For most developers, text editors are just as sacred as discussing the proper way to say “gif.” Sublime Text has been the heavy hitter for some time and for good reason. As an avid Sublime user I decided to see where Atom stood since I last looked; the time of early beta stages. What follows is my experience during a period of five days using the Open Source code editor from GitHub told through the perspective of a seasoned Sublime user.
Atom
I’d like to begin by addressing a few general points concerning my time with Atom before discussing particular facets. During my brief visit I had a bit of trouble finding syntax highlighting that worked right for dot files and bash. I’m sure if I hunted this down a bit longer I may have been able to solve that dilemma, but again it was only for a short period of time. Image previews for PNG, JPEG, ICO assets were wonderful to view directly in the editor, although I didn’t always need this (see the Homer Simpson car).
When previewing via the sidebar’s file tree, a file selected would remain open if a click didn’t occur thus requiring another action on the user’s part to close the file. As you can see in the screen captures above, Sublime handles this the best.
Community Packages
The first bits you’ll want to address when making the crossover are what I term “creature comforts.” In my case, I had five days to find the one’s I used the most and what follows is a short list; although there are plenty out there like color pickers for example.
- atom-beautify by Glavin001
- autoclose-html by mattberkowitz
- bezier-curve-editor by abe3
- emmet by emmetio
Make Emmet Understand Custom Grammar
I typically write in Handlebars for my static site generator projects and Atom picks these files up as Mustache grammar. Since Emmet will not work correctly in Handlebars files you can get your Emmet’s mojo back with expanding abbreviations by adding the line below to your Keymap:
'atom-text-editor[data-grammar="text html mustache"]:not([mini])':
'tab': 'emmet:expand-abbreviation-with-tab'Emmet Autofill in JavaScript
Particularly with JavaScript I found that emmet’s expanding abbreviations for things like console.log wasn’t working as I expected. Abbreviations like cl + tab would produce a Class definition snippet in JavaScript whereas Sublime would do an autofill for console.log(). It seems I’m not the only one out there who’s had complaints when it comes to Atom & Emmit. I didn’t have a chance to write much JavaScript during my time with Atom & Emmet, but I’m guessing if I spent more time I’m sure I’d find something I didn’t like. This is still an assumption on my part of course, but a gut feeling nonetheless.
Markdown Preview
Markdown preview was truly amazing, but also a bit touchy at times in terms of performance; especially when opened for a prolonged period of time. The preview results match up perfectly with GitHub’s markdown rendering although it’s a GitHub product so we shouldn’t expect any less.
I find many text editor’s live preview for markdown like Mou never seem to gauge markdown code blocks quite right or even fail to display embedded items like pens from CodePen; something I do quite often as a writer and a feature not many allow for.
Quick Keys
Coding started out rough when I tried to find my creature comforts such as splitting panels and closing them. Ultimately I figured out a solution, but the feeling of being severely lost was remnant for a period of time. There are ways to decipher quick key combinations if you go to Atom > Preferences > Settings. I highly suggest visiting this part first if you plan on trying Atom or making the switch from another editor.
Here’s a few useful quick key commands I discovered during my use and found quite helpful with my particular workflow…
- splitting panels :
(cmd+k)then a directional arrow of your choosing← ↑ ↓ → - Closing panels :
(cmd + k)then(cmd + w)
Finally here are some quick key commands you already know in Sublime that work in Atom too!
command + k + b for sidebar
command + shift + p for package manager
command + p for file search
Theme & UI
I was truly pleased by the default themes that are bundled with Atom. The sidebar by default and file tree are super slick and the overall UI for Atom is really polished. The theme combo that follows I really enjoyed, but I didn’t spend enough time trying others; there are many that do exist.
- UI Theme: One Dark
- Syntax Theme: Solarized Dark
If you desire to become a die hard Atom user and addict, you can dive deeper by reading more about customizing at this link https://atom.io/docs/v0.80.0/customizing-atom that contains well done documentation that’s easy to read.
Performance
Performance was off with modals that display with file search (cmd + p) for example. The file search modal was at times sluggish during initial rendering. Tasks such as opening a single recent project with 2 split windows (each window contained on average two opened files) was slightly less than par in terms of speed. On average startup times were roughly 2-3 seconds from a fresh boot; even with Chrome and iTerm idling.
Sublime
I don’t really need to make much of a case for Sublime except it operates faster (startup times and overall functionality) plus works wonderfully on multiple OS’ (Windows for example). It’s still customizable, easy to work with, works great with emmet plus there are awesome books available such as Wes Bos’ books. Wes is writing great tutorials and tips for Sublime and iTerm users making this another reason to stick with Sublime; a great community of users and teachers. I still desire that Sublime Text make the official documentation for the product more robust and user-friendly. Maybe Sublime Text 3 will bring a new frontier for us.
