil creation of the last decade in our lovely universities. This is NOT a programmers editor, and if you use it now - switch over to something else. The editor lacks most basic features (global search and replace, backward search, it automatically wraps long lines by default, has no syntax highlighting support...).