Disclaimer: This is not going to be an Sublime Text 3 vs Atom war thread I LOVE Sublime, and have no intentions of switching over. I’ve messed with Atom, and it feels very sluggish due to it being developed on web technology. Sublime is fast and mature in comparison, and has native binaries for each platform. Enough said
My point of this thread is to highlight a few suggestions I have for Sublime.
-
Web Presence - One thing Atom has going for it is http://atom.io. Atom’s website is beautiful, modern and fresh. Especially it’s “Discuss” message board. Though functional, I feel like Sublime’s phpBB is very dated feeling. It may be shallow, but I feel a lot of people will take Atom more seriously just because of it’s already strong web front.
-
Package Control - Atom has package control built into both it’s command palette and it’s website. I love Will Bond’s package control; There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. But since most people consider Package Control an essential, it’s nice that Atom has a package manager as a native feature both in the app and on the website. Maybe there is possibility of closer integration/linking with Will Bond’s website and the official Sublime website?
-
Extendability - Atom totes being more hackable. Everything about it’s UI is rendered through web technology and can be changed with a stylesheet. While this is also it’s downfall (speed-wise), I feel Sublime could offer a bit more in terms of how it handles extendability (sidebar, etc).
-
Menu Structure - I am getting a bit nitpicky now, but one of the things I like about Atom is it’s “Packages” menu in the menu bar up top. In Sublime, as I install more packages, my menus get messier and messier. Some packages like to put their stuff under the “Tools” menu (some at top of Tools, some at bottom), some packages put their stuff under the “View” menu, etc. It’s gotten a little chaotic. This is really the fault of the package developers, not Sublime itself. However, Atom is encouraging devs to put their stuff in the “Packages” menu. It’s a first-level menu, not a sub-menu, so I think it’s more obvious that installed packages go there, and not everywhere else. This might make for a more organized menu structure in the long run.
-
Plugin Host Crash Debugging - Every time someone else’s package causes ST3 to crash, I curse at both Sublime and at the package developer. It’s really not Sublime’s fault, but I would love a bit more feedback about which of my 20 installed packages is causing the crash. I don’t know how Atom compares in this regard, but I know it uses the Chromium dev panel, so in theory you should be able to see which scripts error out? When I open Sublime’s console after a plugin crash, I usually have no clue what’s going on. If anyone has any tips, please share
If anyone else has any suggestions, please keep it constructive! Sublime is developed by mainly one guy, and he’s done an incredible job (if you are reading this, thank you)!