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[vcats]

Inspired by the reading tips thread, does anyone have suggestions for a good text editor for writing statistical software, particularly Stata?

Something that would catch my errors would be nice... I'm working on a pc, by the way.

[zharkov]

Stats SW is probably one of those areas where each of us has his/her own opinions (or biases). 

Although I cut my teeth on SPSS, I now think Excel is sufficient for most normal stuff that comes up.  (Esp. in business.)  For more heavy duty stuff, I would go with Mathematica.

[vcats]

Thanks for the reply; I will definitely check out Mathematica.

Anyone familiar with jEdit? I just downloaded it (and a STATA-code addition so it highlights the code in different colors -- very useful). So far I'm liking it. Being free is a definite plus!

Part of why I'm asking is that I only discovered this kind of software recently and wish I had sooner -- and now it's making me wonder what else I've been missing out on...

[namazu]

Hmm...  I'd been editing everything in WordPad.  Very old-school. 
I don't have anything to add, unfortunately, but want to follow the thread in case others have suggestions.
I may have to check out the program you mention.  I like colors.

[ab_grp]

I am primarily a user of SAS and R.  I like to use Multi-Edit at work for most of my editing purposes.  It allows searching/replacing of multiple files at once, which is useful for many of my projects.  It also allows one to use different colors for different keywords, so I color my do loops yellow, %do loops green, PROC steps pink, SAS keywords blue, etc.  It's helpful when viewing the program as a whole structured thing, seeing unclosed loops, and stuff like that.
I know that previous posters have mentioned making use of this same type of feature in other software.

At home I have found that EditPad Lite (free download) works fine for most programming needs, or I just edit in SAS or R.

[kissa_mau]

Yeah, I'm like Namazu in using WordPad. Definitely old-school. But hey, it works and its free.