Tool #1 in the BI developer’s toolbox
If you are an IT professional working with business intelligence software, or any software for that matter, than you accumulate a collection a of software tools that help you get the job done. Tool #1 is the text editor. Text is software’s raw material, used when coding, scripting, configuring and documenting. The default text editor for Windows is Notepad, and it is what most people end up using for everything. However, there are many better options. The importance of a text editor in the IT industry is evidenced by the massive collection of open source editors available on SourceForge and Freshmeat.
The Pragmatic Programmer offers some guidelines for making an informed choice of text editor:
- Configurable - the look and feel must be comfortable, and keyboard shortcuts must be available
- Extensible - integrates with other tools (like Cygwin or Perl), has a plug-in architecture
- Programmable - ability to automate multi-step tasks that have to be repeated ad infinitum
- Syntax highlighting
- Auto-completion
- Auto-indentation
- Templates
- Access to help systems from within the editor
- IDE features - compile, debug, preview
The best advice the authors offer is simply this: “Use a Single Editor Well” (Tip 22)
My current favorite editors for Windows are Metapad (which replaces Notepad) and Notepad++. For Unix/Linux, I like VIM. I rarely work on a Mac, but if I did more often, I would surely use TextMate.
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