Supercharging your coding productivity: How to help your text editor help you

As a full-stack developer, I spend the vast majority of my workday in my text editor writing code. It‘s the quintessential tool of the trade, my constant companion in crafting software. A 2020 survey of over 20,000 developers found that over 90% spend 3+ hours per day in their code editor, with nearly a quarter spending 7+ hours per day.

Yet many developers, even experienced ones, make do with the default configuration of their editor and never fully leverage its capabilities. They spend precious time and mental energy on repetitive tasks that could be automated or streamlined with a bit of upfront editor optimization.

The impact of this is significant. A study by Stripe found that on average developers spend over 30% of their time on "bad code", costing companies billions in wasted productivity. Imagine how much of that time could be saved by eliminating tedious manual tasks and automating best practices right in your code editor.

As a tech lead who has mentored many junior and mid-level developers, I‘ve seen firsthand how a well-configured editor setup can accelerate learning, boost productivity, and make coding more enjoyable. It‘s not about chasing shiny new plugins but rather strategically employing editor features to optimize your workflow.

Choosing and customizing your editor

The first key step is choosing a text editor that fits your needs and style. While heavyweight IDEs like Eclipse and Visual Studio pack tons of features, they can also be clunky and resource-intensive. Most modern developers opt for lightweight, extensible code editors like VS Code, Sublime Text, or Atom.

Comparison of popular code editors

Editor	UI	Speed	Extensibility	Popularity (Stack Overflow 2021)
VS Code	Sleek, customizable	Fast	Extensive marketplace, monthly updates	71.06%
Sublime Text	Minimalist, fast	Extremely fast	Package control, Python API	28.47%
Atom	Highly customizable	Slower, memory-heavy	8000+ packages, customizable via web technologies	12.13%
Vim	Lightweight, keyboard-centric	Extremely fast	Plugins, fully customizable	24.89%

Ultimately, the "best" editor is the one that you enjoy using and that fits your workflow. Factors to consider include:

UI and visual customization options
Speed and performance
Extensibility and plugin ecosystem
Built-in features for your primary languages and frameworks
Cross-platform support (if needed)
Learning curve and ease of use

Especially for newer developers, I usually recommend starting with VS Code as it offers an excellent balance of power and simplicity. It has a huge extensions marketplace, regular updates, and tons of resources for learning.

However, the specific editor you choose is less important than taking the time to customize it to fit your needs. At minimum, I recommend setting up the following:

Install plugins for your primary languages and frameworks. For example, linters, formatters, syntax highlighters, and snippets.
Customize your color theme, font, and icons. A visually pleasing environment can boost your mood and motivation.
Learn the keyboard shortcuts for your most common tasks, like opening files, toggling sidebars, and launching the command palette.
Set up your editor to auto-save and auto-format on save. This ensures your code stays clean and avoids accidental data loss.

Taking an hour or two to customize your setup can pay huge dividends in your daily productivity and coding happiness. You‘ll minimize friction, reduce context switching, and be able to focus more deeply on problem-solving.

Key editor productivity features

Beyond the basics, there are several specific editor features that I consider essential for peak coding productivity:

Code linting and formatting

Linters are static code analysis tools that flag potential bugs and stylistic issues, while formatters auto-adjust your code syntax for consistency. Having these automated checks built right into your editor provides real-time feedback, catching errors early and keeping your codebase tidy.

Popular linters include ESLint for JavaScript, Rubocop for Ruby, and Pylint for Python. Formatters like Prettier and Black work across languages to enforce standards like consistent spacing, quotation marks, and line breaks.

By surfacing issues directly inline as you code, linters and formatters save huge amounts of manual debugging and cleanup time. Plus, they help enforce coding standards across teams, reducing back-and-forth in code reviews.

Snippets and templates

Snippets are reusable code templates that you can quickly insert to avoid repetitive typing. Most editors come with a set of language-specific snippets, like cl expanding to console.log() in JavaScript, or def expanding to a full function definition in Python.

