If you’re a software developer, you know that the IDE, and specifically the editor, you use becomes a natural extension of the way you think and work.
So often, the editor we use is a factor of the project we’re working on … we use the right tool for the job (or more specifically … the editor in the IDE we’re using). The question of “what is your favorite editor?” can only be answered when there is no pragmatic environmental factor influencing us. You just need to edit some file .. it’s not a C# file, it’s not a Java file, it’s not an XML file … its just some text file (the issue comes up more often than you might think).
I’ve been a dev for nearly 30 years now and a good deal of that was in Microsoft space. I actually worked with Visual C++ 1.0 (the predecessor to Visual Studio), released in Feb. 1993, back when it was installed from 20 floppy disks because not everyone had the ability to read a CD (DVD’s weren’t even around yet). I’ve worked with every version of Visual C++ & Visual Studio since then. As a result, Visual Studio was my go-to editor.
Over the past few years, I’ve been dug in hard in the Android space. Until the past few weeks, JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA (the tool that Android Studio is built on) was my preferred Android dev environment but as much as I liked IntelliJ, Visual Studio was the tool I used to edit an arbitrary text file.
With the release of Android Studio, I feel like the IntelliJ environment (already fantastic) is even better. And just the other day it occurred to me … why am I firing up Visual Studio to edit a text file when I already have Android Studio open. I love working in Android Studio and as I said … I pretty much always have it open.
So with that I realized … after nearly 20 years of using Visual Studio as my go-to editor … Android Studio is now my Editor-Of-Choice.
Here’s looking forward to another 20 years.!!
For information on getting started developing Android applications or working with Android Studio, checkout Jim’s Android programming courses on Pluralsight including his latest course.
Jim Wilson (a.k.a. hedgehogjim) 