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JavaScript Code Editors and IDEs

There are lots of free and premium Code Editor's and IDEs available in the market for JavaScript development.

But let's first explore what is the difference between Code Editor and IDE

What is integrated development environment (IDE)

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software package that brings together essential tools needed for writing and testing software.

A typical IDE contains:

  • Code editor
  • Graphical user interface (GUI)
  • compiler/interpreter and debugger
  • Code editing automation 
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Intelligent code completion
  • Code refactoring support
  • Local build automation
  • Source code library
  • Build automation tools
  • Support for model-driven development (MDD)

Most of the modern IDEs are also designed to integrate with third-party version control libraries, such as GitHub and Apache's Subversion.

On the other hand code editors (also known as text editor) are not as feature rich as IDEs, but they are lightweight and fast. The code editors are mostly used for creating and editing files, they lack most of the features available in IDEs like debugging, build automation tools and model-driven development support.

Most popular JavaScript code editors and IDEs

Following is a list of most popular JavaScript code editors and IDEs

  1. Microsoft Visual Studio (IDE)
  2. Microsoft Visual Studio Code (IDE)
  3. Webstorm (IDE)
  4. Atom (IDE)
  5. Komodo (IDE)
  6. Eclipse (IDE)
  7. NetBeans (IDE)
  8. Brackets (Code Editor)
  9. Sublime Text (Code Editor)
  10. Vim (Code Editor)
  11. Notepad++ (Code Editor)

There are lots of other IDEs and code editors available in the market, you can use the one you like the most.