Comparison of Sublime to other editors like Slickedit

[longphant]

I am a Slickedit user. There are a lot of convenient things within Slickedit that I really like, and I am assuming Sublime Text might be able to do it. I am under the impression that ST is more of a text editor like Notepad++ and not like an IDE where you can jump to functions. But then I saw that it’s possible to make ST like an IDE if you use add-ons. I am going to list the most important ones to me. Please let me know if these functionalities exist, and if you know how to do it, please tell me how to do it

1. With cursor above a variable/function, go to declaration
2. With cursor above a variable/function, list references
3. Auto complete brackets or parenthesis
4. Mouse over a variable and have a small pop up that shows that data type it is

[Arjan]

[quote=“longphant”]I am a Slickedit user. There are a lot of convenient things within Slickedit that I really like, and I am assuming Sublime Text might be able to do it. I am under the impression that ST is more of a text editor like Notepad++ and not like an IDE where you can jump to functions. But then I saw that it’s possible to make ST like an IDE if you use add-ons. I am going to list the most important ones to me. Please let me know if these functionalities exist, and if you know how to do it, please tell me how to do it

1. With cursor above a variable/function, go to declaration

2. With cursor above a variable/function, list references

3. Auto complete brackets or parenthesis

4. Mouse over a variable and have a small pop up that shows that data type it is[/quote]

5. f12 gets you close

6. No

7. Yes

8. Hell no

As you imply, ST is not an IDE, although some people try to get it closer through plugins. Most of what you ask for requires a built in parser for each language (there are clang-plugins for c/c++/etc)

[longphant]

Thank you for the information. Why is it that ST costs $70? Notepad++ is free and can do a lot of things. Do you know what ST has over Notepad++ that would cost $70?

[facelessuser]

There are lots of free editors out there; if Notepad++ works for you and you like it, you should use it. I used to use Notepad++, but I do not anymore.

I wanted a cross platform editor. I like having a the same workflow at work (Windows) and home (OSX and somtimes Linux). One license gets me going on all systems.
I don’t care if I have an IDE. I like using my editor and a good file search app like grepwin on windows.
I like the command palette concept.
I like the goto anything concept.
I like that the plugin system is in python, it makes plugin development more accessible for people to pick up, which is why Sublime has so many plugins available sublime.wbond.net/.
I generally like how flexible it is for me to set it up how I like.

It does have some bugs, but none that really cause major hiccups or that I notice much.
The syntax highlighter system isn’t always the best, but it works pretty good; it is the same that TextMate uses.

Sublime works for me. I could get my company to buy me SlickEdit, but like I said, I wanted a similar work flow at home (I am not paying $300 for an editor).

In conclusion:
Sublime workflow is better for me than Notepad++ (but Notepad++ is a very solid capable program). I can quickly code up my own plugins when I want something specifically. I can use it on all platforms. $70 is more affordable than $300.

[excalibur1976]

I agree with facelessuser:

If you want an IDE, you should use an IDE.
About the pricing:

Why people buy Zend Studio and not use Eclipse PDT or Netbeans? Because they had they workflow based on their favorite IDE / Editor.
I work over years with Eclipse, switched to Netbeans and now since a year i use ST / ST2 only.

Because (for me) i do not need a Overloaded IDE, i need a (really) fast Editor that match with my requirements and workflows.

[Saxi]

Thank you for the information. Why is it that ST costs $70? Notepad++ is free and can do a lot of things. Do you know what ST has over Notepad++ that would cost $70?

Well for $70 you get a ton of support and updates.
Ok, just joking, you don’t get support and updates are few and far between.

[oldwarhorse]

This is pretty good. Fairly recent.

Review of Two Editors: Sublime Text 2 and SlickEdit
By Ben Dupont, October 16, 2012

drdobbs.com/tools/review-of- … 033?pgno=1

[HellesAngel]

FWIW here’s my tuppence worth. My background is embedded C on realtime systems, some C#, some Python (tending to increase), some Perl (trying to cut this out), and a great deal of debugging borked code from my clients.

Experience shows that there will probably be never one editor to rule them all and in any case there would still be many who’d disagree even if I thought such a thing existed. Forgetting IDE functionality and just concentrating on editing I find that UltraEdit, Eclipse, Visual Studio 2012, and best of the lot (for C programmers) Source Insight all have advantages. I tend to use Source Insight + UltraEdit when clients are paying, or Sublime + Studio 2012 when I’m paying

For C programmers who absolutely require symbol lookups then Source Insight is very, very good even for HUGE projects (tens of thousands of files in mixed languages) and instantly knows everything about all C symbols once it has made its database - To give you an idea of the size my Sublime CTags database for these projects was >500Mb. It’s also fast to load, can be entirely keyboard operated, and is very ‘programmer friendly’. Sadly though this editor has become a zombie project in recent years, has serious sporadic windowing issues in newer Windows versions, and isn’t cross platform. It’s also expensive at $200+ a seat. Considering the cost and the zombie nature of the project I wouldn’t reccomend anyone to buy it.

