<cat>Dev</cat> As noted in the <page text="welcome tutorial">Beginner_Tutorial_Intro</page> Lua is plain text, so you can edit it in notepad, but you'll probably find you want something a bit better. The editor you use is a personal preference - so it's up to you to choose one for yourself. The editors below are listed because they are the most popular editors in the Garry's Mod community. # Sublime Text [Sublime](https://sublimetext.com/) is a very good text editor as it is appealing and effective, it's also highly customizable and easy to use. It offers a number of features that will aid you in development, such as syntax highlighting, a minimap and a number of hotkeys. It also has a great [package manager](https://packagecontrol.io/) for installing plugins. The following are a few recommended packages to install: * [GLua Highlighting](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/GMod%20Lua) ([Facepunch thread](https://web.archive.org/web/20160907203732/https://facepunch.com/threads/1038951a)) * [Linting](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/SublimeLinter-contrib-glua) ⤶ ⤶ <image src="sublime_text.png" alt="700px"/>⤶ ⤶ <image src="sublime_text.png" alt="700px"/>⤶ # Visual Studio Code [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) is a lightweight counterpart to Visual Studio, similar to Sublime. It's customizable with extensions and is fairly easy to use. It has built in git support, and a large set of extensions [in the marketplace](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode). Here are some extensions that you should install: * [GLua Highlighting](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aStonedPenguin.glua) * [Linting](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=goz3rr.vscode-glualint). <upload src="46d91/8d7a4ce97a292d9.png" size="123071" name="vscode-demo.png" /> ⤶ # Vim⤶ [Vim](https://www.vim.org/) and [Neovim](https://neovim.io/) are highly extensible terminal based text editors, Vim based text editors use a scripting language called [Vim Script](https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/references/gnu/vim/usr_41.html) which is used for editing every little aspect of the program from the syntax highlighting to keybindings.⤶ ⤶ Vim by itself kind of sucks, you're designed to go in and play with Vim script, adding your own keybinds and customizing it to your liking.⤶ ⤶ <note>Vim isnt designed for new users and you should get a grip of programming before using it.</note>⤶ ⤶ * [GLua Highlighting for Vim](https://github.com/vim-scripts/gmlua.vim/blob/master/syntax/gmlua.vim)⤶ * [Intellisense for Vim](https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim)⤶ ⤶ <upload src="8ccfa/8d8928d72467cc1.png" size="40296" name="image.png" />⤶ # Visual Studio If you use [Visual Studio](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/) then it might be more comfortable and convenient using it to edit Lua too (rather than learning a new editor). The free versions of Visual Studio are called 'Express'. There's a good page about Lua plugins on the [World Of Warcraft Wiki](http://www.wowwiki.com/Lua_editors/Visual_Studio). <image src="VisualStudioLua.png" alt="700px"/> # Notepad++ [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) is a text editor with a number of features. It has syntax highlighting, a minimap and a number of hotkeys, along with a Garry's Mod specific Syntax Highlighter which can be found [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20190406231524/https://forum.facepunch.com/gmoddev/oarh/Notepad-GLua-Highlighter/1/). <warning>Notepad++ is the weakest editor here; it severely lacks plugins that the other editors such as Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code have such as up-to-date code snippets and linting. However, it is completely fine for editing a few GLua files.</warning> <image src="Notepadplusplus.png" alt="center"/>