Is starting to learn better with a plain text editor?

Hey there, I just started learning HTML. I use Brackets as a text editor with all it´s nice comforts: life preview, auto-complete for tags, being warned when making some mistakes… I totally love it. Now I read somewhere, that it´s better to start learning with a plain text editor like Notepad. But why? Am I´m spoiling myself too much?

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Credibility of “somewhere” is questionable :slight_smile:

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@Marcella, I like to type things out repeatedly when I’m learning, so I prefer plain text without autocomplete where possible. I think this helps me remember better. This also helps me get more used to reading and understanding the code.

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The editor that most helps you create is the one you should be using. As long as you’re not using some kind of wizard or utility that generates large chunks of your HTML, you are using a regular text editor, just one with integrated helper tools like error and style checking. I speak as someone who has used actual Notepad to write pages, and now happily develops using Webstorm.

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As someone who wrote out HTML by hand with a pen when I was first learning it (no seriously, I was convinced it was the only way I’d remember it), you are probably not spoiling yourself.

If you just build lots and lots of pages, you’ll see HTML elements often enough that you’ll remember them.

I started using Emmet after a few months and haven’t looked back.

Understanding what your code is doing is much more important than how you write it.

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