I read feature lists of editors like this and wonder why people just don't use a good IDE like IntelliJ. It does everything in this list and a lot more with minimal configuration.
1. The configuration time for stuff like this in ST2 is comparable with IntelliJ.
2. IntelliJ costs more.
3. IntelliJ is simply better for Java than ST2 (more significant time-saving professional features), but not necessarily so for other languages (it becomes less clear cut with languages like ruby).
4. ST2 replaces your standard text editor, IntelliJ doesn't.
It is hard to pin down the author's bias, or yours, without understanding what kind of development the author has done. I look at this as more of a Text Mate 2 vs Sublime Text 2 post.
Thanks for explaining this, b/c editors I use (albeit inside IDEs) all do what the OP is drooling about. I figured he had to be comparing Sub 2 with some other editor that he doesn't specify.
Ignoring what other users have said (bloat, speed, noise, etc), I find that my code in an editor like ST2/TextMate/VIM ends up being substantially better and more maintainable than code written in a full-blow IDE. The full-blow IDE may mask code smell by making it easy to push on when things get ugly.
For a trivial example, if you can't remember the name of some function you wrote in another module, it may be the case that the function was poorly named or the code you are currently writing is trying to do too many things. In an full-blown IDE, it doesn't feel wrong; in a simple text editor, it actually hurts. (Yes, ST2 has autocomplete, but IIRC, it's based on a tokenizer, not a parser. In either case, I operate with it disabled.)
IMHO, it's a trade-off. It requires marginally more mental effort to compose code without the features of a full-blown IDE. This marginal increase in effort may slow me down considerably in the beginning to middle parts of a project compared to someone using a full-blown IDE; however, by the time I "catch up," my code will probably be more conducive to safe expansion and maintenance, and for all but trivial projects, that's the majority of development time.
I tried switching from vim to PyCharm about a year ago. I found it incredibly slow.
With vim or ST2, I do my work and don't think about the editor keeping up. With PyCharm, my typing could briefly outrun the editor. The editor would catchup, but it was just distracting.
I don't think the IDE gave me any features that justified this distraction.
I can use IntelliJ for anything from Python to Ruby to Java to Go to Haskell.
Sure it takes a little longer to start up than a no-plugin Emacs or Sublime Text, but it also does a lot more and I don't have to fiddle with it to make it work.
The Go and Haskell support is better in ST2 than in IntelliJ. For Python and Ruby, it depends. IntelliJ is unquestionably better for Java, though.
Also, consider that ST2 is in its infancy and how developed its language support already is (see SublimeClang, for example). As ST2 becomes more popular, it might compete with the most developed IDEs.
I think that's unlikely. ST2 is already exceptionally fast and complete as an editor. As an IDE, ST2 requires plugins. These plugins are written in Python (which can use libs written in C) as opposed to vimscript or elisp. Moreover, these plugins aren't required for editing text files (or having SublimeClang isn't going to significantly slow down editing python files).
Vim and Emacs kill that argument. Neither is slow, and both are older than dirt in computer years. Sublime Text may continue the march without becoming super slow as well. I'm sure a Java-focused IDE could be fast and excellent, but that's not their focus.
I liked using IntelliJ IDEA for Java development. However the reasons I now use Komodo Edit and ST2 over PyCharm/IDEA for Python are: IntelliJ has slower startup times, does certain things slower, takes up a lot of memory, does not look as nice. I do not need most of the functionality it provides and prefer having something snappier.
Yes, but I think many wouldn’t want to have all the other features a full-blown IDE offers.
While ST2 requires configuration to add the bare-necessities people would take for granted from an IDE, if you went with the latter you still have to do configuration to pair things down to the most minimal-environment you’re comfortable with.
>I read feature lists of editors like this and wonder why people just don't use a good IDE like IntelliJ. It does everything in this list and a lot more with minimal configuration.
Because we don't want a slow, Java based IDE, that goes over the uncanny valley in all platforms.
I do use Eclipse, which is not much better than IntelliJ, for Java editing. But I wouldn't bother with it for JS/PHP/Python/Ruby etc...
The most consistent pushback against ST2 is how ugly and non-native folk find it. Lots of us get past that and really give it a chance, but I can't help but hope that Jon reads this and considers spending a couple weeks/months purely on styling, possibly with the help of a specialist.
It doesn't improve the editor's functionality, but sales and adoption wise I think it would go a long way. Especially on the Mac.
Specifically:
* The file browser is really odd. Very non-native. No in-line name updates. Odd sliding around of items coming in and out. No drag and drop. It works, but it is death by a thousand paper cuts.
* Find results tab - also really odd. It's a real buffer, you can edit text in it - but it doesn't change the source material. Just the result tab. Very odd.
* Split windows are great, but the grouping in the sidebar is odd. What's group 1 vs group 2 vs group 3, etc.
* The color scheme is ugly. Very few text editors on Mac default to light text on a dark background. The dark chrome tabs are odd.
* While I love how flexible the configuration settings are, rooting around in a .js file is kind of a pain in the ass. Some basic scaffolding that throws up a configuration dialog [that looks native!] would be great. If for option discovery, if nothing else!
* If you have split panes active, there is no way to quickly tell which tab has the cursor. Each split has a set of inactive tabs and a single active tab. It's hard to figure out exactly which tab has the cursor if you're flipping back and forth from a terminal.
Totally disagree on the config point. In fact I think the system should be made more simple, so you can keep your editor settings in a dotfile repo. It's not so simple to do this when the settings files themselves are buried in a packages folder, and you have to take care not to accidentally commit your license along with it all.
Hell, even just having the option to parse settings and load plugins from a local dotfile, like vim or emacs, would be nice. The rationale for wanting this is that the config is just text, and is something you'll progressively hone over time (esp. with keybindings).
