Sublime Text 2

I have been a heavy Textmate user for over a year now. I use Textmate for everything and have looked for a comparable editor and have been disappointed over and over again. First off, I’m not always on the Mac for one, my work makes me use Windows, I love using my CR-48 (with Ubuntu) for light couch coding and I have to admit my Macbook pro is heavy. I don’t like lugging it out of the backpack I place it in (okay I’m kinda lazy) and literally hear the register “cha ching” every time I turn the thing on. What can I say I’m cheap. I think that I’ve found my answer, Sublime Text 2. It works on Windows, The Mac, and Linux (yes Linux). You can download Sublime Text 2 here

First Impressions

The look of Sublime Text 2 is awesome. The tabs look just like the Chrome Browsers and the file editor looks modern (unlike Textmate’s drawer file manager). The interesting thing about Sublime Text 2 is that it has a mini map to the right of your code for quick navigation (I turn this off because for me it get’s in the way). Sublime Text 2 comes with code some really nice color schemes out of the box. One of the really nice features about Sublime Text 2 is the fact that Snippets and color schemes are compatible with Textmates bundles and theme files. It’s a bit tricky to get this to work (you have to locate the main Sublime Text 2 file and paste the Textmate theme or bundle file to get this to work) but most (not all) of the bundles and color schemes work with Sublime Text 2. I’ve been able to import Railscasts textmate .theme file and have used it for Rails and PHP work and it’s worked without a hitch. I’ve also included the coffeescript and codeignitor bundles into Sublime Text 2 as well.

Conclusion

While I’ve used Sublime Text 2 for 3 weeks now as my main editor I find it hard to go back to Textmate mainly because of the multiple window editing and keyboard shortcuts. Even though Sublime Text 2 is in beta still I would highly recommend that you give it a try. Sublime Text 2 can be used for Free while it’s in it’s beta form as long as you like. It is $59 dollars to purchase Sublime Text 2

Tags

code editors sublime text 2 text editors textmate