I recently changed my writing tool from those distraction-free text editors[1] to code editor.[2]

It’s mainly because I focus on writing technical books with code examples and tutorials.

Writing code tutorials don’t need a distraction writing environment. Instead, I need to code my code examples, make it works and refractor into a elegant minimal code base. Then I draw different graphs to try to explain the code. After all of this preparation, I can finally put the source code and graphics together into the text editor. Until then, I can write the text that connects the steps and make the tutorial into a piece of writing.

I use AsciiDoc to write the tutorials. It allows me to glue the code snippets, graphics and admonition block together and output as HTML. A code editor with AsciiDoc syntax obviously fits better than an editor that target swriting plain text.

That’s why I switched to use code editor to write.


1 I used to use iA writer, Ulysses.
2 I use Textastic on iOS, Atom on Mac.

Related Posts: asciidoc, writing.