A heated question, oft asked in the nether of SO Chat. It's at the end, of course, a matter of taste and usage: Some editors are better than others at some things, some things are only possible in some editors.
So here's a list of editors and IDEs which we of room 17 use and can recommend, sorted alphabetically.
Most importantly, here's a very short list of (free!) editors which are recommended for beginners to scripting or web-dev (i.e. no compiling necessary), aimed at people who just got into JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Bash, etc and want to get a feel of things. Just pick one and have fun!