Open Source GNU Emacs Alternatives

Vim dates back all the way to 1991 when Vim's author, Bram Moolenaar released it to the public. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. The software is released as free and open-source software under the Vim License. Vim is often called a "programmer's editor," as it relies more on customization of shortcuts and makes heavy use of macros that can be combined with muscle memory to achieve maximum proficiency. Vim was designed for use in both command-line interfaces and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface.

A free and open source IDE based on Electron and Atom, developed by Microsoft. Visual Studio Code or VS Code is an extensible IDE or coding editor that is loved by many developers around the globe. The editor combines a streamlined UI with advanced code assistance, code nagivation and intellisense.

A free and open-source IDE for macOS, Linux, and Windows developed by GitHub Inc. The application is build on the Electron framework and provides a wide eco-system of add-ons that can be used to extend the IDE further. Atom is loved by developers across the globe.

A free and open-source lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK with basic IDE features. Geany is designed and developed with performance in mind, and provides limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. Geany is available for a wide variety of operating systems including BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows.

TextWrangler is an all-purpose text and code editor for macOS. TextWrangler is now BBEdit.