Text Editor: just writes text, no formatting (other than line endings)
Code Editor: A family Text Editors that have additional capabilities such as syntax highlighting. And optionally a plugin or extension ecosystem. (VSCode, vim family, Emacs, even gedit )
IDE: An application that includes Code Editor functionality, but also includes tools for a building on given tech stack. This comes out of the box, are a “part of” the application, are peers to the code editor, and cannot be removed, but can optionally be extended through plugins or extensions.
My understanding has always been:
Text Editor: just writes text, no formatting (other than line endings)
Code Editor: A family Text Editors that have additional capabilities such as syntax highlighting. And optionally a plugin or extension ecosystem. (VSCode, vim family, Emacs, even gedit )
IDE: An application that includes Code Editor functionality, but also includes tools for a building on given tech stack. This comes out of the box, are a “part of” the application, are peers to the code editor, and cannot be removed, but can optionally be extended through plugins or extensions.