What your favorite text editor reveals about your personality

Show me your editor and I’ll tell you who you are.

How you write is who you are. Photo by micah boswell on Unsplash

Disclaimer: The author is an avid Vim-user, so this story may not be unbiased. Besides, gender-unspecific language is used for obvious reasons. Which doesn’t mean that this story is free of stereotypes!

Brackets: The Yuppie

When did the word Yuppie go out of fashion? It’s a shame, because it fits perfectly to the type of person that uses Brackets: It’s that kid with horn-rimmed glasses, tweed pants and a chest-long, meticulously trimmed beard who’s obsessed with the espresso in the café around the corner.

Why? Because they can make any site look breathtaking, and Brackets is their go-to tool for that. Plus, for reasons that nobody understands, the layout reminds them of the packaging of their favorite beard shampoo…

WebStorm: The JavaScript-World Enthusiast

The kind of person who’s clever but doesn’t open their mouth very much. The kind of person with wild dreams that nobody knows about. The type that would like to see their name in programmers’ Hall of Fame but keeps quiet about that.

Or, in other words, your average JavaScript developer. That’s the type that uses WebStorm: Tailored to JavaScript like no other editor, this one is made for people who do JavaScript-World and nothing else.

Act small, dream big. Use WebStorm. Photo by Joe Ciciarelli on Unsplash

Coda: The Web-Developer

Solely for OS X, Coda is for that person next door that always runs around with a shiny new MacBook and creates elusive graphics for the web.

They’re usually city-hoppers, never staying in one place for more than a few months. They’ve tried working on a farm, but noticed that the chicken drove them mad while they were trying to code.

One can’t help the feeling that this person is hiding a thousand books worth of life experience behind their business-casual attire. But they‘re masters at hiding their inner secrets from the outside world, both on- and offline.

Notepad++: The Kid

Oh, the faithful folks who still haven’t abandoned Windows! Welcome to the world of messy hair, thick tinted spectacles and navy-blue sweaters that look like they’ve been picked up from a nearby thrift shop, bathed in pizza dough and then washed until they’re clean enough to not lose that pizza attire.

Or, in other words, welcome to the world of Notepad++: A lightweight tool for MS Windows which promises to save the environment by making your computer less busy. It’s true, the users of Notepad++ care about their CPU-space as much as about the environment! There’s just one thing they care about even more and it’s — you guessed it — pizza.

Sublime Text: The Messie

They have no idea which file they put where, or what they called that variable fifty lines earlier in the code. And for reasons that nobody understands, they expect their text editor to take care of all the mess.

Welcome to Sublime Text — the text editor that cuts through all the clutter. With so many popups and instant switching even between modified and unsaved files, this is the editor that those people use who think their messiness isn’t only efficient in their heads, but also in their projects.

If your desk looks like this, use Sublime. Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

Atom: The Collaborator

Your typical Atom user is the friendliest person on earth. Always sporting pastel-colored sweaters and bringing breakfast for the whole office, what’s not to like about them?

They’re always there when a helping hand is needed, but they never ask for praise. Always self-sacrificing, if they’ve achieved something, they let somebody else collect the prize money. But everyone knows that nothing would work without them. They’re the glue of every team, the knuckle of every book. Welcome to your average Atom-user.

Visual Studio Code: The Perfectionist

Their shoes are squeaky clean, their hair is neatly groomed, and on their desk there is not one speck of dust. They’re not unfriendly, but they’re the person who spots the hair in the soup before everyone else. Everything needs to be perfect; there is no space for unwanted debris in their life.

The same goes for their style of coding. Never — and I repeat, never! — would they write their name under a piece of code that contains even the tiniest of bugs. That’s the user of Visual Studio Code: Debugging is made so easy, you don’t even need a compiler any more. A must-have for every bug-averse coder.

NetBeans: The Coffee-Shopoholic

Green beans, coffee beans, NetBeans. The holy triad!

Your average NetBeans user is obsessed with code and beans. But especially beans. A day cannot start without a holy coffee bean brew in their favorite coffee shop. After that, they’ll stay for the rest of the day, frantically hacking around on their keyboard.

