Comment by Nvorzula | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nvorzula | Hacker News Reader

I took a dive away from Sublime Text over to Atom a few years ago because I was starting up some contract work, didn't want to pay for a copy, and didn't want to continue doing the hokey thing of using a friend's license for work purposes. So I got use to Atom just fine, plus the UI is nice.

I mean, Atom is nice. The package management is all there and frequent updates are great, but...I don't write JS/HTML/CSS/PHP. I typically write Python, Go, Java, and heck even Prolog. Reading the changelog you can clearly see that they have a target audience, and I am not in it.

On the performance side (you knew it was coming!) I am mostly fine except for opening a project directory. I swear Atom has a coded in `sleep` whenever you try to open a file explorer. At first, I thought that this was a cute little quirk that would disappear after an update one day. But that update never came.

So I'll download Sublime again. Spend a morning to get it "just so" for, at the very least, Python and Go. I can easily see Sublime winning me back if I reinvest in it.

Kind of shocked that you weren't able to stomach the cost of Sublime as an independent contractor. Invest in your self!

Avoiding unnecessary costs is a solid business decision.

Investing money to a tool that help your productivity is something should be considered as well.

There is the opportunity cost of transitioning to a different editor/tool. The second the individual got the 10th "Please Register!" dialog they should have just ponied up and factored it into business expense. Instead a few hours were likely wasted scouring the internet for tips and plugins and tools on how to configure Atom.

I'm always bemused by software developers who are unwilling to pay for software. Especially software they actually use.

If software developers don't value software, there is something very wrong with our industry.

> Especially software they actually use.

And it's not even an expensive specialized software you just use once every few weeks. Sublime Text is literally the first program I start in the morning and the last one I close in the evening. I bought a license in 2011 or 2012 and have used it daily since then. And now I can upgrade for just $30? This is easily the best value-for-money of all the things I ever bought in my whole life

> If software developers don't value software, there is something very wrong with our industry.

Oh, they value it, all right. They just don’t want to buy it, at least not in the customary fashion. They’re more than happy to pay for software using bug fixes, feature contributions, community engagement, or even their own software. Maybe, just maybe, software for software developers isn’t a good product to be sold the way software is usually sold?

The developer giving free licenses to big contributors is a very solid plan. It's an inexpensive way to reward the most valuable members of your community and keeps them engaged.

However, most people just use Sublime Text. If the software were expensive I probably wouldn't feel so strongly. Looking for and fixing bugs in Sublime Text would be a terrible use of my time. For many of us, $80 represents an hour or two of work.

That's one way to look at it. I prefer to adjust to reality rather than hope to change reality to suit my preferences. If people don't like paying for software, then charging money for software is not something I'm going to waste my time on.

A lot of people are commenting on how cheapskate I was. Absolutely! I was still in undergraduate and this was my first contracting gig. I am older, wiser, and ahem richer now. =)

Have a look at Visual Studio Code too. It's free and (in my experience) quicker than Atom.

However, both VS Code and Atom stand no chance against ST regarding startup time. Thus I keep coming back to ST.

I think for Python it's fine enough. I personally use PyCharm when performance isn't as much of a concern. You could give Anaconda a try:

http://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/

Though when I did Python I used one of the PEP8 plugins and the enhanced autocomplete plugin (soo highly recommend it).

Also check out:

https://realpython.com/blog/python/setting-up-sublime-text-3...

A bit dated but some of those plugins are definitely worth it, especially Git Gutter.

PyCharm is crazy slow for me, I find I don't need 3/4 of the features in it.

Personally used to the "slowness" of PyCharm, still think it's fast enough and doesn't get in my way too much. If I'm on a system that can't handle a full blown IDE something like Emacs w/ Spacemacs or Sublime Text 3 works for me. I'm not totally married to my tools, though I do use JetBrains software as much as I can. PyCharm has debugging tools and other things which I find useful, though I do agree, it does seem a bit overwhelming at first.

It's discouraging to me that a tool that's excellent, actively developed, and inexpensive still can't get support from professional developers like yourself.

Did you just write 3 paragraphs of Atom review on the sublime 3.0 release announcement?

So what if he did? Any article and discussion about a code editor is going to inevitably inspire conversation and comparisons with other editors.

The discussion sparked by it revolves around "don't be cheap" and "try visual studio code". Just like every other discussion about Atom, Sublime or Visual Studio Code.

What's wrong with that? Atom aims to compete with Sublime and there's nothing wrong with a review comparing the two.

Except for the fact that there's barely any comparison, and nothing new is mentioned. Atom is cool, slow and not every language is supported equally. Sublime costs money. Hardly warrants 4 total paragraphs where sublime is barely mentioned.

I second this. I meander back and forth between Sublime and Atom, for exactly this reason - Sublime is faster, but Atom has done some key things better (e.g. package management).

As someone who uses both editors daily, Atom is simply better for Go because of the plugins there. go-plus is amazing and its maintainers do a fantastic job.

That said, ST is still significantly better for many other tasks and I end up using it daily, so you should definitely try it out. I'm just saying don't judge it solely on how well it handles Go because you may be disappointed coming from Atom.

IMHO VSCode's official Microsoft emdorsed Go extension is unparalleled. Little bit of setup but well worth it.

Don't be so cheap. Sublime is worth every Dollar and if you use it professionally it is well spent.

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