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I still like Sublime Text

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Re: I still like Sublime Text

#481

Post by pbalau »

bbor wrote: post #443
munificent wrote: post #421

I love Sublime Text. It's one of my favorite pieces of software. I have it running 100% of the time on every machine I work on. It's where I write all of my personal notes, blog posts, and it's where I wrote both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters". At the same time, it's not the tool I use as an IDE. For programming, I use whatever IDE is dominant for the language I'm working in. Over time, that'…

Out of curiosity, what is it about an IDE that you find useful...? I'm probably just a heathen, but I've always done the build/run steps on the command line, and Sublime has LSP for all the syntax & semantics goodies other than that -- like for Python, I've got Ruff (syntax), Jedi (semantics), and CoPilot (autocomplete) running happily, with what I feel is an impressive amount of configurability. Are people just work…

Not sure if you are facetious or not, but here's why I use an IDE.

Many years ago I saw an advertisement about some cooking tool. This old East Asian grandma, ninja grandma looking, was doing some prep work for some dish. She stops, looks in disgust at the tool she was using and says "this is meant to bring joy, but this is not bringing any joy". She then switched to the "better" tool and all was good with the universe and much joy for everyone.

This is why I use the tools I use, because they bring me joy. There is an argument to be made that I use some of my tools because they bring me less sadness, but oh well.

I use vscode because it brings me joy, nevermind that I use less than 10% of its capabilities (eyeballing). I compile, run tests, use source control in Windows Terminal, because Windows Terminal brings me more joy than the vscode terminal.

I use a cage on my photo camera because it brings me joy. I use a Peak Design sling because it brings me joy. I use my Lowepro sling bag, that I got as a bonus after buying a cheapish tripod, because it brings me joy. The next version of my bag, size wise, it's a proper backpack, now I'm planning to get one and see how the joy levels are.

You use whatever you use because that brings you joy. You can try and rationalize this in any way you want, at the end of the day, the amount of joy is the only real reason you use what you use. Whatever we use doesn't make us better or worse, it makes us human.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#484

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Macha wrote: post #471
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from and generally agree. The trouble is that the integrated tools are all pretty bad, in my experience. If I can use DataGrip instead of some VS Code extension called "Database Client", I'm going to use DataGrip. I will often even prefer pgsql for many tasks. A mediocre tool might save time here and there because it's convenient, but I find their broader impact is poorer work done in worse…

Datagrip, of course, is just the integrated database editor of intellij packaged without the rest of intellij, so it's not a rule that integrated tools are always bad

Is it integrated into their IDEs? That's incredible. Fair point, then.

Maybe I should consider using their IDEs.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#485

Post by 369548684892826 »

nottorp wrote: post #252
andrepd wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw you can disable all AI bloat and online features with a couple of config keys

But isn't that your "zed"'s selling point? What remains if you turn those off? Does it have gamification too, in addition to "AI" and "social"?

An open source, fast, customizable cross-platform text editor with native UI and support for plugins and language servers. I don't think there's any other software that can tick all these boxes.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#486

Post by 369548684892826 »

lbrito wrote: post #399

Sublime user since 2014. I tried vim and nvim. Its just more overall effort and I'm never as productive as with Sublime. I tried zed and it doesn't work with Linux. I briefly opened vscode but haven't tried it out earnestly yet. I think its mostly muscle memory. I'm just too used to the shortcuts, workflow etc. You can teach new tricks to an old dog; I can learn and get used to another editor, but ultimately I always…

> I tried zed and it doesn't work with Linux

Did you mean to say Windows? It definitely does work with Linux

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#487

Post by cobertos »

jll29 wrote: post #117
ben-schaaf wrote: post #81

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…

It's not a one-time purchase if you consider updates.

> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates.[0]

Tbh I think this is fair, but it surprises me every 3 years when I have to pay up again xD

[0]: https://www.sublimehq.com/store/text

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#488

Post by klardotsh »

moffkalast wrote: post #404
eigenvalue wrote: post #90

I use both Sublime and Vscode every day for different things. Sublime is just so fast and responsive all the time, while vscode can get annoying slow and laggy, often because of all the many plugins I have running. If I just need simple text file editing with syntax highlighting, say while editing a markdown file, Sublime is just snappier. For actual coding VScode is much better because of all the IDE features.

I like VSCode's feature where it doesn't constantly bitch and moan about buying a license. Like cmon, there's billions of text editors to pick from, it would be like paying for breathing air or worse, for winrar.

Yeah, screw devs for making a industry-renowned product and wanting to be able to eat food or pay the rent for having made that thing, right?!

The pricing on Sublime Text is a steal for what value a frequent user of it derives from it. And they even let you use it forever with just a nag screen if you still refuse to, or can't afford to, pay that fee, unlike a SaaS product which would just lock you out.

I can totally get the high school student not paying for Sublime because they can't, but IMO no industry professional has any legs to stand on for using ST but refusing to pay for it on principle.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#489

Post by cobertos »

catwell wrote: post #136
ben-schaaf wrote: post #81

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.

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.

Same experience. My local machine at $Job is so slow and locked down that spinning up a VM in the cloud + VSCode remote plugin is the only way I can develop now. I would not have switched if I could edit the remote filesystem without syncing. I've worked on a ton of projects with the paid SFTP plugin but it was too painful in this case.

Re: I still like Sublime Text

#490

Post by xwkd »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #328
bruce343434 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does sublime do code navigation in such a clunky way? Such as "go to definition". Control click does not work, instead you need to press the far away F12 key. It then opens up a new tab instead of an inline dropdown. Apparently that tab isn't normal text, it's clickable text. it contains usages as well as definitions so you need to manually scan and decipher the results. When you click on a result, it opens the f…

> It then opens up a new tab instead of an inline dropdown. Apparently that tab isn't normal text, it's clickable text. If you're talking about the built-in goto-definition then it's definitely not a tab, it's a popup similar to goto-anything and the command palette. You can type to filter, use the arrow keys, press enter, ctrl+enter for side-by-side, etc. If you want to use the mouse you can hover over the symbol an…

It's rare for an app dev (of such a popular tool) to go out of their way to respond to a random forum user. Even rarer is to address every point on their list with patience and consideration.

You must be a remarkable person and I wish you nothing but success.

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