After years of using it, I finally just bought a Sublime license. It's about as close to perfect as an editor gets for me - fast, stable, powerful, extensible, portable, and very low cognitive overhead.
I'm the opposite - bought a license years ago but don't actually use it for much except plaintext.
In my experience the core editor is fast and rock solid, but I think every single extension I've tried has been somewhere between glitchy and completely broken, and debugging/fixing them has soaked up more time than they'd save if they worked perfectly.
Part of the problem may be that extensions seem remarkably keen to take giant dependencies. I think one wanted a full node.js install to do JS linting.
Likewise - It was over the winter, when I was back home in Canada, and remarked that I still hadn't purchased a license, but, in the last 6 months, had probably spent 3-4 hours/day in Sublime. In particular, making a lot of use of Sublimerge to do fast visual diffs, really won me over. Even though on remote hosts I still live in vim, I really, really love this tool when working locally.
Hopefully I'll be a little faster to purchase an upgrade license when a new version of Sublime is released. Probably One of the most important software tools I've used in the last year from a personal productivity perspective.
Besides Firefox, Sublime Text is the application I use the most in my day-to-day professional life. It is faster and easier to configure than any other code editor I've used in the past. I would say it's one of the few pieces of software I've encountered that is a joy to use.
If you also use ST regularly and can afford it, I highly encourage you to support development and buy a license right now.
I purchased the licence years ago and used it almost exclusively until I got familiarized with vim. It's way more powerful and can do anything that sublime can. Plus more.
The only downside is the learning curve, but you only go through it once.
FYI For the people running dev-builds (like myself) and are wondering why they don't get an update notification from 3079:
If you're already using dev build 3079, then there's no need to update
- 3080 is identical, except it will give update
notifications for beta builds only, rather than dev builds.[1]
Sorry for bring this up , but this is my honest question , why should I use sublime ? what is specific about it ? Let me explain , If I wanna text editor there is Emacs ( and vim for vim user's ) , and if I want to have specific feature like IDE's have (auto complete , GUI debugger etc ) , then I can use Qt Creator/Code Blocks/etc (which I don't need , Because I am not IDE user) , then Why should I use sublime , It does not fit in my either use cases.It is ide or text editor , If it is just text editor , what it provide which Emacs ( or vim) could not provide ?
p.s. my comment should look like bias opinion , but it is not really. It is just question I have in my mind.
Good question.
From my perspective, it's a text editor done properly which doesn't get in your way. You almost don't feel it.
Put it another way - there are very few annoyances that I've noticed about it.
It's very fast, it's configurable, it takes me 2 minutes to set it up on a new machine and have the same environment, regardless of the OS.
Here's a story:
I've recently started learning Clojure and I've been looking into editors which are best suited for it - I've tried LightTable, looks nice, but still rough around edges and slow, I've given a (new) shot to Emacs, but got discouraged when I realised I'd still have to learn all the shortcuts and stuff in addition to Clojure, IntelliJ Idea....
But then it struck me - does Sublime have a Clojure REPL ? It sure does and it's very nice.. 10 minutes later I was hacking away with a split screen and REPL, just like in Emacs.
And I didn't have to do anything complicated, no files to edit, no environment vars to set up, it was easy.
If you're happy with emacs or vim then you probably shouldn't use it. Many people aren't comfortable with those two or prefer a mouse based approach without the overhead of an IDE in which case Sublime is a pretty good choice with lots of customizability and available plugins.
Edit: For me I do my coding/most everything in vim but if I get a new project I have to learn about I find it much more easy to navigate an unknown project in Sublime while I get it sorted in my mind.
I am using Sublime for programming and here is why i use it over Vim or Emacs or an IDE.
Vim is "way to go" editor for me on remote connections to server. But on my local machine, vim requires lots of configuration in order to let me be productive (at least for me). For example, Vim's regex engine is slow comparing to Sublime, which will be freezing for 2-3 seconds when you are doing some complex search and replace. This can be fixed by some config, but Sublime doesn't have this problem at all.
