Wednesday, February 5, 2014

No more Notepad++! Sublime Text all the way!

You know when a kid gets a new toy and is so excited that wants everyone know how cool the toy is? Well I feel like that kid today as found new tool that some of you might already know about.

Ok, as most of the work I do is JavaScript with usual mixture of HTML and CSS I tend to stick with simple tools. Set of web browsers, Git and text editor. Originally, years back I used Homesite (when it was still owned by Allaire). Then I switched to Notepad++ and been using it till today. Its simple enough, allows easy duplicating lines, folding etc. With a bit of configuration I was able to get it the way I like it. Using plugins you can compare files and it provides most of the basic functionality you would expect from simple text editor. It's far from perfect though and many times got on my nerves and e.g. folding I mentioned gets confused sometimes and N++ got few other glitches.

Every now and then I look up new tools. It's been few years with Notepad++ and thought I should give something new a try. Once my favourite, Homesite officially is dead and buried now. I still cannot believe that even though it wasn't improved since a decade or so Adobe was still charging money for it. Luckily I came across Sublime Text 3. I Downloaded the thing, installed and got totally blown away. All basic editing features that I constantly use are in there. Duplicate line by CTRL+SHIFT+D instead of CTRL+D as in Notepad++. Installing new plugins (they call it packages in ST3) is a breeze and in few minutes I had SASS support, Git and all ready to work. And the best thing is you configure everything by modifying JSON structures in config files. How simple is that??

Long story short Notepad++ compares to Sublime Text 3 like chariot to Merc C63. If you are still one of those unfortunate souls that code with Notepad++, you really should give Sublime Text 3 a try. For me there is no going back, not any time soon anyway. This thing really puts smile on my face and if you haven't already, you can download this gem from http://www.sublimetext.com/3.

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