Am I the only one who thinks a plain text editor beats a fancy IDE when you're first learning to code?

Ben Barnes · 2026-09-18T07:10:04.377511+00:00

I started with VS Code on day one because that is what every video told me to do, autocomplete and all. Then last month I wiped my laptop and forced myself to write a small to do list app in Notepad for two weeks. The difference was night and day for actually learning. With autocomplete I was hitting tab and watching code appear without knowing why it worked, and I could not explain my own loops when a friend asked. In plain text I had to type every bracket and semicolon, and I made about 40 mistakes that first week, but each one taught me something. Now I want to hear from people further along than me, did starting with a heavy editor slow you down, or am I just old and cranky about tabs?

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Am I the only one who thinks a plain text editor beats a fancy IDE when you're first learning to code? | Coding For Beginners - Guest Forum