7 ms·

I still haven't given Atom a go. Is it worth switching from ST3?

by jscheel 11y ago

jszymborski 11y ago
I prefer Atom, although I never was quite a ST3 super-user. The speed issues are all but gone imho (start-up is a bit slow, but I have it open almost all the time so I hardly notice). The main reason I switched was because Atom is FOSS, and that always bothered me about ST3. It's also very easy to hack on, which is nice as well.
Kequc 11y ago
Both are good editors, I haven't tried Atom in about a year. Try it and then report back.
flytwokites 11y ago
I only keep using ST because of: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/5344 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/5344 https://github.com/atom/fuzzy-finder/issues/57 https://github.com/atom/fuzzy-finder/issues/57
- to3m 11y ago
  People just don't seem to know how to do fuzzy searching. Xcode has the same problem. I used Xcode every day for 2 years and its fuzzy matching never once made me happy. Fortunately, I have a concrete solution: copy what Visual Assist does. Space-separated substrings. It makes it very easy to be more precise about what you're looking for, while still letting you be vague when you'd rather, and the computer never has to make a judgement call. See here: http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W193 http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W193 and search for "filtering in the dialog" (their page has no anchors! - I'm certainly not suggesting you should copy their HTML style)
iamd3vil 11y ago
Atom is nice but much slower than ST3. It takes 30 seconds to open a file while ST3 almost instantly loads. It's not worth switching from Sublime.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  I've been using atom for several months now, and i've never had a file take 30 seconds to open.. Granted all my devices use SSDs, but still for me it's been like 10 seconds at the worst, and currently it opens in like 3-4 (and i have about 30 plugins too)
  - iamd3vil 11y ago
    I use may be 10 plugins. The speed is improved but still the startup time is so slow. May be I exaggerated a bit, but it will be definitely around 15-20 seconds for me.
    - wisew 11y ago
      You don't have to guess about the startup time – you can find the actual startup time by searching for Timecop in the Command Palette.
teamhappy 11y ago
I switched from Atom back to ST3 a month ago.
grayrest 11y ago
If you have a setup that works for you, probably not. Atom's main advantage is that it's in a DOM environment and people could do neat things with it but at the moment the efforts have gone into putting it roughly at feature parity with ST3.
rcchen 11y ago
I would say that it's at 90+ percent feature parity with ST3; the only real downside is that the package/extension ecosystem is nowhere near as mature as with ST3 right now, but that looks like it is changing very quickly. In addition, ST3 is closed source vs. Atom is open source, and that alone could be a good reason for a number of people to switch. My recommendation is to give Atom a chance, see if it fits into your workflow (whether it has native support for the languages/frameworks you work in, or if packages exist). If it works out, then you have a viable alternative to ST3 :)
- jdc0589 11y ago
  the package ecosystem isn't on par yet, but the package DEVELOPMENT ecosystem far surpasses sublime in every way imaginable. I really did not enjoy writing plugins for sublime. The development/debugging/testing experience isn't especially pleasant.
  - zzleeper 11y ago
    Agreed with the last bit. I wrote a few plugins and it drove me insane. Maybe it's the lack of tutorials or sparse documentation. That said, the new features (.sublime-syntax files instead of TM files, etc.) look very refreshing.
szastupov 11y ago
At least worth trying. I like atom a lot but it's still noticeably slower than ST3 on my late 2011 Macbook, even with SSD.
- MozMorris 11y ago
  I'm running this spec and I personally don't find the speed is an issue. I waste far more time when once a week Thunderbolt causes a kernel panic.
rev_bird 11y ago
I'm not a heavy plugin user, so I don't get a lot of the power-user benefits of ST, but the git integration alone has been worth switching. If you're editing a file under source control, it keeps track of changed segments (and files) out of the box. Nice, simple tool that's been really handy even though I only switched last week.
veidr 11y ago
No, it still fares very poorly when matched up against ST3 (or Textmate 2, or basically any high-quality native editor). It is slow slow slow, and has lots of little quirks which are clearly a result of the wacky way they decided to build a text editor. BUT.... it is way, way better than it used to be. I keep it installed and use it from time to time, to let it update itself and see how it has grown. It clearly has momentum, and computers clearly are getting faster... probably one day the slowness of it won't matter. But it still matters today -- Atom is noticeably slow on the fastest Mac notebook you can currently buy.
- MozMorris 11y ago
  Sorry be that guy who posts his specs and disagrees... :-) Running on a stock mid-2011 Air w/ 4GB Ram plus a Thunderbolt display. If it was slow, I would have switched or upgraded my machine sometime ago. Things that are slow to me are waiting for node-sass to compile on save, server-side code reloading, npm installing... and so on.
  - lvillani 11y ago
    It highly depends on your usage pattern. I usually have one long-lived instance of an editor for the project/thing I'm focusing on, but I also frequently fire up "temporary" instances for one-off editing jobs, from the terminal. The difference between, let's say, "subl ." (launch Sublime Text in the current directory) and "atom ." is staggering: Sublime Text starts instantly with a boatload of plugins; Atom starts nearly instantaneously but then takes around 5 seconds to become usable, without plugins, after repeated runs. (Speaking of specs, I'm on a late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro, 16 GB of RAM)
    - MozMorris 11y ago
      Yup, that is totally where it is slow. Would be great if they could nail that. I must be more tolerable to that startup time, perhaps I've even become used to it.
    - rplnt 11y ago
      I never close my text editor (ST2 that is). Why would I do that? So I guess Atom is not for me then?
agmcleod 11y ago
Comes down to preference. I still use sublime for opening really large files. But otherwise i stick with Atom. I've found when using linters, typescript compile checking and such Atom is just better. The notifications built in and such are great, where as the bottom bar for listing that kind of stuff in sublime feels archaic.
- bshimmin 11y ago
  The consensus seems to be that Atom is still much slower than ST3; I'm still on ST2, and I find it terrible for opening large files and mostly resort to Emacs for that sort of task (and anything involving search and replace with regular expressions on even moderately-sized files). Is ST3 markedly faster than ST2 and generally worth upgrading to now? (I've held off upgrading because I've always been in the middle of a project... but I'm now realising that I really am just always in the middle of a project, so I might as well just get it over with.)
  - balls187 11y ago
    The files ST3 has choked on, VIM also choked on. All other files, ST3 has performed incredibly well.
AlexMax 11y ago
As a paying user of Sublime Text 3, I finally jumped on the Atom bandwagon a few months ago and have overall been pretty happy. It's certainly a slower editor - I have found that opening it, creating a new window, and quitting all take more time than I would like. However, I have stuck it out primarily for two reasons: 1. It's far more extensible. Sublime Text has a thriving package ecosystem, but the limitations of the extension API show up in lots of little places. Atom being browser-based comes with its downsides, but it also allows flexibility that Sublime could only dream of. 2. It's open source. Sublime Text is a great editor, but it's closed source, maintained by a single guy, and updates have slowed to a crawl. It's not something I ever felt 100% comfortable with relying on as part of my day-in-day-out workflow.
- jjawssd 11y ago
  Amazing how a single guy can outdo the design by committee that is Atom?

