8 Reasons why Sublime editor is awesome
After using many PHP/HTML/CSS/JS code editors and IDE’s over the past decade or so (Eclipse, Komodo, Notepad++, Dreamweaver, Netbeans etc etc),
I’m super chuffed that I have finally discovered one which doesn’t drive me round the bend for one reason or another. Sublime text editor is awesome. And I don’t use that word lightly. Here’s 10 reasons why you need to get on it.
1. It’s free
It’s completely free to try for as long as you like. You get a nag popup about once per day, but you can keep trying after that as long as you like. To buy, it’s just $59 per person. You can install it on as many machines as you like.
2. It’s fast
There’s no hanging around with Sublime. It’s fast no navigate between projects and files, fast to search and fast to install addons.
3. It’s light on RAM
I’ve been flicking through projects all morning, I’ve probably edited 50 files so far today and Sublime is using just 70MB of RAM. Netbeans/Eclipse often used to chew up over 500MB.
4. It’s mega extensible
There’s a decent amount of plugins available. I followed a video guide online to install the top addons when I did my initial setup and I found something to do everything I need.
5. It’s easily configurable
Sublime uses two configuration files: Default and User. The Default files holds the current configuration settings in JSON format. To override something, you just copy that setting into the User file, which overrides. The same technique is used for hotkeys, via the ‘key bindings’ configuration files.
6. It’s efficient to navigate
Everything in Sublime can be done from the keyboard, via hotkeys. You can jump between projects, search files, jump to line by number, move screens around, anything. There’s obviously a bit of a learning curve, but within a week you’ll be flipping around like a friggin’ ubergeek using just the tips of your pale fingers.
7. It has plenty of dark themes
I prefer dark themes for coding, they’re much easier on the eye than white once you get used to them. Sublime has loads to choose from.
8. It’s code completion just works
After my frustrations with Netbeans’s’s weird code completion shoving triple speech marks around everything, Sublime offers smooth, intuitive code completion.
So if you find your current code editor/IDE to be resource-hungry, bloated or lacking decent features, you simply have to give Sublime a shot. I’ve been using it for about a month now and I’m mega happy with it.