Code Editors

Every program that other programs are written in — TECO to Cursor.

25 posts· 1962 – 2026

• Cursor, 2026: the sixty-billion-dollar code editor 2026
• JetBrains Air: the IDE bets it still matters 2026
• Claude Code, 2025: the bottleneck was never the typing 2025
• Windsurf, 2024: the editor that broke a $3 billion deal 2024
• Cursor, 2023: the editor that already read the whole codebase 2023
• Zed, 2023: the editor written from scratch in Rust 2023
• The Language Server Protocol, or how Microsoft solved an infinite grid 2016
• Visual Studio Code: how a failing browser editor became the one everyone uses 2015
• Atom: the hackable text editor that accidentally built a platform 2014
• Sublime Text, or the text editor that left Google to reinvent itself 2008
• TextMate: the grammar every editor learned to speak 2004
• Eclipse, or the IDE that cost IBM $40 million and then became free 2001
• IntelliJ IDEA: the IDE that knew what you meant 2001
• Visual Studio 97: five languages, one box 1997
• BBEdit, or what a cancelled compiler left behind 1992
• Vim: from Vi IMitation to Vi IMproved 1991
• Brief, or the keyboard that other editors had to imitate 1985
• Alice Pascal: the editor that refused to let you make a mistake 1984
• Turbo Pascal: the whole IDE in thirty-eight kilobytes 1983
• Turbo Pascal, or the compiler that never touched the disk 1983
• vi, or the editor that made modes out of necessity 1976
• EMACS, or the macro that became an editor 1976
• ed: the editor that still ships with every Unix 1969
• QED, or how fifteen years of mathematics became a search command 1965
• TECO, or the editor that was also a programming language 1962