I still haven't given Atom a go. Is it worth switching from ST3?

by jscheel 11y ago

I still haven't given Atom a go. Is it worth switching from ST3?

I prefer Atom, although I never was quite a ST3 super-user. The speed issues are all but gone imho (start-up is a bit slow, but I have it open almost all the time so I hardly notice). The main reason I switched was because Atom is FOSS, and that always bothered me about ST3. It's also very easy to hack on, which is nice as well.

Kequc 11y ago

Both are good editors, I haven't tried Atom in about a year. Try it and then report back.

flytwokites 11y ago

I only keep using ST because of: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/5344 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/5344 https://github.com/atom/fuzzy-finder/issues/57 https://github.com/atom/fuzzy-finder/issues/57

to3m 11y ago
People just don't seem to know how to do fuzzy searching. Xcode has the same problem. I used Xcode every day for 2 years and its fuzzy matching never once made me happy. Fortunately, I have a concrete solution: copy what Visual Assist does. Space-separated substrings. It makes it very easy to be more precise about what you're looking for, while still letting you be vague when you'd rather, and the computer never has to make a judgement call. See here: http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W193 http://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W193 and search for "filtering in the dialog" (their page has no anchors! - I'm certainly not suggesting you should copy their HTML style)

iamd3vil 11y ago

Atom is nice but much slower than ST3. It takes 30 seconds to open a file while ST3 almost instantly loads. It's not worth switching from Sublime.

Klathmon 11y ago
I've been using atom for several months now, and i've never had a file take 30 seconds to open.. Granted all my devices use SSDs, but still for me it's been like 10 seconds at the worst, and currently it opens in like 3-4 (and i have about 30 plugins too)
- iamd3vil 11y ago
  I use may be 10 plugins. The speed is improved but still the startup time is so slow. May be I exaggerated a bit, but it will be definitely around 15-20 seconds for me.
  - wisew 11y ago
    You don't have to guess about the startup time – you can find the actual startup time by searching for Timecop in the Command Palette.

teamhappy 11y ago

I switched from Atom back to ST3 a month ago.

grayrest 11y ago

If you have a setup that works for you, probably not. Atom's main advantage is that it's in a DOM environment and people could do neat things with it but at the moment the efforts have gone into putting it roughly at feature parity with ST3.

