IDE Fight: Geany (ooh) vs. gedit (What!?) (Don’t worry–it’s close)
In my Python pursuits,I’ve used three IDEs to write the code. Geany, IDLE, and gedit (aka ‘Text Editor’ in Ubuntu) (OK, OK! I know gedit’s actually a text editor! But I’m using it as an IDE! Calm down!)
I’m kind of developing a love for the bullet form of review, since it keeps things concise. Also note that this is not very technical, it’s just what Timmy-the-end-user likes and dislikes.
- I used IDLE for about five minutes. I didn’t like it. Don’t ask why, it’s the same feeling I had when I tried KDE. The gut-reaction, pseudo-phobia, I-can’t-deal-with-this moment. I’m sure it’s great, I just don’t like it. Case closed.
- Geany is definitely…bigger than gedit, and it’s written with an eye to programming, not text editing. As such:
- Geany: When you open a new document, it has a nifty GPL license already put in.
- Geany: It has the all-powerful ‘Execute’ button, which is definitely faster than executing it with the Terminal.
- Geany: I’m not quite sure how sound the ‘Execute’ button is, it seemed a bit buggy to me, but that may just be a hallucination.
- Geany: When you type an if/while/for/etc., it’ll automatically indent. Which is kind of cool.
- Geany: Speaking about those, it has the ability to ‘fold’ ifs/whiles/comments/fors. So you can just minimize them into one line to save screen real estate. Which is also kind of cool.
- Geany: There’s variable auto-completion. So if you have variable user_input, just type in user, and a menu will show up asking if you want to autocomplete. It’s actually really intuitive.
- Geany: Wikipedia calls it ‘cross-platform’. So it runs on every major OS except for Macs.
- Both: They both have syntax highlighting.
- Both: They both have tabs.
- gedit: gedit’s lighter/faster/smaller.
- gedit: gedit has plugins (read: Stinkin’ AWESOME!!. So with plugins (easily addable from Edit=>Preferences|Plugins), some of the highlights are that you can:
- gedit: Have a Python interpreter chilling in the bottom of your screen. Which is HANDY.
- gedit: Mass indent/unindent (Nice if you add or remove an extra level of control flow)
- gedit: On the lame side, you need to have a Terminal running to execute your entire program. Though you should be executing less often with the interpreter.
- gedit: Since we’re on the lame side: It only runs in ‘Unix-like systems’. Sorry, Windows people! (I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of workaround, though that’s outside of the scope of this post)
Conclusions:
Don’t use IDLE (haha, just kidding. But I really don’t have anything else to say about it).
Use Geany if you want to feel like the editor knows what you’re thinking (variable autocompletion, auto-indenting), or if you execute your program like crazy.
Use gedit (which I personally prefer) if you want speed, an interpreter, or handy tools (aka plugins).
Really though? They’re both great, I’ve used them both, and the easiest way of knowing is to code in both of them and make an executive decision.
Pieta Said,
November 3, 2008 @ 9:23 am
The clincher for me is that gedit doesnt rewrite to files it has open on samba shares and i do a lot of that so i have switch (regretfully) to geany
Denis Said,
January 6, 2009 @ 3:15 am
Just use Emacs, man.
Timmy Said,
January 6, 2009 @ 4:45 am
To be honest, I actually use Vim a lot nowadays.
Ladislaio Said,
February 15, 2009 @ 8:02 am
Geany has mass (un)indent, you just highlight the code and then use (shift+) tab.
as for size – From the Arch Linux repros: (Some categories removed)
Name : geany
Version : 0.15-1
URL : http://geany.uvena.de
Depends On : gtk2>=2.6.0
Download Size : 2300.01 K
Installed Size : 7132.00 K
Name : gedit
Version : 2.24.3-1
URL : http://www.gnome.org
Depends On : gconf>=2.24.0 pygtk>=2.13.0 pygtksourceview2>=2.4.0 enchant>=1.4.2 desktop-file-utils iso-codes gtksourceview2>=2.4.2
Download Size : 5537.93 K
Installed Size : 18460.00 K
Geany is less than half the size and has much less in the way of dependencies(which is why there is a windows port). Of course, most of the depends for gedit are needed for gnome anyway, so that is really not a problem unless you are not using gnome.
Geany has a plugin system, but there are not the nice plugins for it yet, but there IS one that allows for split-window editing. It also supports a terminal at the bottom of the screen by default if you have vte installed – typing ‘python’ in this magically changes this into a python interpreter.
Geany also has some rather powerful search and search/replace functions. I do not know about gedit.
Gedit, allows for MUCH easier setting of syntax highlighting customization. It seems to launch somewhat faster(But they both cream Eric and Eclipse).
