I’m teaching (or trying to teach) computer programming to a grad-student. Her previous experience amounts to little more than writing spreadsheet formulae. Which IDE or text editor should I recommend?
Please bear in mind that:
- I only meet my student about once a week.
- She uses Windows and I use Linux.
- She doesn’t have a community of users on hand.
- She doesn’t have much money to spend.
Edit: The languages she’s learning at the moment are Perl and R. (Sorry … for forgetting to mention them earlier.)
Edit: Thanks for all your answers!
The most highly recommended editors are jEdit and Notepad++.
If I can find a way to give my student adequate support for Notepad++ (e.g. by running it under Wine) or if I think that she can manage without support from me, then I’ll recommend that. If not, I’ll go for jEdit.
Apologies, once again, to those who saw the question before I got around to listing the languages that I’m teaching.
Start off simple. Do not not scare her with an IDE! They are overwhelming at first and are not core to developing software. I learnt rudimentary Java with Crimson Editor. If I started again I’d probably go for Notepad++.