Sublime is easy to use from dummy programmers to experts. Not Emacs or Vim.
IDEs are mostly specific to a programming language, if not, they are memory hog to handle everything and takes around a minute to get ready for me to start typing code.
One of the best features of Sublime is that, it lets to decide if you want a text editor or a IDE like experience from it. Customise it however you want.
Of course it is not for everyone, I guess the best is to give it a try and see yourself.
For me, Sublime Text feels like an editor with the ethos of Vim/Emacs, but designed in the 21st century, without all the legacy baggage.
The key-bindings are based on modern GUI standards. The configuration uses simple JSON files. It provides most commonly used features as standard.
Vim/Emacs are still probably more powerful once learned, but after using vim for a few years (admittedly not trying that hard to improve), I felt I was able to get to the same efficiency in Sublime in a few weeks.
You don't, really. It's just a solid editor in a GUI environment, not as heavy as an IDE, not as esoteric or hard to learn (sorry guys) as emacs or vim.
I've used it pretty much full time for three years programming JS. Autocomplete is non-existent in JS, and WebStorm was just too bulky / laggy for me. The SublimeLinter plugin was enough error handling for me, and there was a Grunt listener running at all times running other validations and doing autorefresh.
I don't see why you are getting downvoted, this is a legitimate question.
Sublime is certainly not an IDE. AFAIK it can not do any of the things that make IDEs worth using : automatic refactoring, statistical analysis of your code, ... (not that it tries to).
It is a text editor with plugins. The barrier to entry is way lower than for something like vi or Emacs and that's it.
This question is pretty much like a vim user asking why he should use emacs (or viceversa). Sure, they cover a lot of common features each, plus their big differences.
Sublime is just another alternative. No real reason to use it if you prefer what you already have. It's just a matter of trying it out and seeing how it works for you.
Note: I no longer use sublime. vim+ctrlp+other plugins has replaced it for me.
IMHO, sublime is a lazy yet flexible editor, it has very fancy out-of-box experience, you don't have to download a lot of stuff from the internet and make your own customizations before you can finally gets started with what you intended to do few hours earlier.
I know that both vim/emacs have very handy package manager, but they don't ship with vim/emacs.
Certainly there are more powerful tools (emacs and vim - or 3dMAX and Rhino, when comparing with Sketchup) but Sublime/Sketchup are so fast and easy to use from first day by amateurs and professionals making them very hard to beat.
I don't use them everyday but I can be quite productive with both. It would take ages to be productive with Emacs or 3dMAX using them only every other week.
I've been running the last stable build happily since August. Running this new build causes all four cores in my rmbp to spin up to 99% repeatedly (Activity Monitor says it's Sublime) and the fans to go wild. Is this happening to anyone else? I had to revert to the previous version which fixed it :(
I ran into this too. It's because of the index that Sublime builds for its Goto Anything feature. If you never use Goto Anything, in your User Settings:
On every file change ST status bar says - indexing files. And it takes > 10s (I have a lot of files). When it does that - 2 CPU cores are loaded at 99%.
Opened the console (@jskinner suggested to enter sublime.log_indexing(True)) and there was a message that index is corrupted and I have to remove it. Index is located in:
/Users/bumbu/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Index
Removing all the files from that folder did the trick.
I used to simply ignore that nag screen, but decided to buy a license of ST3 since I use it every day - best investment in a while. I hope to see a stable ST3 build soon and some nice new features soon :)!
I love the 'Goto Symbol (in Project)...' feature, but I really wish the input would be populated with text you have selected in the editor. This way you could jump to a function/whatever underneath the cursor by doing something like: Cmd-D, Cmd-(Shift-)R, Enter - instead of copy-pasting, or retyping the symbol. I added this to the mass of suggestions in the ST forum, but I guess it has been lost or rejected :(
The guy said he will be coming back with more, and the most delay between updates was like 8-9 months -- something that happens all the time for commercial projects where you might or might not see an update in 1 or even 2 years.
