I enjoy using Visual Studio as an all-in-one IDE for Windows programming, but when I’m writing code for the web, I prefer simpler text editors. I’ve tried many, and eventually settled on Notepad++ sometime last year.

What I really like about Notepad++ (besides the fact that it’s free) is how lightweight it is. It fires up instantly, just like classic Notepad does, and at the same time includes all the features that I want, including syntax highlighting, auto-completion, brace matching and auto-indentation, tabs, support for regular expressions, macros etc.

As I was working on a project this morning, it occurred to me that I should mention a custom syntax highlighting style called Ruby Blue that I’ve been using (image above, courtesy of the author). It’s quite surprising how beneficial a good font and syntax highlighting scheme can be, and Ruby Blue, coupled with DejaVu Sans Mono or Consolas, works very well for me.

The Ruby Blue style is also available for Vim and TextMate.

Do you have a favorite text editor, monospace font, and syntax highlighting scheme?

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