#Issue 2: WYSIWYG and other old-school magic
If you grew up on modern IDEs, this might sound unreal. If you did not, welcome home.
There was a time when the editor mattered more than your machine. Some developers even wrote code on paper first, then typed it out later. It never ran anywhere, but I got good grades, so it worked 😂.
The usual suspects
Back then, your tool of choice said a lot about you:
Notepad/WordPad: the bare-metal experience. No syntax colors, no linting, no mercy. Think of it as coding with training wheels removed, compared to today’s IDEs that come with radar, autopilot, and cup holders.Dreamweaver: the HTML and CSS party starter. Half WYSIWYG visual builder, half code editor, and 100% nostalgia. It was like the early version of “design + code” tools, before Figma-to-code became a thing.Notepad++: fast, lightweight, and surprisingly capable. It felt like a cheat code when you discovered tabs, search/replace that actually worked, and syntax highlighting. Today’s IDEs are Swiss army knives; Notepad++ was the sharp, no-nonsense pocket knife.Vim: for the brave, the persistent, and the keyboard ninjas.
By the way, WYSIWYG means “What You See Is What You Get” — basically the editor shows a live preview of what the page will look like. learn more.
The horrors of Vim
These days, my only interactions with it are in Git. Outside that, I am not one of the developers who wants to make my already difficult life 100 times harder by using Vim for actual coding. Newsflash though: there are developers who actually use Vim, and they are dangerously good at it.
For most new developers (me included), the hardest part of Vim is figuring out how to leave it. It is a tiny horror movie: you hit random keys, the screen yells at you, and you start bargaining with the universe. I am pretty sure that is why I never went all in on Vim. This thread says it all.
Final thoughts
These tools were rough around the edges, but they built a generation of resilient developers. If you used any of these, you already have a badge of honor. If you did not, now you know 😂
If you have a favorite editor story, I want to hear it.
Ciao!