In the last 2 months, he has been publishing an update dev release every 1 week or so.
For registered users it has been active again for the past two months—this is just the first stable release from that work. There was a noticeable silence from October through January, but lots of activity ever since. Hopefully it continues.
I tried Atom during the lull and it's gotten really great, but ultimately went back to the plugins/snippets I know and love.
In case anyone isn't aware, Package Control[0] adds an incredibly simple package manager to Sublime in order to automatically install/update plugins. After that's been installed, I'd recommend browsing the popular packages (already linked in another comment) or just hitting Ctrl+Shift+P, "Install", and searching for the names of languages/tools you use.
One plugin I'd recommend for anyone is All Autocomplete. It extends Sublime's autocomplete detection to match across any open file, and not only the current file.
Also Ctrl+Shift+P searches through all of Sublime's and your plugins available actions. Ctrl+P allows you to switch files without your mouse.
I still have issues on my desktop where sometimes I can't interact with the text area of sublime using my mouse. I can still use the mouse with the menus and stuff, but scrolling and clicking in the text does nothing and I have to use my keyboard only. Still not sure what is causing this issue as it doesn't happen all the time. The fix is usually just rebooting my PC which is rather annoying.
[+] [-] cheald|11 years ago|reply
Kudos to the Sublime folks.
[+] [-] mrec|11 years ago|reply
In my experience the core editor is fast and rock solid, but I think every single extension I've tried has been somewhere between glitchy and completely broken, and debugging/fixing them has soaked up more time than they'd save if they worked perfectly.
Part of the problem may be that extensions seem remarkably keen to take giant dependencies. I think one wanted a full node.js install to do JS linting.
Or maybe I've just been unlucky/incompetent.
[+] [-] swah|11 years ago|reply
Just look at the contortions this little package has to go through to apply a color to portions of text: https://github.com/Monnoroch/ColorHighlighter/blob/master/Co...
It has to create and apply a fake theme merged with your current theme so colors can be added "dynamically"[1].
The ancient Emacs (I hate a hate/love relationship with it) can do this is several ways, the "modern" one are overlays IIRC.
[1] As expected, this will lead to bugs related to the users' color schemes: https://github.com/Monnoroch/ColorHighlighter/issues
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
Hopefully I'll be a little faster to purchase an upgrade license when a new version of Sublime is released. Probably One of the most important software tools I've used in the last year from a personal productivity perspective.
[+] [-] corobo|11 years ago|reply
I'm never going back.
[+] [-] spacemanmatt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cheetos|11 years ago|reply
If you also use ST regularly and can afford it, I highly encourage you to support development and buy a license right now.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nkg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hobarrera|11 years ago|reply
The only downside is the learning curve, but you only go through it once.
[+] [-] jrnkntl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xFFC|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeshaman|11 years ago|reply
Put it another way - there are very few annoyances that I've noticed about it. It's very fast, it's configurable, it takes me 2 minutes to set it up on a new machine and have the same environment, regardless of the OS.
Here's a story:
I've recently started learning Clojure and I've been looking into editors which are best suited for it - I've tried LightTable, looks nice, but still rough around edges and slow, I've given a (new) shot to Emacs, but got discouraged when I realised I'd still have to learn all the shortcuts and stuff in addition to Clojure, IntelliJ Idea....
But then it struck me - does Sublime have a Clojure REPL ? It sure does and it's very nice.. 10 minutes later I was hacking away with a split screen and REPL, just like in Emacs. And I didn't have to do anything complicated, no files to edit, no environment vars to set up, it was easy.
[+] [-] sanswork|11 years ago|reply
Edit: For me I do my coding/most everything in vim but if I get a new project I have to learn about I find it much more easy to navigate an unknown project in Sublime while I get it sorted in my mind.
