In: computer, software, writing.

Text editor

A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text.
Text editors can be used to edit files such as: configuration files, documentation files and programming language source code.

Specialised editors:

Source code editors have additional functionality, to facilitate the production of source code
IDEs (integrated development environments) are designed to manage and streamline large programming projects
World Wide Web HTML editors are dedicated to the task of creating web pages
TeX editors are often used by mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists to produce articles and books
Outliners, also called tree-based editors, combine a hierarchical outline tree with a text editor
Distraction-free editors provide a minimalistic interface to isolate the writer from the rest of the applications and operating system, to able to focus on the writing process without distractions

Personal

My fists computer had Windows, so I used M$ editors first. I liked Wordpad for taking notes and writing short stories. M$ Word was way too bloated and slow for my taste.
For programming, I used Notepad quite a bit, until I discovered Notepad++.
I’m trying to remember what editors I used, in historical order:

Notepad & Wordpad
SciTE / SCIntilla
Notepad++ - while working for Nexial? Terradox?
PyCharm - when I was a freelancer, working with Django for AtlasTrans
Sublime-text - before and during Luxoft
Atom editor - before and after Akasha
VS-Code - before and after Digit
NeoVIM - for a short time
Emacs - probably the last editor I will ever need
I’m still using Sublime-text and VS-Code sometimes

A list of editors

Aaa+

Pico, Nano
VI, VIM

Amp

A complete text editor for your terminal, written in Rust
Heavily inspired by Vi/Vim
https://github.com/jmacdonald/amp
https://amp.rs

Emacs

Extensible, customizable text editor, an OS, and much more
https://gnu.org/software/emacs
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs

Helix

A post-modern text editor
Kakoune & neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
https://helix-editor.com

Iota 💀

Simple Rust text editor
https://github.com/gchp/iota

Kakoune

Modal editor, faster as in fewer keystrokes, multiple selections, orthogonal design, somewhat similar to Vim, writen in C++
https://github.com/mawww/kakoune
http://kakoune.org

Lapce

Lightning-fast and powerful code editor, written in Rust
Designed with Rope Science from the Xi-Editor which makes for lightning-fast computation, and leverages Wgpu for rendering
https://github.com/lapce/lapce
https://lapce.dev

Lite 💀

Lightweight text editor written in LUA.
https://github.com/rxi/lite
https://github.com/rxi/lite-plugins

Lite XL

A lightweight, simple, fast, feature-filled, and extremely extensible text editor written in C, and Lua, adapted from lite.
https://github.com/lite-xl/lite-xl
https://github.com/lite-xl/lite-xl-plugins
https://lite-xl.com

Mg (micro Emacs)

Micro (GNU) Emacs is a small, fast, and portable Emacs-like editor for users who cannot, or do not want to, run the real Emacs
https://github.com/troglobit/mg
https://man.troglobit.com/man1/mg.1.html

Micro

Modern and intuitive terminal text editor, written in Go
https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
https://micro-editor.github.io

Ne (nice editor)

ne, the nice editor, written in C
based on the POSIX standard and runs (we hope) on almost every UN*X machine
https://github.com/vigna/ne
http://ne.di.unimi.it

NeoVIM

NeoVIM is a modern fork of VIM
https://github.com/neovim/neovim
https://neovim.io

O

Text editor and a simple IDE
Configuration-free text editor and IDE limited to VT100
https://github.com/xyproto/o
https://orbiton.zip

Ox

Simple Rust text editor that runs in your terminal
https://github.com/curlpipe/ox

Pepper

Simple and opinionated modal code editor for your terminal
Inspired from Vim and Kakoune
https://git.sr.ht/~lessa/pepper
https://vamolessa.itch.io/pepper
https://github.com/vamolessa/pepper – archived