Sublime Forum

Atom or Sublime or

#1

Hi all,

I’m new to the world of Mac OSX an am looking for a decent editor for python. Atom seems to be the new thing, and Sublime more mature. But Atom is compatible with Sublime and seems to work the same way for me.

I like Sublime better for slightly better speed, Atom better for extensibility. Also Atom seems to be developed very quickly while Sublime development has stopped. Also it costs money, while atom is free and open source. But Sublime has minimap. But Atom has…

You get the point

Please help me choose my long term editor.

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#2

[quote=“jiketi”]Hi all,

I’m new to the world of Mac OSX an am looking for a decent editor for python[/quote]

TextMate2 is an excellent choice as well.

I think Sublime Text, as awesome as it is, has just stalled and there’s quite a few outstanding bugs that you then have to live with. Atom has even more bugs currently, but the pace of development is staggering.

I am setting up a sub-business for plugin writers, so it’s obviously very important to me to pick the editor I believe has the brightest future with the most users, and in the long term I think atom will win out. The strong SCM integration is just something people want.

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#3

Since your question is Atom or Sublime, i guess it should posted on Atom board.

Funny how there is exactly zero posts on Atom board that ask things like this.

[/rant]

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#4

[quote=“iamntz”]Since your question is Atom or Sublime, i guess it should posted on Atom board.

Funny how there is exactly zero posts on Atom board that ask things like this.
[/quote]

Huh? Atoms’ future is not in question, so that explain that…

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#5

To use Atom do you not have to subscribe to Github? I do subscribe I’m not a hater but my understanding was that was part of the deal. I’m happy to be corrected.

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#6

I’m using the unofficial Windows builds, and I didn’t have to subscribe to anything.

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#7

Not a fan of Atom. It seems a bit sluggish and it’s configuration interface is… lacking… in many ways (come on, if you’re going to have a GUI-ish config interface, at least provide a pop-up font menu to set your editor font, or, at the very least, display what the current font is).

Sublime is blazing fast and its speed does help compensate for some of its shortcomings in other areas (which may or may not be shortcomings in your opinion – a lot of this is a matter of personal taste).

If you don’t want to use Sublime as a Python editor, I’d look at Komodo Edit. It’s also free and open source, actually has a usable configuration UI, is scriptable in Python (a la Sublime), has a minimap, etc. It’s not as fast as Sublime, but it is faster than Atom (though not as fast as Sublime) and between Atom and Komodo, I’d definitely pick Komodo.

Between Sublime and Komodo, it’s a trickier decision as both are great editors IMHO with their own strengths and weaknesses. Sublime wins for speed, some of the really cool features with it’s keyboard-based UI, and the great plugin community/selection. Komodo wins for price (free), open source (if that matters to you), and configuration UI (while I like the idea of plain text configuration files and have no problem with the JSON syntax for them, I still think a proper config UI is a good thing to have in addition to just editing the config files directly). Komodo also has some configuration settings that Sublime (at least out of the box – perhaps the added functionality is available via plugin) lacks.

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#8

For serious Python work consider Jetbrains Pycharm. Between Atom and Sublime the issues are 1) Atom is web based, slow, and still rough, but has a big future, 2) Sublime is mature, polished but the future is up in the air as there is a single dev who went underground.

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#9

[quote=“jiketi”]Hi all,

I’m new to the world of Mac OSX an am looking for a decent editor for python. Atom seems to be the new thing, and Sublime more mature. But Atom is compatible with Sublime and seems to work the same way for me.

I like Sublime better for slightly better speed, Atom better for extensibility. Also Atom seems to be developed very quickly while Sublime development has stopped. Also it costs money, while atom is free and open source. But Sublime has minimap. But Atom has…

You get the point

Please help me choose my long term editor.[/quote]

Atom does have minimap:

https://github.com/fundon/atom-minimap

You seem to have a good handle on the current state of both editors and their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve been splitting my time between Sublime and Atom. Atom is slower to startup, but I don’t feel any problem while editing. Sublime still feels more polished. If I was starting from right now and hadn’t purchased a license I would go with Atom. It has a brighter future, but that’s just me.

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#10

I dislike the atom mini-map. It’s an overlay instead of being an actual part of the editor, so long lines run under the map instead of wrapping at the edge of it.

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