I’ve been complaining quite a bit on Twitter as well in regards to the stable release of Sublime Text 3, since it’s beta period grows ever so longer each day (Beta Released July 2013). The majority of developers using ST3 shout with rejoice that ST3 works perfectly! I think it’s time to release the hounds and ship it as they say in the boating business.
Sublime does have it’s quirks don’t get me wrong, but the quirks are far less compared to the benefits Sublime lends to developers.
The Editor I Picked
Regardless of what you choose I decided to go back to Sublime. I urge everyone to find the editor you like the most and stick with it. It’s nice that Atom is Open Source and I’m sure it will become even more amazing as time passes; I don’t see it fading away any time soon. I will however keep a close eye on Atom, but I’ve decided to stick it out with Sublime. So in the end when it came down to Atom or Sublime…well…Sublime FTW!
I recently made this same decision. If i spent more time in atom and got the workflow problems ironed out, it might have been fine, but Sublime is quick, and the autocomplete/emmet/keyboard shortcuts just make sublime crucial to my workflow.
Yep. The creature comforts essential to my workflow were without a doubt the deciding factors for me to switch back to Sublime. Stuff just works better in ST
I’d also pick Sublime. It’s quick and can be customized.
I tried Atom and couldn’t stand its lack of performance, finding files and working in a large application directory was very slow.
I recommend sublime text with these packages:
Modific – for highlighting git changes in the side panel.
Origami – for working with split panes quickly.
VIM Navigation – for basic vim style editing
Material Theme – recent theme that is beautiful and easy to digest (https://github.com/equinusocio/material-theme)
I use some other plugins but these are the essentials to writing faster code.
Take care,
Anton.
Thanks so much for sharing and reading Anton. I’m definitely interested in checking out Origami for split window action! I’d love to try the Material Theme, but alas it is only for ST3 🙁
Not just Sublime 3, @Dennis: It’s also avilable for Atom https://atom.io/themes/atom-material-ui 😀
Working with heavy files on Atom is almost impossible. I had to work with Sublime, despite everything else works pretty well and smoth in Atom.
I had the same experience Albert. In the end Sublime is still much more performant, but also has it quirks as well.
I’ve also made the same choice 🙂
* There is plugin for atom to have same tabs behavior – https://atom.io/packages/sublime-tabs
* The atom 1.0.3 loads w/in 1.4sec according to timecop (Ubuntu @ MBPro)
* Big files used to be a problem
BTW which version of atom you ran?
Brackets would be great to evaluate alongside sublime and atom.
I’ve found brackets to be much faster and with brackets 1.4 it’s all file search is faster than any editor I’ve used. It is so fast that it displays all hits from all files as you type.
http://brackets.io/
I would like to see this comparison with Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/). It’s based on the same core as Atom but it does so much better when it comes performance and handling large files/projects.
I never took the time to look at this editor, but I really dig it from first glance especially because of all the platforms it runs on. There might be a good shot at seeing this for a future post 😉
I also decided to go with Sublime. My reason: projects. Atom is lacking here badly.
Hello, nice article, i just installed Atom , things i liked about atom was user friendliness and ease to install packages but after installation , it crashed 90% of the time and uses too much resources in comparison to Sublime, uses 30-40% cpu during installation of packages and freezes alot,had to restart the Atom several, which is annoying. so uninstalled it and sticking to sublime 3 for now. I wish sublime had user friendly settings and installation interface like Atom does. Peace
I wonder if you have checked out Atom lately; I use 1.0.7 on both Windows and Linux and it can do much more than you outlined in your post (and it’s just 1 month old!)
July 30th was the last time I checked. Since workflows can differ, so can the use of the application. This was just my experience. Atom is great, I just prefer Sublime still right now.
The fact that you spent cash on ST means you have buyers bias towards it. Of course you’d choose it over Atom, else you would feel like you threw your money away.
Hi Jake. ST3 is publicly available without purchasing, although you can still use your ST2 license with ST3 beta and Atom costs $0; so really I have no bias towards anything. Sorry you see it that way, but hopefully my explanation clears that up for you. Thanks for reading.
Dennis,
Spin it any way you want, but Jake is right.
Meanwhile us cynics will observe that passion for development and design are not your sole motivations for WDW, we all have to pay the bills somehow.
In a lab experiment, your findings would be thrown out.
I say this as a person who also tried Atom, threw it out and returned to Sublime 3 with my purchased license.
The fact that I paid for Sublime 2 was just validated nicely for me by its Ball To The Wall speed over anything built in Electron.
