X-SciTE

Programming languages are responsible for translating your commands into input readable by your computer to allow smooth interaction. This task needs to be accomplished by programmers that need to write down dozens of lines of code. The tools of choice are usually advanced text editors such as X-SciTE, with support for most of your needs.

Since your project is text-based, not a lot of space is taken up by files. The same can be said for the application, which comes in a pretty light package. This comes in handy because this is the portable version of SciTE you can store along with project files on a USB Flash drive.

In terms of visuals, everything is kept simple, with your canvas taking up most of the main window, and several controls cleverly fitted to the upper toolbar. Syntax highlighting is implemented for an impressive array of programming languages, such as C/C++, CSS, Java, Pascal, Python, Ruby, SQL and a lot more.

Multiple projects can be kept active at a time and this comes in handy because of the supported formats. File formats are as abundant as the programming languages included, with export options adding PDF, HTML and LaTeX.

Line numbering is implemented so you can easily keep track of your code, or quickly jump to lines of interest with a dedicated tool. Search further adds to flexibility, and you also find tools to save bookmarks, suitable for large projects.

In order to keep the code easy to read, several functions help you trim it by removing additional spacing, change casing, merge paragraphs, and even auto completion, which is sadly triggered manually, with no options to make it pop up as you type.

There are options to edit functionality and visuals, but they are a pain even for advanced users. This is because each opens corresponding lines of code, with no proper window for an easy approach.

All things considered, we can state that X-SciTE comes with good intentions, especially because it's portable, and can meet most programing demands. It supports an impressive amount of languages and formats, letting you manage multiple projects at a time, and with a little more work on functionality and proper options handling, it might just become the right tool for coding.