Atom Shell / Electron
2013–todayGitHub. Still developed
Chromium and Node.js in one desktop runtime. Built for Atom in 2013, then adopted by VS Code.
Editors & IDEs as of Oct 2026
Rank 67 code editors and IDEs from 48 makers, from VS Code, Cursor, Zed, and JetBrains to Neovim, Emacs, Helix, and the classics that shaped how we write code. Drag them, tap to place, or use the keyboard. Your list saves in this browser, and you can share it as a link or an image.
Drag editors into tiers, or tap one and then a tier. Keyboard: focus a editor, press 1–6 to rank it and 0 to unrank, or Enter then the arrow keys to move it. Ctrl+Z undoes.
Popular is the most used editors and IDEs on the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, plus the AI-first IDEs and modal editors developers switch to. Switch to Current or All for 45 more.
Most modern editors and AI IDEs descend from a handful of shared codebases and modal lineages. Hover a logo for the details.
16 of the 67 editors and IDEs here run on Code OSS, the open-source core of VS Code — and 14 ship with a built-in AI coding agent (compare the agents themselves on the AI Harness Tier List).
GitHub. Still developed
Chromium and Node.js in one desktop runtime. Built for Atom in 2013, then adopted by VS Code.
GitHub. Retired
GitHub’s hackable editor that gave birth to Electron and Tree-sitter. Retired in 2022; Pulsar carries on the fork.
Microsoft. Still developed
Monaco and Electron under an MIT license. Nearly every modern AI IDE is a fork of this repository.
Bill Joy (UC Berkeley). Kept running, no longer developed
Written for BSD Unix on a Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal, where Esc and hjkl sat right under the fingers.
Bram Moolenaar. Still developed
Began on the Amiga as “Vi IMitation” before becoming “Vi IMproved.” Still shipped on almost every Unix system.
Neovim Contributors. Still developed
Refactored Vim with first-class Lua, built-in LSP, and Tree-sitter, sparking distributions like LazyVim.
Maxime Coste. Still developed
Flipped Vim’s grammar from verb–object to selection–verb, with multiple cursors as the core primitive.
Helix Contributors. Still developed
Brought Kakoune’s selection–action model to Rust with Tree-sitter, LSP, and multi-cursor support out of the box.
Richard Stallman & Guy Steele. Retired
“Editing MACroS” written at MIT’s AI Lab for the TECO line editor on the PDP-10.
GNU Project. Still developed
The first flagship program of the GNU Project, built around an Emacs Lisp core where the editor itself is user code.
IBM / Eclipse Foundation. Still developed
IBM’s Java IDE and Rich Client Platform, spun out to the independent Eclipse Foundation in 2004.
TypeFox & Eclipse Foundation. Still developed
A vendor-neutral cloud and desktop IDE framework compatible with VS Code extensions, powering Arduino IDE 2.
JetBrains. Still developed
One JVM platform and PSI syntax tree underneath every JetBrains IDE and Google’s Android Studio.
Neil Hodgson. Still developed
A standalone C++ source-editing component that powers Notepad++, Geany, and Code::Blocks.
KDE. Still developed
KDE’s embeddable C++/Qt text editor framework, shared by Kate, KWrite, and KDevelop.
Apache & JetBrains. Still developed
JVM editors outside the IntelliJ and Eclipse workbenches: Apache’s Swing-based NetBeans Platform and JetBrains’ Skia-rendered Fleet.
Zed & Lapce Contributors. Still developed
Written from scratch in Rust with GPU-accelerated UI frameworks and rope data structures inspired by Xi-editor.
Microsoft. Still developed
Microsoft’s Windows COM/WPF IDE architecture — completely separate from VS Code — plus its former MonoDevelop macOS sibling.
Apple, Bare Bones, MacroMates & Panic. Still developed
Mac-only editors built directly on Macintosh System 7, NeXTSTEP’s Project Builder, and Apple’s native AppKit/Cocoa text system.
Sublime HQ, Qt & Posit. Still developed
Cross-platform desktop editors and IDEs written in C++ with custom hardware-accelerated rendering or Qt.
Replit, StackBlitz, Jupyter & Adobe. Still developed
Browser-native workbenches built on CodeMirror, Monaco, Lumino, or WebAssembly containers rather than forked from Code OSS.
GNU & Open Source. Still developed
Modeless terminal editors where typing inserts text immediately and shortcuts follow standard modifier keys.
Dashed logos mark editors whose creators or codebases grew out of that earlier foundation.