So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.

The following are a must:
    support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
    free
    no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
    syntax highlighting
    straightforward to use

anything else is a bonus.

Whats your experience with what you use?

Many thanks
Nic

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.
>
> The following are a must:
>     support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
>     free
>     no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
>     syntax highlighting
>     straightforward to use
>
> anything else is a bonus.
>
> Whats your experience with what you use?
>
> Many thanks
> Nic

Those all apply to Geany. It's much like Notepad++ but crossplatform.

I'm sure there are other good options too. The problem with geany is that it's syntax highlighting and auto-completion depend on having the file where the symbol's defined open. But that's because it's primarily a lightweight editor, not so much an IDE. It has some ide features, but I am not using them and don't know whether you can could solve these by creating a geny project.

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.
>
> The following are a must:
>     support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
>     free
>     no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
>     syntax highlighting
>     straightforward to use
>
> anything else is a bonus.
>
> Whats your experience with what you use?
>
> Many thanks
> Nic

Textadept [1] matches your requirements.
I found it lightweight, responsive, and easy to use&extend.
I'm only on Sublime Text [2][3] because it's shinier.

[1] https://foicica.com/textadept/
[2] https://www.sublimetext.com/
[3] Depending on your definition of free (libre vs beer) it might also qualify

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.
>
> The following are a must:
>     support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
>     free
>     no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
>     syntax highlighting
>     straightforward to use
>
> anything else is a bonus.
>
> Whats your experience with what you use?
>
> Many thanks
> Nic

vim or SublimeText

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.
>
> The following are a must:
>     support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
>     free
>     no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
>     syntax highlighting
>     straightforward to use
>
> anything else is a bonus.
>
> Whats your experience with what you use?
>
> Many thanks
> Nic

+1 for Geany

If it's to learn D programming, then I strongly advice CoEdit (despite I think that Geany's automatic brace insertion and copy paste features work MUCH better).

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> So I will be doing a workshop on programming for the biology department at my university and I was wondering what would best suit the users.
>
> The following are a must:
>     support windows & mac ( the more consistent between the two the better)
>     free
>     no large install footprint, preferably simple install procedure (running on laptops)
>     syntax highlighting
>     straightforward to use
>
> anything else is a bonus.
>
> Whats your experience with what you use?

Visual Studio Code seems to be what you need.

https://code.visualstudio.com/

Easy to install, Support Windows, Linux, Mac. Has plugin support from WebFreak001 his Code-D / Serve-D(beta) plugin.

Kitchen and sink support. Easy to use ( as seen with the popularity ). Relative low memory footprint for the functionality ( compared to several IDEs that do the same ).

Moved to Visual Studio Code a long time ago and loving it. They are now adding multiple workspaces to the editor, to make things more easy for people and plugin architecture. Did i mention massive plugins?

Git Integration to make it easier to teach people what Git is and what the difference it makes in programming projects.

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 13:15:41 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>> The following are a must:
>>     no large install footprint
>
> Visual Studio Code seems to be what you need.
>
> [...]
>
> Relative low memory footprint for the functionality ( compared to several IDEs that do the same ).
>
> [...]

The (must) requirement was install footprint, not memory footprint, and as Visual Studio code uses the electron framework[1] its install footprint is gigantic (about 180MB vs e.g. TextAdept's 20MB).

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 15:17:51 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 13:15:41 UTC, Ryion wrote:
>> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>>> The following are a must:
>>>     no large install footprint
>>
>> Visual Studio Code seems to be what you need.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Relative low memory footprint for the functionality ( compared to several IDEs that do the same ).
>>
>> [...]
>
> The (must) requirement was install footprint, not memory footprint, and as Visual Studio code uses the electron framework[1] its install footprint is gigantic (about 180MB vs e.g. TextAdept's 20MB).

It isn't that gigantic in comparison. You can say the same thing in comparison with vim which is only a 2MB install size, 20MB in comparison is gigantic. The requirements are rather vague, you can interpret it in a number of ways. I wouldn't consider 200MB gigantic in comparison to 20MB cause there is literally no difference of use for me. You'd have to have a really shitty laptop for it to be an issue.

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 16:22:44 UTC, Jerry wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 15:17:51 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
>> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 13:15:41 UTC, Ryion wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 10:05:29 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>>>> The following are a must:
>>>>     no large install footprint
>>>
>>> Visual Studio Code seems to be what you need.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Relative low memory footprint for the functionality ( compared to several IDEs that do the same ).
>>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> The (must) requirement was install footprint, not memory footprint, and as Visual Studio code uses the electron framework[1] its install footprint is gigantic (about 180MB vs e.g. TextAdept's 20MB).
>
> It isn't that gigantic in comparison.

It's nearly ten times the size, so yeah, it is relative to Textadept.

> You can say the same thing in comparison with vim which is only a 2MB install size,
> 20MB in comparison is gigantic.

Indeed, but that's only the raw executable, not the full package (which includes things like syntax highlighting), which adds another 26MB.
But, yes, Textadept and vim+vim-core (Gentoo speak) are both gigantic required to bare bones vim. But bare bones vim doesn't fulfill the syntax highlighting requirement IIRC.

> The requirements are rather vague, you can interpret it in a number of ways.

The sensible interpretation imho is "as low an install footprint as possible while still fulfilling the other requirements". I'm not aware of anything below ~20MB install footprint that fulfills the other requirements, but I'd be interested if you know any.

> I wouldn't consider 200MB gigantic in comparison to 20MB cause there is literally no difference of use for me.

The thread is about OP's requirements.

> You'd have to have a really shitty laptop for it to be an issue.

Not relevant.

On Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 18:08:52 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> Indeed, but that's only the raw executable, not the full package (which includes things like syntax highlighting), which adds another 26MB.
> But, yes, Textadept and vim+vim-core (Gentoo speak) are both gigantic required to bare bones vim. But bare bones vim doesn't fulfill the syntax highlighting requirement IIRC.

I don't know how it is packaged on your system, but the vim syntax highlighting for D is like 12 KB and pretty easy to just drop in and use on its own.