Split windows would be much better if you could mix and match the size, or have a non-standard layout.
One of ST's real benefits could be its position as a beginner's introduction to vim and/or emacs. It's already immediately more accessible.
Ugg, I disagree with most of most of your points. I like the sidebar simple, use finder/explorer if you want more. Text for find results and config is great.
Native ui is a huge amount of work to get right and maintain. Make the most of the beautiful text buffers I say!
I disagree with you on the colour scheme and absolutely adore how st2 looks.
However, I completely agree about the find results tab. It's incredibly annoying not being able to edit from within that. It might as well just give me a list of what files what I want to find is in because I end up having to open them up manually anyway.
Does anyone else feel like if we spent all the time masterbating about our text editor writing software instead in something that just works the world would have better software? The amount of text editor posts I see on HN lately is astonishing.
The less emphasis we put on tools the more we can rely on skill. We should all just use notepad for a year and see what all that extra time produces.
I use vim. That's kinda my point when it comes to see fancy GUI editors. Even with vim, here are the only commands I use regularly: n, b, dw, dd, u, w, :/, home, end, and :wq.
Coupled with Grep -r, I literally use nothing else. My productivity is not bound by how fast I can use vim, but how much effort it takes me to understand the real problem I'm trying to solve.
If everyone else worries about how they can jump around code more than actually decomposing the true motivation behind their work, they are either unbounded geniuses, or far more likely, writing a lot of code that could be completely avoided. All of these bells and whistles distracts from the problem, and focuses on code instead of problem solving. This worries me. Especially when at the end of the day all we are talking about is how fast we can introduce bugs into the code base or writing code that doesn't help the customer directly.
I tried Sublime and it works well, but RubyMine still won me over for Ruby because it finally feels polished and it's fast thanks to new hardware with plenty of RAM & CPU.
For text editing, Sublime just couldn't match vim & emacs because they're widely available on remote servers via SSH.
having started my programming career with web stuff, i just cant stand the full blown IDEs because of their slowness and bloatedness.
sublime text feels like having my cake and eating it too. it has most of the required features but its still amazingly fast and extendable.
It's quite funny that he complains about the icon (quite bad, I agree) that was made by the Iconfactory, and then links to a replacement, again, by the Iconfactory.
Makes me wonder, why SL2 icon is so bad. Maybe the author had some unreasonable requests to the obviously talented designers?
ST2 is a great text editor (I like vim more) - and a text editor is what it should be compared to.
Intellij/RubyMine are slow to start (initially) because they are indexing and giving you some of the most powerful refactoring support you could ask for. I sincerely doubt ST2 could will ever match this functionality.
They can be bloated but so can Emacs with all its plugins and so can ST2 by the time it starts to resemble an IDE in features.
I have been using ST2 for awhile and overall its pretty good. Although I still find myself opening Vim/Textmate a lot.
It may be archaic but my biggest issue is not being able to print from it. Along with coding I usually use my editor of choice for random things and sometimes this means I have to print something. No print option in ST2 is a slight annoyance.
I agree. When I start feeling stressed out about some code, I usually like to print it out and walk away from my computer to review it. Sitting outside with a copy of code that I cannot edit is very helpful sometimes.
Right now, I often will minimize (metaphorically) my ST2 editor; open up a copy of my code in gEdit; print it out; close gEdit; and, maximize ST2. That's not cool.
>By default, the scope of autocomplete is only for the current file. “All Autocomplete Package” extends the scope to all open files in the current window.
Slightly buggy (alas, so many Sublime packages are), but even so, I'm really glad to see a plugin that tackles my only major disappointment in ST2.
In my brief testing with some CoffeeScript files, I had a few autocomplete suggestions that got the last few letters clipped off. Not a big deal, but a little odd.
I really liked Sublime Text, but each time I try to search for some word in 20MB log file it reminds me how slow and unresponsive it is compared to Emacs. The closest to my ideal editor would be Emacs with visual appearance of ST2.
Hm, that's pretty odd, I found its handling of large files to be pretty fast for a GUI editor, and "slow and unresponsive" accurately describes the opposite of why I like Sublime.
Especially since it's always non-blocking, e.g. when you load a large file, a progress bar appears as it loads into memory but the rest of the editor continues to work without a hiccup. Quite nice.
Besides, it wasn't designed to search log files. That's what grep is for.
The speed of ST's find function never fails to take me by surprise. Even with thousands of files it'll never take more than a second. In fact, it's sometimes only slow when it can't find something.
I gave it a shot one weekend, but went back to my highly-customized TextMate. ST2 is still rough around the edges. It doesn't show source control status in the sidebar. TextMate has the ProjectPlugin plugin which solves a lot of those problems: http://ciaranwal.sh/projectplus. ST2's find-in-project was also kind of annoying, at least compared to AckMate (https://github.com/protocool/AckMate).
I realized I don't want to make the same mistake that I made when I switched to TextMate: Using a closed-source editor. One day, Sublime Text 2 will stop being developed. It's not clear if they'll ever change the license to something that allows community development. ST2 will probably end up like TextMate: consigned to the graveyard of abandoned closed-source text editors.
That's one advantage of Vim and Emacs: They're never going away.
I'm sort of on the fence. I'm still using TextMate at work, but trying ST2 for some personal projects. It's pretty good, but there are a few things I miss, for instance TextMate packages make great use outputting HTML to a webview for things like Markdown previews, SVN/Git blame, etc. Maybe I'm missing something, but there doesn't seem to be anything quite the same in ST2.
I know someone who did, said it never felt as smooth for Rails dev, but he'd spent years in it grinding code out so it's hard to retrain that muscle memory. I didn't like TM much to start with some ST2 was an easier switch.
