Comments on: Lessons learned from the Sublime Text editor

By: Xaprb

Xaprb — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:00:20 +0000

Are you sure Sublime Text can do so many things Vim can only dream about? I consider myself pretty much a power user with both, and I think Vim is objectively way, way more powerful. The most fundamental difference IMO is that one is a terminal-based editor and the other is a textarea, cursor-based editor. Sometimes I want one, sometimes the other, it just depends on the task. But that difference has little to do with their abilities.

By: xman

xman — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:45:10 +0000

I get it, you don’t want to leave Vim, in which you are consummate experts, for a new environment where you have to learn lots of new stuff.

But let’s be realistic for a while. Sublime Text can do a few things that Vim can only dream about. The drawback: it’s a lot easier to use, apparently.

So no matter what you think of it, Sublime will become absolutely massive in programming circles. Because of all the people who are switching from anything OTHER than vim :)

Not to invalidate your point, more to explore the context

By: Xaprb

Xaprb — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:27:03 +0000

I’m sure the upcoming Sublime Text 3 will be amazing. And to go into snark-mode for a moment, it will have 2 new versions of documentation, so there will be 5 incomplete, partially overlapping, half-contradicting sets of docs. One of Vim’s most endearing features is its amazing and comprehensive documentation.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 06:27:05 +0000

I came across Sublime Text based on a recommendation and I’m underwhelmed. Ok, I’ve used vi / Vim for over two decades, but still, I don’t see how the screen splitting in Sublime can compare to :split, or :vsplit – as many times as you like, in contrast to Sublime’s “columns / rows” arrangement. Even then, having to use “File -> New View Into File” instead of :b someBufNum leaves something to be desired: I shouldn’t have to Google something like that. Most other GUI text editors have something more obvious than that. I don’t want to bag on Sublime, but that’s not what I consider “cutting edge.”

To be fair, someone waltzing into Vim for the very first time would probably get very frustrated very quickly, without some sort of guidance.

I also love Vim’s session files, which must be similar to Kate’s. I had a nasty, ugly legacy project where I absolutely needed Vim’s sessions to track where I was. Ugh.

Finally, for now, I like how vi / Vim is on every platform I use: Mac, Win, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX, you name it.

Good luck to Sublime, but I’ll stick with Vim for day-to-day stuff, thank you, and Eclipse for my large projects where I need comprehensive symbol indexing. Maybe the upcoming Sublime Text 3 will be more enticing.

By: Xaprb

Xaprb — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:18:17 +0000

I second that — Vim’s help system is amazing.