Programming Text Editor

You will need a text editor to use to write programs. In particular, there are number of editors you should not use for programming including, Microsoft Word, NotePad, TextEdit or Libre Office. These editors tend not to store "plain text" which is how we need to write programs. Programs cannot have things like bold, italics, or different fonts - and even if you don't use these things in your file, the files are stored in a format that can represent all this "pretty" text stuff - and that confuses compilers and interpreters.

If you already have an editor or development environment installed please keep using it. There is no need to install another editor just for this course.

If you have a programmer editor or development environment you like, you can use it. If not, we recommend these free text editors for software development:

• Thonny – Free, open source, simple
• Phoenix Code – Free, open source, more advanced
• VS Code – Free, feature-rich, includes AI assistance

You can use any programmer editor you like for this course.