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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Text Editor
  5. Notepad++ vs SourceTree

Notepad++ vs SourceTree

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Notepad++
Notepad++
Stacks20.4K
Followers16.8K
Votes422
SourceTree
SourceTree
Stacks10.6K
Followers8.1K
Votes727

Notepad++ vs SourceTree: What are the differences?

Developers describe Notepad++ as "Free source code editor and Notepad replacement". Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. On the other hand, SourceTree is detailed as "A free Git GUI client for Windows and macOS". Use the full capability of Git and Mercurial in the SourceTree desktop app. Manage all your repositories, hosted or local, through SourceTree's simple interface.

Notepad++ belongs to "Text Editor" category of the tech stack, while SourceTree can be primarily classified under "Source Code Management Desktop Apps".

Some of the features offered by Notepad++ are:

  • Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
  • User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4
  • PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace

On the other hand, SourceTree provides the following key features:

  • Full-powered DVCS
  • Create, clone, commit, push, pull, merge, and more are all just a click away.
  • Review your outgoing and incoming changesets, cherry-pick between branches, patch handling, rebase, stash, shelve, and much more.

"Syntax for all languages that i use", "Tabbed ui" and "Great code editor" are the key factors why developers consider Notepad++; whereas "Visual history and branch view", "Beautiful UI" and "Easy repository browsing" are the primary reasons why SourceTree is favored.

According to the StackShare community, SourceTree has a broader approval, being mentioned in 618 company stacks & 414 developers stacks; compared to Notepad++, which is listed in 187 company stacks and 499 developer stacks.

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Advice on Notepad++, SourceTree

Stefan
Stefan

Jan 19, 2020

Decided

I explored many Git Desktop tools for the Mac and my final decision was to use Fork. What I love about for that it contains three features, I like about a Git Client tool.

It allows

  • to handle day to day git operations (least important for me as I am cli junkie)
  • it helps to investigate the history
  • most important of all, it has a repo manager which many other tools are missing.
198k views198k
Comments
Andrey
Andrey

Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers

May 18, 2020

Decided

Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark

539k views539k
Comments
René
René

Sr. Financial Analyst

Aug 21, 2020

Review

I have used and like them both... here's my take on what to use in your case.

  1. Use whatever software your instructor is using when learning a language. It makes it simpler to start. Then change to whatever you like.
  2. Use an IDE (Integrated Development Enviroment). For Java I'd pick InteliJ (because I have found the Jetbrains IDEs great) or Visual Studio as a second pick (because it's free for individual coders).
  3. Pick your text editor: the Atom vs Notepad++, vs others question Both Atom and Notepad++ offer many features and add-ons, making it a long-disputed competition. This is what drives to chose between one and the other, and I have been alternating: On Atom: The good:
  • Good looking coding environment
  • Good autocomplete
  • Project focused structure to your files The bad:
  • Higher system resources usage
  • Slower loading time (if you are opening and closing)

Notepad++ The good:

  • Very light system resources use
  • Fast and simple, with decent code higlighting
  • Loads very fast The bad:
  • Not as pretty as Atom
  • Autocomplete and syntax checking is not that good
  • File-focused editing
495 views495
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Notepad++
Notepad++
SourceTree
SourceTree

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Use the full capability of Git and Mercurial in the SourceTree desktop app. Manage all your repositories, hosted or local, through SourceTree's simple interface.

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding;User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4;PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace;GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list;Document Map;Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and Function parameters hint;Multi-Document (Tab interface);Multi-View;WYSIWYG (Printing);Zoom in and zoom out;Multi-Language environment supported;Bookmark;Macro recording and playback;Launch with different arguments
Full-powered DVCS;Create, clone, commit, push, pull, merge, and more are all just a click away.;Review your outgoing and incoming changesets, cherry-pick between branches, patch handling, rebase, stash, shelve, and much more.;Use Git-flow and Hg-flow with ease. Keep your repositories cleaner and your development more efficient with SourceTree's intuitive interface to Git and Hg's 'branchy' development model.
Statistics
Stacks
20.4K
Stacks
10.6K
Followers
16.8K
Followers
8.1K
Votes
422
Votes
727
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 104
    Syntax for all languages that i use
  • 60
    Tabbed ui
  • 56
    Great code editor
  • 54
    Fast and lightweight
  • 38
    Plugins
Cons
  • 3
    No default plugin manager
  • 2
    Can't install more advanced packets
Pros
  • 205
    Visual history and branch view
  • 164
    Beautiful UI
  • 134
    Easy repository browsing
  • 87
    Gitflow support
  • 75
    Interactive stage or discard by hunks or lines
Cons
  • 12
    Crashes often
  • 8
    So many bugs
  • 7
    Fetching is slow sometimes
  • 5
    Very unstable
  • 5
    Extremely slow
Integrations
No integrations available
GitHub
GitHub
Git
Git
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Windows
Windows
macOS
macOS
Mercurial
Mercurial

What are some alternatives to Notepad++, SourceTree?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Emacs

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

GitKraken

GitKraken

The downright luxurious Git client for Windows, Mac and Linux. Cross-platform, 100% standalone, and free.

Brackets

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

Fork

Fork

Manage your repositories without leaving the application. Organize the repositores into categories. Fork's Diff Viewer provides a clear view to spot the changes in your source code quickly.

Tower

Tower

Use all of Git's powerful feature set - in a GUI that makes you more productive.

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