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Comment by jinushaun | Hacker News Reader

Sublime Text is awesome! Even though it's still in beta and missing lots of features, I still bought a license for it last week.

As a Mac user, text editors are a pain in the ass. When you're booted into OSX, you wish you had access to your Windows-only text editors. When you're booted into Windows, you wish you had access to your OSX-only text editors. Running Parallels just to edit text is over kill. ST solves this problem beautifully--on Linux as well!

The best part is that the license if PER USER instead of per machine, so you can install Sublime Text on all your different operating systems.

I also want to mention that the config files and plugins are written in Python. Yes, the config files are actually Python files. I haven't made a plugin yet, but the API looks great and simple to use.

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As a VIM user I find that amusing, people that use editors other than Emacs and VIM are very disloyal to their editors, I've been using VIM for years, and I'm not switching to another one...

Just out of the curiosity, what editor do you use on Windows?

PRO Tip: Pick an open source editor, so it's always updated (ejem TextMate).

Maybe that's because Vim and Emacs have a steep learning curve so it's hard to switch to another editor.

Or it may just be because they do all what we can want from an editor (and even more).

The learning curve of Vim and Emacs making it hard to swith TO another editor? Sorry, but that makes no sense. :-) Maybe Vim and Emacs do have qualities that other editors don't match?

That's not what I meant. What I wanted to say is you put so much effort to master Vim/Emacs (as you want) so if you say "oh great a new editor i'll use it" all the efforts spent in learning Vim/Emacs are "lost".

I hope you get my point!

(and I agree that they have qualities that other editors don't match)

My fingers do emacs-y things on their own. It's a huge problem for me when I have to do something on windows. Especially C-a. That one's the worst.

I think that is also due to a form of lock-in.

Emacs and Vim are so different from anything else, and you invest so much time customizing and tailoring them to your use that in the end they are actually your own editor, not Emacs or Vim anymore.

Other editors instead are usually based on the same general idea and interaction, so switching and trying different ones is easier.

I used to be a sublime user and I switched over to vim. Now I'm in a weird position where I use Sublime for the ability to instantly find anything and go anywhere in my project and I use vim just for editing.

On a side note, Sublime has excellent project navigation functionality.

maybe this plugin will be helpful for you: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3025 it emulates the "command-t" functionality in textmate, which is pretty similar to sublime's project navigation.

What about people that use both Emacs and Vim?

I don't think there are many people who are seriously using both vim and emacs equally. Fully mastering either of them costs years...

They may not be mastered equally. For example, I find myself using vim to edit files on servers, because setting up emacs to my taste is always a bit of a pain. (I do know about TRAMP.)

I feel very comfortable in both of them. If Vim had ido, vc and slime, it would be the clear winner (because of RSI). I don't write Vimscript thought.

You can always go the other way get Vim commands in Emacs with Vimpulse.

I completely agree - Sublime Text is awesome.

I originally coded in C# with Visual Studio. The part I had most difficulty with while switching to Ruby wasn't the syntax change (I loved that part), but the editor. Visual Studio really does a lot for you, but you don't even need to do most of that stuff in Ruby.

Just finding a good text editor for Ruby is a challenge. I'm very picky about text editors, and I prefer to code in Windows, just because it's the most comfortable environment (in my opinion). I was coding in Redcar (http://redcareditor.com/) which is a cross-platform Ruby IDE. It was very buggy and felt gross. It wasn't efficient, and it is missing a lot. I tried Notepad++, but after 5 minutes of it, I didn't want to deal with it. It just felt really old. I tried Vim too, and of what little I do know of making it more productive, I thought it was awesome. I don't want to spend that much time learning how to use the utilities for coding though, I want to get started. I use Vim for editing various config files on my server machine, but other than that I rarely use Vim

Then, I tried Sublime Text 2 and I knew that's what I was going to go with. It was much cleaner, stabler, and offered the right kinds of things, things that I didn't get with Redcar, Visual Studio, or (especially) Notepad++.

What Windows text editor do you miss when on OS X?

I'm not the OP, but I liked Notepad++ before I switched to Sublime for both platforms.

I miss Visual Studio's find/replace dialogue and window management whenever I'm in other text editors.

Notepad2 is my favorite light-weight text editor on any platform, although Text Mate served this role admirably.

Powerpoint obviously.

No - Word is definitely better for coding.

But you're right, both are good choices. You can highlight, bold, and italicize all your code at capricious whim, no other editors can compete with that

You laugh, but every now and then I've actually wanted to do this as a commenting technique

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