3 obscure Windows programming apps to try this weekend

It seems there is an IDE or other specialized programming tool for each language. Some of them have gotten extremely large, which is good if you’re using a beefy PC that supports it and need those features.

Here are three equally capable coding programs that you may have never heard of before.

VSCodium

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is Microsoft’s ever-popular code editor. It’s quite lightweight, which ensures it works on most PCs, and flexible.

However, if you use VS Code, you’re stuck with Microsoft’s telemetry, which you normally can’t turn off. Fortunately, there is an open source fork that allows you to keep almost all the benefits of VS Code without any real downside: VSCodium!

VSCodium is free, open source and works on all popular operating systems. It offers syntax highlighting for almost all programming languages, tabbed completion (IntelliSense), and has access to a library of over 7,500 plugins. There are only a handful reserved for Microsoft’s VS Code project that you cannot use.

VSCodium has become my default text editor on Windows these days since Notepad has become so bulky

You can download VSCodium from the VSCodium GitHub for Windows, macOS or Linux.

Kate

KDE Advanced Text Editor, or Kate, is the text and code editor developed and maintained by the KDE community. This is the same group that develops the exceptional open source software like Kdenlive, Krita, and KDE Connect that you’ll find running on Kubuntu.

Kate is usually used on Linux, but the Windows client can hold its own with more famous text editors like VS Code any day of the week. Out of the box, it offers syntax highlighting for over 300 languages, has a built-in tool for finding and removing items using regular expressions, and supports plugins that make it just as flexible as the competition.

It also has a Vi mode, which lets you control it using just the keyboard, if you want that classic experience on any operating system.

Kate is available on the Microsoft Store.

Cuda Text

CudaText is the most minimalist coding app on the list, and that’s one of its greatest strengths. It can work any material going back years and will be snappy and responsive. I recently ran it on an old Dell workstation that was still running Windows 7.

Plus, it’s completely portable. When you download it, you get a ZIP file containing a few dependencies and an EXE. No installation required. This makes it a good candidate to use on a USB stick if you want to have something a little more capable than Notepad in your pocket when the need arises.

However, just because he’s light doesn’t mean he’s incapable. CudaText has a robust add-on ecosystem that lets you customize how it works, supports syntax highlighting for over 300 languages, and a built-in tool (under “Make Plugin”) that lets you create new actions using Python.

If you’re looking for a lightweight editor that can withstand larger, more complex applications, CudaText is a great program to try.

Whether you’re writing complex code or simply editing configuration files, these three programs can help you get the job done.

I always have some of my favorite programs on a USB stick (whether they need to be installed or are portable), and any of these three is a good candidate. CudaText is particularly useful because it requires no installation.

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