[+] [-] whizzkid|11 years ago|reply
Vim is "way to go" editor for me on remote connections to server. But on my local machine, vim requires lots of configuration in order to let me be productive (at least for me). For example, Vim's regex engine is slow comparing to Sublime, which will be freezing for 2-3 seconds when you are doing some complex search and replace. This can be fixed by some config, but Sublime doesn't have this problem at all.
Sublime is easy to use from dummy programmers to experts. Not Emacs or Vim.
IDEs are mostly specific to a programming language, if not, they are memory hog to handle everything and takes around a minute to get ready for me to start typing code.
One of the best features of Sublime is that, it lets to decide if you want a text editor or a IDE like experience from it. Customise it however you want.
Of course it is not for everyone, I guess the best is to give it a try and see yourself.
[+] [-] aninhumer|11 years ago|reply
The key-bindings are based on modern GUI standards. The configuration uses simple JSON files. It provides most commonly used features as standard.
Vim/Emacs are still probably more powerful once learned, but after using vim for a few years (admittedly not trying that hard to improve), I felt I was able to get to the same efficiency in Sublime in a few weeks.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
I've used it pretty much full time for three years programming JS. Autocomplete is non-existent in JS, and WebStorm was just too bulky / laggy for me. The SublimeLinter plugin was enough error handling for me, and there was a Grunt listener running at all times running other validations and doing autorefresh.
[+] [-] on_and_off|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hobarrera|11 years ago|reply
Sublime is just another alternative. No real reason to use it if you prefer what you already have. It's just a matter of trying it out and seeing how it works for you.
Note: I no longer use sublime. vim+ctrlp+other plugins has replaced it for me.
[+] [-] methou|11 years ago|reply
I know that both vim/emacs have very handy package manager, but they don't ship with vim/emacs.
[+] [-] ianlevesque|11 years ago|reply
Then stop calling it a beta?
[+] [-] swah|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galfarragem|11 years ago|reply
Certainly there are more powerful tools (emacs and vim - or 3dMAX and Rhino, when comparing with Sketchup) but Sublime/Sketchup are so fast and easy to use from first day by amateurs and professionals making them very hard to beat.
I don't use them everyday but I can be quite productive with both. It would take ages to be productive with Emacs or 3dMAX using them only every other week.
[+] [-] PSeitz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davexunit|11 years ago|reply
And this is why it's important for your editor to be free software. Emacs isn't going anywhere, and they don't have unjust control over my computing.
[+] [-] ashes2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bumbu|11 years ago|reply
On every file change ST status bar says - indexing files. And it takes > 10s (I have a lot of files). When it does that - 2 CPU cores are loaded at 99%.
Opened the console (@jskinner suggested to enter sublime.log_indexing(True)) and there was a message that index is corrupted and I have to remove it. Index is located in:
/Users/bumbu/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Index
Removing all the files from that folder did the trick.
[+] [-] paraboul|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxbtch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpmonette|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joefreeman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahojnnes|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losvedir|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkjv|11 years ago|reply
I'm curious what most people are using it for, since the license clearly states that you need to buy a copy for professional use.
[+] [-] evjan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
The guy said he will be coming back with more, and the most delay between updates was like 8-9 months -- something that happens all the time for commercial projects where you might or might not see an update in 1 or even 2 years.
In the last 2 months, he has been publishing an update dev release every 1 week or so.
[+] [-] lukeman|11 years ago|reply
I tried Atom during the lull and it's gotten really great, but ultimately went back to the plugins/snippets I know and love.
[+] [-] Narretz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avinassh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|11 years ago|reply
One plugin I'd recommend for anyone is All Autocomplete. It extends Sublime's autocomplete detection to match across any open file, and not only the current file.
Also Ctrl+Shift+P searches through all of Sublime's and your plugins available actions. Ctrl+P allows you to switch files without your mouse.
[0] https://packagecontrol.io/installation
[+] [-] Fogest|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guinness74|11 years ago|reply
Edit: seems like they will need to be ported [0].
http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-3-beta
[+] [-] hobarrera|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ddingus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deletethisuser|11 years ago|reply