rcchen 11y ago

I would say that it's at 90+ percent feature parity with ST3; the only real downside is that the package/extension ecosystem is nowhere near as mature as with ST3 right now, but that looks like it is changing very quickly. In addition, ST3 is closed source vs. Atom is open source, and that alone could be a good reason for a number of people to switch. My recommendation is to give Atom a chance, see if it fits into your workflow (whether it has native support for the languages/frameworks you work in, or if packages exist). If it works out, then you have a viable alternative to ST3 :)

jdc0589 11y ago
the package ecosystem isn't on par yet, but the package DEVELOPMENT ecosystem far surpasses sublime in every way imaginable. I really did not enjoy writing plugins for sublime. The development/debugging/testing experience isn't especially pleasant.
- zzleeper 11y ago
  Agreed with the last bit. I wrote a few plugins and it drove me insane. Maybe it's the lack of tutorials or sparse documentation. That said, the new features (.sublime-syntax files instead of TM files, etc.) look very refreshing.

szastupov 11y ago

At least worth trying. I like atom a lot but it's still noticeably slower than ST3 on my late 2011 Macbook, even with SSD.

MozMorris 11y ago
I'm running this spec and I personally don't find the speed is an issue. I waste far more time when once a week Thunderbolt causes a kernel panic.

rev_bird 11y ago

I'm not a heavy plugin user, so I don't get a lot of the power-user benefits of ST, but the git integration alone has been worth switching. If you're editing a file under source control, it keeps track of changed segments (and files) out of the box. Nice, simple tool that's been really handy even though I only switched last week.

veidr 11y ago

No, it still fares very poorly when matched up against ST3 (or Textmate 2, or basically any high-quality native editor). It is slow slow slow, and has lots of little quirks which are clearly a result of the wacky way they decided to build a text editor. BUT.... it is way, way better than it used to be. I keep it installed and use it from time to time, to let it update itself and see how it has grown. It clearly has momentum, and computers clearly are getting faster... probably one day the slowness of it won't matter. But it still matters today -- Atom is noticeably slow on the fastest Mac notebook you can currently buy.

MozMorris 11y ago
Sorry be that guy who posts his specs and disagrees... :-) Running on a stock mid-2011 Air w/ 4GB Ram plus a Thunderbolt display. If it was slow, I would have switched or upgraded my machine sometime ago. Things that are slow to me are waiting for node-sass to compile on save, server-side code reloading, npm installing... and so on.
- lvillani 11y ago
  It highly depends on your usage pattern. I usually have one long-lived instance of an editor for the project/thing I'm focusing on, but I also frequently fire up "temporary" instances for one-off editing jobs, from the terminal. The difference between, let's say, "subl ." (launch Sublime Text in the current directory) and "atom ." is staggering: Sublime Text starts instantly with a boatload of plugins; Atom starts nearly instantaneously but then takes around 5 seconds to become usable, without plugins, after repeated runs. (Speaking of specs, I'm on a late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro, 16 GB of RAM)
  - MozMorris 11y ago
    Yup, that is totally where it is slow. Would be great if they could nail that. I must be more tolerable to that startup time, perhaps I've even become used to it.
  - rplnt 11y ago
    I never close my text editor (ST2 that is). Why would I do that? So I guess Atom is not for me then?

agmcleod 11y ago

Comes down to preference. I still use sublime for opening really large files. But otherwise i stick with Atom. I've found when using linters, typescript compile checking and such Atom is just better. The notifications built in and such are great, where as the bottom bar for listing that kind of stuff in sublime feels archaic.

bshimmin 11y ago
The consensus seems to be that Atom is still much slower than ST3; I'm still on ST2, and I find it terrible for opening large files and mostly resort to Emacs for that sort of task (and anything involving search and replace with regular expressions on even moderately-sized files). Is ST3 markedly faster than ST2 and generally worth upgrading to now? (I've held off upgrading because I've always been in the middle of a project... but I'm now realising that I really am just always in the middle of a project, so I might as well just get it over with.)
- balls187 11y ago
  The files ST3 has choked on, VIM also choked on. All other files, ST3 has performed incredibly well.

AlexMax 11y ago

As a paying user of Sublime Text 3, I finally jumped on the Atom bandwagon a few months ago and have overall been pretty happy. It's certainly a slower editor - I have found that opening it, creating a new window, and quitting all take more time than I would like. However, I have stuck it out primarily for two reasons: 1. It's far more extensible. Sublime Text has a thriving package ecosystem, but the limitations of the extension API show up in lots of little places. Atom being browser-based comes with its downsides, but it also allows flexibility that Sublime could only dream of. 2. It's open source. Sublime Text is a great editor, but it's closed source, maintained by a single guy, and updates have slowed to a crawl. It's not something I ever felt 100% comfortable with relying on as part of my day-in-day-out workflow.

jjawssd 11y ago
Amazing how a single guy can outdo the design by committee that is Atom?