As a C programmer who looks a lot at other people’s borked C and absolutely requires accurate, complete, and fast symbol lookups and completions I’m a bit lost now - Slickedit’s licensing cost puts me off investigating that, the dead SublimeClang project is irritating for Sublime, and I just can’t bring myself to rely on Studio 2012 (even if it is muuuch better than 2010 at symbol lookups). What to do…

[ntenney]

I’ve used both SlickEdit and SublimeText for a significant amount of time (12 months on SlickEdit, nearly 2 years with Sublime). Here’s my 2 cents (which Arjan will immediately discount). I read the drdobbs article, and it smacks of someone that spent a day or 2 on each editor. He discounts the code map on the side as eye candy, but I’ve found it to be extremely useful. It’s surprising how quickly I can just scroll to the bit of code I’m interested in just by it’s appearance visually. He also left off some of the most interesting features of SlickEdit, such as the built in versioning of edited files.

Also, his assessment of the cost is somewhat confusing. It’s not clear from the article how stark the contrast in costs is. With a single license purchase of Sublime, I can install and run on Mac, Linux, and Windows. For some, that’s not that big of a deal, but I support software on all 3 platforms, so I need something that will allow me to work on all 3. To purchase a license for SlickEdit that will run on all 3 platforms, I would need to spend $650 (that’s taken from their website this week). I got away with running SlickEdit for as long as I did by purchasing an educational license (I was teaching Computer Science on the side at the time, and used it in class for code demonstrations). If SlickEdit had shown itself to be worth the cost, then I would have figured out a way to either get my employer to purchase me a copy, or saved up the money to purchase a full license, though I probably would have just gotten a 2 platform license, and made do with Vim or something else on Mac (it’s the platform that I spend the least amount of time on out of the 3). In the end, I didn’t find SlickEdits code completion to work all that well, and some of the features that I thought were really cool, were also ones that I never got full use out of, so for me, it wasn’t worth the price tag.

I next tried Sublime. I stumbled on it from discussions of another textmate like editor that went defunct (e TextEditor). Initially I just used the trial version. I used it in my courses for a semester, and in my day job. I found that the snippets made me more productive (and my students were impressed as well, though it did confuse them initially that I’d type if, and suddenly a stubbed out if statement would appear). As mentioned before, I liked the code map, and a vim mode was an absolute necessity for me (both SlickEdit and Sublime offered it one way or another). The plugins available for Sublime worked well enough for me, and I’ve rarely had a significant issue or a crash, so after a month or 2 of use, I went ahead and purchased a ST2 license. I’ve been using ST2/3 ever since.

[Acecool]

Sublime text uses threads - Notepad++ doesn’t… For example, you can code in ST3 while running a search - with n++ the ui is locked and you can’t do anything but wait.

Most other editors are bulky and slow - ST3 isn’t but the lack of advanced panels is annoying… The cost is way too high because it isn’t a translation suite and it is pretty basic, considering. It does a lot of things better - but the cost means more professional types use it meaning more quality addons… With Notepad++ you end up with a lot of addons with memory leaks such as Function List…

With ST3 you end up with basic addons such as CodeMap which can be made a lot better ( with my XCodeMapper ) for instance… No need to reinvent the wheel - simply extend it…

Sublime text is so much more usable… But the cost is way too high - Windows 10 Pro is around $20 to $30 nowadays and comes with a lot… Open Office is free and works amazingly - Google provides a ton of free apps but earns money elsewhere ( Ads and data mining ) so it can… If sublime text had full translation suite integration and transcription suite too - without needing to mod then the cost would be WELL worth it ( most translation suites are very basic and are chock full of bugs )…

But, because of modding functionality you can get rid of the nag incredibly easily - it occurs on save… I wrote a simple autohotkey script to remove it. I still hear the notification that it is being removed so I know when it happens but I don’t have to see it. I have a ton of injuries from a May 7 2011 accident where the other person hit me because they were too busy looking in their passenger mirror at a going out of business sale for a grocery store to notice a stop sign… It looked like they were stopping but at the last moment they accelerated violently which put their axle at a STRAIGHT angle against my front right frame rail and the curb - It was instantaneous stopping from speed without any crumple at all causing severe injuries… In short - I have very little time to myself - most is spent in agony, physical therapy, doctors, etc… the little time I do have to retain my sanity while being tortured on a daily basis means I want to spend it being productive… Having an editor lock up due to searching, etc… isn’t productive… the nag isn’t either and I can’t even sign up for disability because I can’t sit long enough to fill out the form, and when I save it and come back to it they claim it has expired because I didn’t come back soon enough which defeats the purpose of saving… So I have no income - otherwise I would pay.