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Ask HN: How do you stand using Sublime Text?

• Hypsurus 11y ago
  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.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • l1feh4ck 11y ago
    How long did it took you to master VIM
    • Hypsurus 11y ago
      Few weeks, once you understand vim. it's fun. (plugins,themes, vimrc etc..).
  • Raed667 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      it's your choice, Use what you like, your code will be written in any case (:
• afshin 11y ago
  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.
• jeffmould 11y ago
  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 11y ago
  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.
• malyk 11y ago
  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.