You can also create your own snippets for patterns specific to your codebase. For example, a React component boilerplate:

"React Component": {
  "prefix": "rc",
  "body": [
    "import React from ‘react‘;",
    "",
    "const ${1:ComponentName} = () => {",
    "  return (",
    "    <div>",
    "      $2",
    "    </div>",
    "  );",
    "};",
    "",
    "export default ${1:ComponentName};"
  ],
  "description": "Creates a React functional component"
}

Paired with editor autocomplete, snippets can save you hundreds of keystrokes per day and make it lightning fast to scaffold out common code patterns.

Multi-cursor editing

Multi-cursor editing is a game-changer for batch editing and refactoring. By holding a keyboard modifier (like Alt or Option) while clicking, you can place multiple cursors in your code. Any edits you make will be applied to all cursor locations simultaneously.

I use this constantly for tasks like renaming variables, updating tags or class names, and extracting repeated logic into reusable functions. It‘s also handy for quickly duplicating lines or adding items to arrays and objects.

With a bit of practice, multi-cursor editing will become one of your most used editor powers for eliminating tedious manual editing.

Integrated terminal and debugging

Having an integrated terminal right in your editor is a huge time saver, eliminating the need to switch back and forth to a separate terminal window. You can run shell commands, manage dev servers, and see output without ever leaving your code.

Similarly, integrated debugging tools let you set breakpoints, inspect variables, and step through code execution directly in your editor. While the exact features vary by language, most modern editors support debugging for popular stacks like JavaScript, Python, and Java.

Being able to rapidly run and debug code in a single environment streamlines development and troubleshooting workflows. It‘s especially valuable when juggling multiple microservices or complex configurations.

Git integration

As the de facto version control system, Git is an essential part of most development workflows. Having robust Git tooling baked into your editor makes it much easier to stage, commit, push and pull code changes.

Features to look for include:

Inline diff indicators showing which lines have been added, modified or deleted
One-click staging and unstaging of files
UI for resolving merge conflicts
Visual log of commit history
Blame annotations showing who last modified each line of code

While the command line is great for complex Git tasks, having simple, visual Git tools in your editor is extremely convenient for day-to-day code changes and project tracking.

Future of AI-assisted coding

Beyond manual editor configuration, I‘m excited about the potential for artificial intelligence to further augment our coding workflows. In recent years we‘ve seen a surge of AI-powered coding tools that can intelligently autocomplete code, find bugs, and even auto-generate functions from natural language descriptions.

Some prominent examples include:

GitHub Copilot – An "AI pair programmer" that suggests entire lines and functions based on your code context
Tabnine – An AI code completion tool that adapts to your coding style and predicts multiple tokens at a time
Kite – An AI-powered code completion and documentation engine for Python
Sourcery – A tool that refactors your Python code to be cleaner, shorter, and more efficient

While still in the early stages, these AI assistants have immense potential to boost developer productivity and lower the barrier to entry for coding. They can offload much of the cognitive load of remembering syntax and language-specific details, freeing developers to focus on higher-level problem solving.

I believe we‘ll increasingly see AI baked into our text editors and IDEs, providing real-time suggestions and optimizations as we code. It‘s an exciting frontier that could redefine what it means to be a productive programmer.

Putting it all together

At the end of the day, investing in your text editor setup is about optimizing your experience as a developer. The goal is to minimize friction and tedious tasks so you can spend more time in flow, crafting elegant solutions to difficult problems.

But there‘s no one-size-fits-all approach. The "perfect" setup is the one that fits your unique needs, style, and technology stack. It takes experimentation and iteration to dial in your editor configuration, and it will likely evolve over time as new tools emerge and your work changes.

My advice is to adopt a mindset of continuous improvement with your coding environment. Regularly take stock of your pain points and bottlenecks, and proactively seek out editor features and plugins to streamline those areas. Stay curious about what other developers are using to be productive, and don‘t be afraid to invest time in honing your tools.

As you level up your text editor skills, I think you‘ll be surprised at how much more productive and enjoyable coding becomes. You‘ll be able to work faster, catch errors earlier, and stay in flow longer. And that ultimately translates to more impactful products, more valuable skills, and a more fulfilling career.

So take a few minutes today to help your text editor help you. Your future self will thank you. Happy coding!

Cover image: Leveraging VS Code extensions and themes for a tailored development workflow | Image by author via VS Code

Supercharging your coding productivity: How to help your text editor help you