About the needing to launch the program from a terminal, you might want to try this little idea:
Create a little script that will launch your program (and nothing else)
make the script system executable (chmod +x)
Use your system settings to make a keyboard shortcut execute this script(do not know where exactly to do this in gnome)
When you change projects, edit this file to point to the new project.
(I have gotten a ton of mileage out of this system)
About python IDE’s, have you tried Eric? It is nice, full featured, and written in python for python, but may be too heavy for your purposes.(I normally use geany or vim myself)
Also, there is a pydev plugin for eclipse, AND a plugin to let it use vi – style keybindings. But eclipse is too slow for me.
happy hacking,
~ladislaio
Calvin Said,
April 2, 2009 @ 3:12 am
MonoDevelop. It’s much better than Geany. It has syntax highlighters, autoindent and completion, an execute button, , UI designer on par with Glade, and a new debugger.
David Said,
May 30, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
You should also give UliPad a try. It’s similar to both GEdit and Genie, but has some advantages over both.
For one thing, it has a lot of intellisense-like features, and they work very well. It’s written in 100% Python, and the developers (mainly a fellow from China who goes by the name of Limodou) are really expert, making use of functional programming paradigms. And it’s fast! It’s extensible by plug-ins and by direct development of the code base. It’s not too tough to configure for just plain text editing. Plus, it’s light as a feather.
Downsides? It’s not 100% complete. It’s missing a few (a VERY few) of the features we all love, like automated comment-line marking. But it’s so easy to write code for that soon, that omission will be filled in.
Here’s the link: http://code.google.com/p/ulipad/
Thomas Said,
March 18, 2010 @ 8:06 am
Geany is very nice. My only two wishes are pyflakes integration and a faster way to create a new file or subdirectory in the present working directory. (Right now it takes me 10 seconds and that it too much)
zenny Said,
April 7, 2010 @ 8:24 am
I checked with Geany and Ulipad and when I tested in my system where Geany is open with several files and Ulipad is just installed and run without any files, Geany was using 2.7% of the memory whereas Ulipad is using 5.2% of the memory. Thus, Geany is lighter in my system (debian, ubuntu)
flo Said,
May 16, 2010 @ 4:03 am
weird, i recognized geany starting 100 times faster as gedit, e.g. if you open a 50000 lines text file! So I used to use it as text editor and IDE
Bipartisan Said,
February 17, 2011 @ 7:33 am
First off this was a weird review or whatever.
Secondly, anyone can see that Geany is superior. Especially in terms of programming. It does the indenting, color highlighting, syntax, and has execute which works perfectly. It also, has autosave which is very useful. I could say the UI needs some work though, that can be a bit confusing and there should be a better way to control screen real estate. I think that it would be nice to have a floating windows mode a la GIMP. Though, all depends.
Gedit really is just a basic editor if you need to change something. The main drawback is that th
ERIC IDLE is actually pretty good on Windows
Anyway, I’ve been hearing too much hooplah on using vim or emacs to do programming as it’s easier so I guess I will give it a try. Though, I have emacs-23 the GUI on my computer and I am not impressed. I’ve seen videos of the commandline version and that looks so much more powerful and I know I just need to get familiar with it before passing final judgement.
As for vim…I really really cant stand the modes thing but I also, have seen more (and used vi a long time ago) that I know that vim is powerful. Im just lazy to learn it.
As for Windows. I am really loving Notepad++ I sincerely wish that Geany would take more cues from it or that Notepad++ would make a native Linux port (I know it runs in Wine but I dont use WINE), because I actually enjoy using Notepad++.
Thrawn Said,
October 10, 2011 @ 6:43 pm
@Bipartisan: I love NP++ too, but I’ve moved (happily) to Linux at work, and although I do use Wine, NP++ on Wine is buggy (maybe drunk?). Turns out that Geany is a cousin of NP++; they both have Scintilla at their cores. Geany has thus become my Linux replacement for NP++, and the only thing that I really miss is the Hex Editor plugin.
Yes, Gedit has plugins that make it more than just a basic editor, so you *can* use it as an IDE, but a basic one. I use it for opening log files, because its ‘file has changed’ messages are non-intrusive. But Geany has plugins, too, eg file browser, integration with version control, XML pretty-printing…and it comes with column-mode selection out of the box! And much better search & replace features (including Search in Files), similar to NP++.
No doubt Gedit is undervalued, but the level of effort required to make it powerful could probably be better invested in enhancing/learning another editor that is already powerful.
Alecks Said,
December 3, 2011 @ 2:25 am
I’ve always just used nano or Gedit for Python prgramming. Python is simple enough that you shouldn’t need fancy schmancy IDE features. That’s the whole point of the language. Gedit has everything you need.
Also, I use the built-in interpreter a LOT. It’s sooooo useful!