Evelands Dot Net

First up is a good text editor. While you can make do with Notepad, there's no reason to suffer. Look for syntax highlighting and/or folding for the languages you're interested in. Other nice features include compiler/interpreter integration, bracket matching and auto indenting. gVim is discussed, but others are mentioned here. Did I mention gVim is lightweight?

     First head over to the gVim download site and grab the 'Self-installing executable'. Install using the standard options... Next browse to the folder:
   C:\Program Files\Vim\
If the file _vimrc exists, you want to edit it. If not, create a new text file named _vimrc This is the config file for vim. My current windows _vimrc is here.

Some of the _vimrc options I use for coding include:

set nowrap	turn off line wrap
set nu	turn on line numbering
set ai	turn on auto-incrementing
set expandtabs	expand tabs to spaces
set ts=4	set tab width to 4
set ignorecase	ignor case when searching
set nobackup	don't auto-create backup files
set showmatch	highlight matching braces
let &guioptions=substitute(&guioptions,"t", "","g")	turn off the tearaway menus

More vim info is available on the vim docs site.

If this is your first stab at vim, spend the half hour to run the vim tutor. It's in the Start Menu or in the folder:
     C:\Program Files\Vim\vim70\
The file is named vimtutor.bat