The perhaps most famous Amiga text editor for programmers was developed 20 years ago (1986/1987) by Bruce Dawson, Colin Fox & Steve LaRocque (CygnusSoft Software) and was originally self-published. Even back then CygnusEd distinguished itself through its high performance and robustness. Development on CygnusEd would proceed at a steady pace in the years to follow. CygnusEd was one of the first programs to feature an ARexx interface and the first Amiga text editor with an Undo/Redo feature. Many Amiga programmers "grew up" with CygnusEd and a considerable part of the Amiga software library was created with CygnusEd.

The current CygnusEd version 5 was enhanced with new features, and robustness and performance were improved again. The "Ed" auxiliary tool was rewritten from scratch and its complete source code is included with the editor. Many limitations and deficiencies of CygnusEd were removed. Version 5 is also the first CygnusEd release ported entirely, including all auxiliary tools, to the PowerPC (AmigaOS 4) and one of the first commercial software packages specially adapted for AmigaOS 4.