I am a big lover of Sublime in terms of usage but when it comes to the look and feel, I like atoms UI too much. Unfortunately i did not had a good experience with atom i do not know if there is something wrong with my system or with atom. The most important thing missing is when i press CTRL + R it says no methods even if there are 50 methods on that file! How one can code with this problem !
If anyone of you guyz know about how to fix this please help me. Meanwhile i am happy with Sublime Text 3
i have the same problem with some features that on sublime works like a charm but atom doesnot. I really want to give a chance to atom but a think i need to wait for it
Just recently I switched to Atom for a while and quickly switched back to Sublime. Seems Atom has some serious problems leaving smb_delete files in GIT repos. This completely baffled me at first as to what was causing the problem but once I isolated it it was a no brainer to go back to Sublime.
I don’t really understand how GitHub can get away with completely ripping off Sublime Text. The look-and-feel are identical, the menus are near identical, the shortcut keys are actually the same from what I gather, the Search-Replace functionality is the same – except in the positioning of the buttons (cunning)… I could fill a page with a list of items that Atom seems to have ripped that probably took years of tweaking as Sublime matured. Granted, package management is much more polished in Atom.
I understand that two minimal-style editors might look the same but GitHub are basically copy and pasting functionality, UI, and more importantly, innovation on a massive scale. If Sublime was an MS, Adobe, Apple product GitHub would have their arse handed to them. I totally feel for the creator[s] of Sublime.
Maybe for the same reasons that sublime text is a (better) copy of textmate.
It’s functionality, not aesthetics, that are important in an editor. Atom is still so young that it’s lacking in functionality. Sublime Text is also short on functionality out of the box, with packages filling the gap.
I prefer WebStorm; it is an expertly engineered IDE. To each their own though.
I’ve been using sublime for 4 years. I tried a lot of code editors and IDE such as: Atom, Brackets, Light Table, Vim, Notepad++, TextMate, Gedit, Komodo, Aptana and PHPStorm, wich is the best PHP IDE in my opinion and dispite all of their quality and features like quickEdit for brackets and the Version Control System for PHPStorm. SublimeText still is the best in performance, workflow and customization.
I develop on OS X, Ubuntu and Windows and Sublime Text is the only one that works fine on each system without crashing or losing performance.
Haven’t seen any editor launch and work faster than Sublime Text. Atom has come a long way but still lacks in areas of parallel file handling – window splitting. Sublime keeps the area open regardless and doesn’t need to keep the a file opened to keep the second window open. This is so much cumbersome to me that I’d rather pay for sublime than use free Atom.
Developing an ember application , atom does a much better job than sublime at disregarding the appropriate folders during a find; sublime will do no job, finding instances tucked away in tmp folders & minified files. No amount of folder_exclude-patterns & file_exclude_patterns will remedy this.
I have been a computer programmer [old terminology for software developer 🙂 ] for 50 years but am a bit new to current software technologies. I normally have simply used NotePad. I saw Atom and decided to try it. Well, what a disappointment – takes forever to load, simple scrolling does not work as Windows default, and other stuff. I am not interested in the extra features of these two editors – i have enough to do learning Java, Android, etc, so neither Atom nor Sublime really interests me.
I tried NotePad++. Well this is the editor for me. Starts instantly, has the color text highliting for Java, does all the basic things an editor needs to do [or that i need an editor to do], and has by default whatever features i need.
If you are a beginner learning Java and Android and have your hands and brain full of new, abstract concepts – skip these two editors and go for NotePad++.
I’m just getting started with Javascript, CSS, etc., and your comment hit home. I was thinking I should go get the latest shiny editor instead of Notepad++ but you brought me back to reality — what I need is simplicity and the basics. Thanks!
you didn’t even bother trying out sublime text?
sublime text out of the box is like notepad++, but looks a lot better
never try, never know…
Hey, thanks Mick for your response. I am just starting to code and your logic on keeping things basic with text editing was helpful.
My favorite free code editor is Codelobster: http://www.codelobster.com . It works much better for me.
I’m trying to find a solution for replacing Google Keep for some kind of “GitHub Pages Jekyll” thing ( http://blog.cregox.com/2015/12/25/new-blog-platform-once-again.html ) and ended up here while googling for that + “notes keep evernote”, then http://formalfriday.club/2015/01/04/making-jekyll-blogging-easier-with-quiver.html and then “quiver vs atom vs sublime” got yours as first hit. The “quiver” didn’t have any effect, in fact. I may even be completely mistaken in trying to compare them, never heard of quiver before.
Introductions aside, got you a couple of questions:
– Do you know quiver? (I don’t)
– Would you happen to have a good working solution for taking notes like in google keep, but using git? ( and dropbox http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1960799/using-git-and-dropbox-together-effectively )