They’re of the anxious type. Always scared of losing out. Dressed slightly below casual (those jeans really need a wash), always a little jittery and unfocused, they don’t really need coffee to wake them up. They need coffee to calm themselves down. And code, of course.

TextMate: The Automator

Some people are born engineers. Do a task once? Boring. Do it twice? Automate!

That’s your average user of TextMate: An engineer with OS X (because that’s the only system where it runs). The quiet person in the corner of the office. The person that never seems to work hard, yet their results are beyond amazing. The person who doesn’t say much in meetings, but asks brilliant questions. The person who doesn’t socialize a lot, but would always help you out on a problem.

The only downside? Their work often goes unnoticed. It can take years before they get some recognition. That’s your average user of TextMate.

IntelliJ: The Optimizer

There’s always that one person in your group of friends who’s obsessed about every new productivity hack. Your average user of IntelliJ is that friend.

They’re the one who put butter in their coffee a few years back, practices the extremest forms intermittent fasting and drinks protein shakes at 4 A. M. in the morning. If you offer them a piece of cake, they’ll gladly take it — but only to be eaten in five hours, when fasting is over.

Their dress style is functional above all, and so is their haircut. It’s not bad taste, it just hasn’t got that X-Factor that other clothing has.

But despite all the focus on productivity, they’re not always the one with the greatest output…

If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk — then Dreamweaver is for you. Photo by Gregory Hayes on Unsplash

Dreamweaver: The Ego

Their hair is slick, their shirt is freshly pressed, their suit is worth a month’s salary. They’re nice to look at, but not so nice to speak to — because they don’t know any other topic apart from themselves. They think they’re savvy, but their technical skills are slightly underwhelming. They think they’re learning, but really they’re just bragging.

Welcome to your average user of Dreamweaver: Complete with a visual interface, this is an editor for show-offs. Secretly, they dislike coding. They don’t like the appeal of a command line interface or understand the power of automation. They’d rather impress their colleagues with that snazzy new website template. And why not? It gets them further in their career.

Vim: The Geek of Geeks

The person who hasn’t had a haircut for the last three years, and hasn’t brushed it for the last five months. The person who still wears mom’s sweaters for work. The person whose shoes are falling apart but who refuses to buy new ones (“85% of the material is still intact!”).

Welcome to your average user of Vim: It doesn’t get geekier than this.

One-half of the Editor War, Vim is for all those who think in rigidly systematic categories and don’t need much personalization. Vim is for those who like to learn a structure, then never let go of it. Vim is for the geeks of geeks.

Emacs: The Indecisive

Emacs is the go-to editor for all nerds who haven’t reached geek status. This is the kind of nerd who has a slight dislike for graphical user interfaces but can’t go without them. The kind of nerd who likes to code, but still wants their text editor to be capable of more than code.

The nerdy person in the corner who always drinks rosé wine. The person who, when asked a black-or-white question, will answer with an elaborate gray. The person who gets up at 11 a.m., not because they were sleeping before, but because they were too busy thinking about the optimal time to get up.

You suck at making decisions? Use Emacs.

Tell me your editor, and I’ll tell you whether you’re a geek. Photo by Marília Castelli on Unsplash

SpaceMacs: The Peacemaker

Your average SpaceMacs user is a teacher in academia. Elegantly dressed in worn-out clothes. With a fresh cactus in a smelly office. A beaming smile with tired eyes. And a laugh that is as weird as it is infectious.

They’re a person who wants to quit with the Editor War. A person who is not as indecisive as an Emacs user, but not as decidedly geeky as a Vimmer. A person who never wants to take center stage. A harmony-dependent person. Often with a purple terminal background.

Welcome to SpaceMacs — traditional and unspectacular.

You are what you code

… or how you code.

Did you choose your text editor based on who you are? Or did your text editor shape you into who you are today? You decide.

Edit, 5 March 2020: As Tylor Borgeson so rightly pointed out, IntelliJ was missing when this article was published. It is included now!

Also, after edmund munday’s comment Java-World was renamed to JavaScript-World — to clarify that JavaScript is very different from Java.

Edit, 21 March 2020: I added a brand new section on NetBeans, specially for Bran Lim!