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I still like Sublime Text

ohdoylerules.com

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Re: I still like Sublime Text

#161

Sublime Text developer here, thank you for all the praise! I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish this year. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.

I don't use it much for programming, since I mostly use IntelliJ for that.

Where Sublime shines for me is opening large files, and opening pretty much any file. So many times MacOS wants me to open a json file in Xcode, or a txt file in TextEdit, when all i want to do is open it in Sublime! And I know that i can open files that are multiple GB without issues, just takes a few seconds :P

And the Ctrl-D shortcut and multi-cursor in general is so neat. I know other editors have it too now, but when I showed my wife how useful it was for simple tasks like formatting a list of emails...she ended up making her company buy her a license and teaching others how to use it.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#162

I use sublime as a copy paste buffer when I need excellent visual regex search and replace. Vscodes regex search has awkward semantics (or at least I don't know them as well as sublimes) so I usually paste things into sublime, edit them with the regexes, then go back to what I was doing. My work has some extensions that only work in vscode so I'm stuck with it but it's good enough. I also never close sublime tabs and…

If you use windows, you can use WIN + V instead of using an editor for a copy paste buffer.

WIN + V activates clipboard history, so you can see and select things you copied previously.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#163
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, I love the licensing, as it is very fair: I bought a personal license and I can take it to as many machines as I have (I do use many different computers). And you can buy it one time, no silly monthly subscription fees. As a result, Sublime ist the only commercial (locally installed) software I still use, and it is always open. There are situations, where I use macros, regex substitutions, or browsing t…

> but I immediately lost an important file Zed has an "autosave" setting, it's just off by default.

Sublime’s behaviour isn’t an autosave, it just never loses text in a window. You can upgrade the entire OS, start Sublime and your windows and text will be waiting for you, regardless of saved or unsaved state. I’ve got five-year-old scratchpad windows open that I’ve never saved.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#164
Not sure how projects and workspaces are a feature, it's the most convoluted thing ever. I just use `subl .` to open my project directory. I think it would be saner to just have a dot file in the directory if you want to tweak settings for that project/directory.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I'm a Sublime Text user since ST2 in 2011. I love ST (my last blog post is https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2025-01-04-teal-lsp-sublim... ) and I think the main thing lacking compared to the competition is the remote development experience. I work in AI so we typically work over SSH on machines with big GPUs. Most of my colleagues use VSCode because it has a very good Remote Development extension.

Can't this be solved using a remote file system these days? I haven't done it in years since with every customer from the last few years the only official way to get to prod is a CI-pipeline, but I think I remember using sfpt or ssh-based file systems even a decade back?

You can use a remote FS but it is nowhere close to the experience VSCode gives you. For instance, running code will run it locally, not on the remote machine.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#166

I came to Sublime Text 3 from Atom because I wanted a native editor. It boggles my mind that so many people love VS Code. I’ve tried Zed, it’s a beautiful editor…it’s just too opinionated. For whatever reason, it doesn’t understand my Deno projects and I content get rid of the red squigglies. Sublime lives up to its name.

VS code has good defaults and extensions but if you have time to configure it precisely it's also possible. When configured to your needs the differences between ST and VSC aren't big. What I don't understand is why would anyone use Eclipse.

Eclipse is a full IDE. Sublime Text and VSCode are not.

A competitor to Eclipse would be JetBrains IntelliJ or Visual Studio (not Code), both are often considered superior by far, but neither are free.

Eclipse is also a platform for creating applications (RCP/RAP).

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#167

Sublime Text developer here, thank you for all the praise! I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish this year. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.

Semantic highlighting! The LSP thing I mean [1]. It's the one thing which I thought was just an aesthetic nicety but actually makes a huge difference. In C++ for example:

- Color virtual calls differently from direct calls to tell them at a glance

- Class members in a different color than regular variables

- Arguments in a different color than locals, in a different color than statics

- Consts in red, mutable variables in orange

makes a huge difference in effortlessly reading the code.

It's not supported in Sublime (though you can hack a kludge to make a basic version of it work).

[1] https://gist.github.com/swarn/fb37d9eefe1bc616c2a7e476c0bc03...

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#168
post #117

Sublime Text developer here, thank you for all the praise! I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish this year. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.

For starters, I love the licensing, as it is very fair: I bought a personal license and I can take it to as many machines as I have (I do use many different computers). And you can buy it one time, no silly monthly subscription fees. As a result, Sublime ist the only commercial (locally installed) software I still use, and it is always open. There are situations, where I use macros, regex substitutions, or browsing t…

How did you lose a file?

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I immediately lost an important file Zed has an "autosave" setting, it's just off by default.

Sublime’s behaviour isn’t an autosave, it just never loses text in a window. You can upgrade the entire OS, start Sublime and your windows and text will be waiting for you, regardless of saved or unsaved state. I’ve got five-year-old scratchpad windows open that I’ve never saved.

Fwiw zed also has this explicit "sublime style" save all buffers since 3-4 months ago.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#170
The main feature of Sublime Text for me is that it doesn't throw away your buffers. Ever. So it's mainly a note taking app with vim key bindings for me / snappy scratch pad. All of my actual code editing happens in an IDE or actual VIM when on a server.
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