Emerging Editors
Single Platform Development Is of The Past
In this day and age, there are so many editors available for free that it sometimes seems intimidating which one to use for development. Hopefully this blog post will tip one in your favour — or expose you to some you’ve never seen before!
House Keeping
Let’s get straight into it. The software that I used for this blog post includes:
Note: All of the software mentioned above is available to download for free with only premium features requiring a purchased license.
After browsing between Atom and Sublime, I chose to continue with the latter. Why? Well because one of my professors, Catherine Leung, uses it during her lectures for Data Structures & Algorithms (and because I’ve been using it for a week or two). I’ll leave Atom installed for the time being but everything below will be performed in Sublime Text 3. Again, you can find the latest download of Sublime here.
Visual Layout
Sublime is rather minimal. From the screenshot below, it looks like your standard text editor however it has many more features, some of which will be shown shortly. Also note that I’ve applied the “Solarized Dark” theme to my own version for an aesthetically pleasing view.
As mentioned earlier, Sublime houses some neat tricks that will help you reduce your keystrokes and cursor movement (and hopefully your chances of Carpal Tunnel syndrome too).
Check each feature out below:
Column views using Alt + Command + 2 (or 3):
Go to Symbol using Command + P:
Multiple selections using Command + D (repeat for more instances):
Search & Replace for All Files using Shift + Command + F:
An Extension You Need
One tool that I cannot live without is Git. Git is a version control system that's widely popular amongst the developer community (think of it like Google Drive or Dropbox in a sense).
Naturally, Sublime does not come with it pre-installed and as such, you must use Package Manager to install it. Luckily it’s a simply as hitting Shift + Command + P to bring up the Command Palette and type “Git” followed by a restart of Sublime once completed. Below reflects the installation process as well as one feature of git, git diff showing the changes in the specified file:
Showing changes in Git with Git Diff via Shift + Command + P
Closing Remarks
In retrospect, after having used Visual Studio (not Code) for so long, it’s comforted me into having everything at my fingertips with minimal customization required. By exploring editors like Sublime, I’ve gained a great appreciation for other tools out there that are cross-platform and free.
