“These editors are especially useful for developing Java
software for two main reasons. First, since Java is portable across
operating systems, you’re more likely to want to develop and test
on multiple operating systems. Second, different tools require
different infrastructure to run. For example, a text editor written
in Tcl/Tk (another development language that also runs on multiple
operating systems) requires the Tcl/Tk runtime engine. These
editors, since they are all written in Java, require the Java
runtime engine. If you are developing in Java, you must already
have this component, so you should have all the necessary
infrastructure already in place.”
“Even though these editors focus a lot on Java development, they
are text editors, so you can edit any text file you’d like. In
addition, most of these editors have special syntax coloring modes
for a number of programming languages.”
“Text editors are central to the process of developing software.
Regardless of the language, you use a text editor to make changes
to the source code, and then run the code. Depending on the
language, you may need to compile, or compile and link the code
first. Typically this is done by invoking shell commands, such as
jikes or javac for compiling Java code or cc for compiling and
linking C code, or make to run a number of tasks to build a
software package.”
“Since text editors are central to the process of developing
software, many editors provide more than just text editing. You’ll
find shell access (to run the aforementioned compilation tools, for
example), integration with source code control systems, and other
special features. Furthermore, all of these editors are
configurable in ways that are not readily apparent. Each supports
and underlying extension API.”