Every programmer has their own favourite tool for writing code. Some prefer command line text editing tools like Emacs, or Vi. Some like full Integrated Development Environments (aka IDEs) like Visual Studio, or Eclipse. Others prefer anything from the most basic text editor like Notepad, to more advanced text editors like Notepad++, or Kate. I fall into that last group and favour Kate.
When you first open Kate, it presents you with a blank canvas to start your creations on. It looks like just another text editor. But after a little digging, or maybe some accidental keystrokes, you discover other features. Things like turning the line numbering on and off, toggling automatic word wrap at 80 characters, and toggling full screen mode. Looking through the settings, you find you can change where the word wrap happens (want words to wrap after only 20 characters? Yep, you can do that). Or you can turn on an indicator line where word wrap happens. Or you can automatically create a backup of files you edit. Or you can change the color schemes.
Ok, so far, nothing really THAT different from other editors. But a little more use or knowledge and you find that you can open files via FTP without coping that file to the local location first. Or you can open a file sitting on a server located across the country via SSH. Editing these remote files is exactly the same as editing them locally - only the storage location is different. Hit save while half way through some changes and you've just updated the remote file.
If you need to write shell scripts occasionally, or need to do some command line processing of the file you are editing, Kate has a Terminal built in and enabled (though hidden by default). Hit F4 and there's the terminal for you to use.
Don't like having to indent every line? Tell Kate you want automatic indenting. And you can even indicate the indenting style - Normal, C, Bash, etc. Don't like using tab characters for indenting, tell Kate to convert indents to spaces. And set the number of spaces that works for you. Highlight everything, indent, then "out-dent" (indent back the other way), and every line is automatically adjusted to the new indenting scheme.
And more recently I've discovered the joys of Kate's "sessions". Initially I saw no sense in automatically opening files I had open the last time I used Kate. Afterall, I may use kate for editing a server configuration one time, then the next time I use Kate I could be writing new code for a project. BUT, sessions do more than that. I have Kate to use a new session when I open it, but then I can load previously stored sessions (which I can give convenient names to), to pre-load a work environment. This is VERY handy when I need to open 10 files when working in a particular part of a project. The few seconds saved opening these files manually is incredibly helpful.
The more I see of Kate the more I fall in love and MUST have it on my systems. Occasionally I need to cheat on Kate and use Nano at the command line, but I do notice all the things that are missing.
Opps, my data migration is done. Time to go back to Kate and do more work.