Pragtical
Shares rank 47 of 56 text editors by recommenders
People recommend it as a lightweight code editor with a small footprint, familiar editing without Vim-style key bindings, and many added features like an image viewer and color picker.
People recommend it as a lightweight code editor with a small footprint, familiar editing without Vim-style key bindings, and many added features like an image viewer and color picker.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Lightweight and feature-rich editor
“It has small footprint, has everything I need and I don't need to put in time to learn Vim/Helix style key bindings for editing.”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 on Hacker News “Many fixes and new features like the image viewer, built-in color picker, support for drawing polygons”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pragtical Editor v3.8.0 add Canvas API and Image Viewer feature” Simple to use, no learning curve
“It has small footprint, has everything I need and I don't need to put in time to learn Vim/Helix style key bindings for editing.”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 on Hacker News “For me, Pragtical answers that need.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions” Looks nice and fits needs
“the software looks really really nice”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions” “For me, Pragtical answers that need.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions” Favorite editor for a year
“my favorite code editor for the last year”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Rediscovering Sublime Text” “the software looks really really nice”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Includes an unneeded music player
“Looks interesting. I just installed it. But I didn't know I needed a music player in my IDE...”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| PragticalThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“For me, Pragtical answers that need.”
“Looks interesting. I just installed it. But I didn't know I needed a music player in my IDE...”
“the software looks really really nice”
“It has small footprint, has everything I need and I don't need to put in time to learn Vim/Helix style key bindings for editing.”
“my favorite code editor for the last year”
“which has SDL as a cross-platform backend and uses the more modern meson as the build system, which made developing for it much easier”
“Many fixes and new features like the image viewer, built-in color picker, support for drawing polygons”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.