
Ask HN: How do you stand using Sublime Text? - Raed667
Whenever I try to watch a tutorial I see the &quot;expert&quot; coder working with either Sublime Text, Atom, Brackets, etc...<p>I find all these fine text editors for markup or config files or very-simple quick code fixes.<p>What I don&#x27;t understand is how people are using them to code?<p>I come from a background of Eclipse, Netbeans, VisualStudio, etc...
Where an IDE is there to help you all the way and un-complicate your life as much as it can, and I might be missing something but I just don&#x27;t understand how and why people use text editors to code?
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jeffmould
I will preface this with I used to lean heavily to using IDEs. I still think
there is a place for them in development, depending on the language/framework
you are developing in.

With that said I almost entirely use Sublime these days. Out of the box
Sublime doesn't have an enormous feature load. However, you can easily
find/add packages to make it your own. You can essentially turn Sublime into
your own custom IDE with only the features you personally need and want
without all the bloat of a fully-loaded IDE.

Again though, I think it really depends on the language and framework you are
developing in. I think it also depends on skill levels. I don't mean that in a
rude or condescending manner. I just think IDEs are most often the first entry
point into coding for many people. They either become so comfortable with
using them (was my case for a long time) that they don't bother, or don't
want, to look outside the box for other development environments. This can
often lead to relying on the environment for helping with writing the code.
Where if the individual does switch to something like vim or Sublime they
struggle without the crutch provided by an IDE environment. I don't claim to
be some expert coder by any means, and find myself constantly referring to
books and Google, but I can honestly say that my skill levels increased when I
stopped solely using an IDE and moved to Sublime.

Why did I switch? For a couple reasons. First, I wanted to try something new
(I used to use DreamWeaver and Eclipse mainly). Second, I saw more and more
people using Sublime and wanted to see what all the hype was about. I still
use Eclipse for some mobile stuff, but beyond that I am entirely Sublime.

------
PaulHoule
A lot depends on the language, for the most part if it is statically type or
not.

In Java, for instance, an IDE can do useful things easily because of static
typing. It knows what type is expected in what situation, so it can do a good
job of autocomplete, automated refactoring, etc.

Now there has been a lot of work on brilliant compilers for dynamically typed
languages that can infer types and produce very fast output code, and in
theory some of that could be applied to IDEs, but it has not really happened
yet.

Often an "IDE" for a dynamic language turns out to be syntax highlighting, a
visual debugger that works sometimes, and a button to press to restart your
web server. If that is what you run into, particularly on Linux where any
distro is going to put some deliberate errors in the GUI such as making the
scrollbars weird, you are going to think an IDE a big waste of time. For
instance, Eclipse almost works for Java (use IntelliJ!), but all of the
Eclipse plugins for other languages are awful.

The exception that proves the rule is LISP, for which all kinds of smart
editors have existed for a long time -- however I did a raft of work lately
with Clojure and Light Table and I was unimpressed. I thought about trying
emacs, but I switched from emacs to vi long ago and don't really want to go
back.

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malyk
For me, all I really need are decent syntax highlighting, in file
autocomplete, fast global search, and a quick file open by name (CMD-t on a
Mac) to be productive.

But, I've been doing 90% ruby for the last 7 years. I might feel different on
a large Java application, but even then the speed of navigating around sublime
without moving my hands off the keyboard would probably drive me to sublime
for most work in that environment.

If you are used to relying on the IDE to do things like extract interface,
refactor, auto generate getters/setters, rename methods, etc then sublime is
going to be hard to get used to.

As an anecdote, one of my coworkers uses ruby mine and is always using his
mouse to open menus and "go to definition" type things but watching him I
always think how cumbersome that is and how much simpler and faster a cmd-t
then cmd-f is.

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afshin
I find IDEs cumbersome and bloated. It really depends what language you're
writing, though. I don't know _any_ Java programmers who can live outside
their IDEs, and I don't know _many_ C programmers who prefer anything other
than a text editor and some terminal tools.

------
Hypsurus
I use vim, IDE is sometimes heavy. and you want to write code and run it from
the terminal, instead of IDE, it's an habit.

~~~
Raed667
Yes IDEs are memory hogs.

But assume that I have the newest laptop ever with the best config and I don't
have to worry about that. Why would I use anything else?

PS: I use vim/nano/ne daily when SSH'ing into servers.

~~~
Hypsurus
it's your choice, Use what you like, your code will be written in any case (:

